Rovio's CMO, Peter Verterbacka (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
Announced back in March, it has taken eight months for Rovio's gravity defying title to reach Windows Phone. At the time the omission of Microsoft's mobile platform was shorthand for the problems that Redmond were having around third party applications. Now that the title is here (and if you ignore the 'late' tag), it shows why Windows Phone 8 will be a force to reckon with in the mobile gaming space.
Yes, Windows Phone 8 specifically, and not Windows Phone as a whole. Angry Birds Space is still not available for the older generation of Windows Phone devices. The reason behind this is pretty simple, and shows the gaming potential. Windows Phone 8 allows developers to run native code on the handset, Windows Phone 7.x does not.
That means popular middleware engines such as Unity and Havoc can run on Windows Phone 8, and that means porting advanced gaming titles between iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8 is going to be a much simpler process.
While that might only give Windows Phone 8 technical parity in the eyes of the developer with the other leading mobile platforms, there's something lurking in the background of Windows Phone 8. Windows 8 itself, the Xbox platform, and Windows RT. It might not be write once run on any Redmond device, but it's going to be a very small jump and the addressable audience just jumped up a few orders of magnitude.
Probably the only area that's missing is a gaming focused tablet that fits nicely into the ecosystem. What's that you say, Jason, an Xbox Surface? That'll do nicely.
