Kabam, one of the colossi of the mobile and casual games market, has announced plans to transfer its free–to–play projects to smartphones and tablets based on Windows Phone.
Among the games that can be found on the Windows Phone Store are such box office hits as Fast & Furious 6: The Game, Dragons of Atlantis: Heirs of the Dragon and The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth. The first release will take place no earlier than next year. In the future, Kabam plans to release its future projects on all mobile platforms synchronously.
Despite such a loud announcement, it’s not worth clapping Kabam’s hands and talking about a serious victory for Windows Phone. Porting of all games will take place within the framework of the transaction, the details of which Kabam has kept silent.
In other words, we are not talking about a standard model, when a developer sees an opportunity to make money on a new platform and starts porting his products for it. Most likely, Microsoft has agreed with Kabam that it will pay for porting the hits of the mobile company, provide a certain number of downloads, and also, perhaps, “put” something on top.
In principle, this is standard practice for Microsoft.
As for the prospects of Windows Phone, they have been very vague for the third year in a row. Of all smartphones sold in 2013, only 3.3% of devices worked on it. Yes, this is almost twice as much as in 2012, but still very little. IDC assures that in four years more than a quarter of all smartphones will work on this platform, but IDC traditionally has very bad forecasts.
Source: http://corporate.kabam.com