If you"re looking forward to playing Angry Birds Space on your Windows Phone, you"re in for a long wait. Rovio"s chief marketing officer, Peter Vesterbacka, told Bloomberg that Windows Phone users shouldn"t hold their breath.
Despite the previous sucess that Rovio has had with Microsoft"s mobile platform, the market apparently just isn"t there. "We want to be on all screens, but we have to consider the cost of supplying the smaller platforms. With Windows Phone it’s a lot of work to technically support it... If you look at activations, Apple’s iOS and Android are clearly bigger than any other platform."
Rovio"s market is already way, way bigger than Windows Phones" market share, so not supporting it isn"t really a risky move for them, but it could prove damaging to Microsoft. Adding insult to injury, Microsoft"s biggest Windows Phone partner is Nokia, another Finnish company, like Rovio.
It would take a pretty diehard Angry Birds fan to make a decision about which platform to embrace based on the availability of the new game, but Windows Phone is already at a disadvantage not only as a platform, but with developers. The worst thing that could happen to the budding platform is for major developers to start jumping ship, if they ever got on the ship in the first place.
Who knows, maybe after the initial rush is over Rovio will decide to support Windows Phone, but until then, it"s definitely going to leave a lot of users longing for the new game.
Update: 12:00 PM EST Rovio CEO Mikael Hed has told Reuters that Rovio in fact is working on a Windows Phone version of the new game, although no release date was given. "We are working closely together with Nokia to bring our games to their platforms," Hed told Reuters. "Our mutual goal is to bring the best possible experience to our fans, including all fans using Windows Phone devices." Woot for Windows Phone owners!