Microsoft Pays to migrate iPhone games to WP7

An anonymous developer leaked that Microsoft is stimulating developers to migrate their iPhone games to Windows Phone 7. Microsoft is helping with money, and giving out mobile phones. Microsoft has confirmed this news and explained even more how Microsoft is helping developers to switch to their platform.

However, the developers have a problem. iPhone apps are written in objective C, while Silverlight and XNA games are written in C#. A migration would therefore involve a complete game rewrite. Of course, if you can make money with it, this should not be a big problem.

Unfortunately, I haven’t heard that Microsoft approached Silverlight game developers with the same deal. It is my own speculation, but perhaps Microsoft’s interest in iPhone games is to get the developers to switch, and because the iPhone developers created games which proved to be commercially successful. I don’t know of any Silverlight game which became a large commercial success, but SL game developers have invented their wheel.