Hit game makes £52 in first week on Windows RT
Great Big War Game, a popular iOS and Android app, made only £52 in its first week on Windows RT.
Great Big War Game was a hit on iOS and sold more than 100,000 copies on Android. It costs £2.19 on Windows RT, where it has just three reviews - all giving it the maximum five stars.
In an angry blog post titled "Windows RT - Born to fail", UK-based developer Rubicon originally blamed Microsoft for the paltry sum and said it won't be bringing any more of its titles to the fledgling platform.
If other developers get this treatment, that store is going to look mighty bleak for a long time to come
However, Microsoft quickly got in touch with Rubicon to smooth things over, and the post was deleted and replaced with the following:
"If anyone already read this post, it has had a very positive effect and Microsoft have graciously decided work with us to iron out the problems and get us past this incident. With a sense of fair play, I’m putting my grumpiness on hiatus and deleting the juicy bits. Which was all of it, sorry."
The original post was more scathing. Rubicon claimed that "even whilst there’s almost nothing to promote, [Microsoft] will not feature our title for bizarre admin reasons". Rubicon said it appears Microsoft is refusing to promote it because the game is only available on ARM-based Windows RT devices, not those running on x86-based Windows 8.
"If you’re familiar with their new store, this means our app is forever consigned to the garbage bin, presumably earning us less than £52 a week in future." Rubicon points out it would take two years to recoup the £10,000 cost of porting the game at the current sales rate.
The picture has been rosier on other platforms, where independent developers such as Rubicon are given a "bit of a leg up" in competing with the bigger releases.
"Apple regularly promote our apps. Android regularly promote our apps. Even RIM (Blackberry) regularly promote our apps... Microsoft on the other hand clearly do not value us at all."
"If other developers get this treatment, that store is going to look mighty bleak for a long time to come. Please take this as a warning. I know I sound bitter and twisted and there’s a reason for that – I actually am. We have wasted a lot of time, resources and money on supporting this platform and all that happened was we got spat on."