Angry Birds Space Will Launch on Windows Phone
The new Angry Birds Space game will be released for Windows Phone, according to Mikael Hed, the CEO of Rovio, the company who makes the popular title.
Hed told Reuters in a recent interview that Rovio was "working towards getting Angry Birds Space to Windows Phone 7."
This contradicts a previous statement made by the company's chief marketing officer, Peter Vesterbacka, who said that it would not launch for smartphones using Microsoft's software. He told Bloomberg that it would be a "big undertaking" to support Microsoft's mobile operating system since the game would have to be completely rewritten in order to be compatible with Windows Phone.
"If you look at activations, Apple's iOS and Android are clearly bigger than any other platform," said Vesterbacka. "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."
He also stated that Rovio had no plans of releasing Angry Birds Space for Windows Phone at this time.
Angry Birds is arguably the most popular game in the smartphone market, so by excluding it from Windows Phone, it could seriously hurt Microsoft and its partners in terms of sales.
Nokia recently teamed up with the software giant in releasing new handsets running the company's new Windows Phone 7 software. Losing Angry Birds would give Apple and Android platforms another competitive advantage.
Microsoft is also planning to release its Windows 8 software that is specifically geared towards tablets in the near future. Any tablets being released using the software would suffer from not being able to have Angry Birds.
Microsoft is looking to make itself a major player in both the tablet and smartphone industry that are currently dominated by Apple and Google. Losing support for popular titles such as Angry Birds Space is something the company must fight to prevent.
