Popular Mobile Game "Great Big War Game" Earns £52 in First Week of Release on Windows RT

Hot on the heels of news that Microsoft's Surface tablets haven't been selling too well thanks to "channel problems", we now have a developer speaking freely about its lack of success with selling its established game through the Windows RT Store.

Rubicon's Great Big War Game has been available for Android and iOS for quite some time, and it's proven successful on both platforms, having achieved a 4.5 rating on Google's Play store based on 2,500 ratings. Naturally, then, the developer expected that its efforts to port the game over to Windows RT would pay off. After a report of earning £52 in the first week, however, earning back the £10,000 that it cost to port over would take two years - assuming sales kept up.

The developer originally had a scathing blog post blaming Microsoft for the lack of support, as it refused to "feature" the game despite the relative lack of anything else worthwhile to promote. As someone who peers into the Windows 8 Store on occasion, I can sympathize with the developer here. You'd imagine that if Windows RT were to succeed, promoting proven titles is what would help it happen.

Not long after Rubicon's blog post was published, Microsoft got in contact with the developer and smoothed things over, resulting in the entire thing being purged. Still - there's something to be said here when a developer successful on other platforms finds no success on Microsoft's. It seems to me, as a non-developer, that Microsoft needs to work closer with those who bring their apps to the OS, and likewise help promote the best content - the content people should know about, given the current lack of selection on the platform versus the competition.