Most commentators in North America and Europe treat RIM like a dead man walking.

There's plenty of passion for the upcoming fight when it launches BlackBerry 10 within the company, however.

And some of RIM's development partners are surprising upbeat, so following the BlackBerry World 2012 conference, we've been polling the views of game studios already supporting the platform.

One such is Canadian outfit GlitchSoft. We caught up with marketing director Rob Price.

Pocket Gamer: What's your current view about PlayBook as a gaming platform?

Rob Price: The PlayBook has some excellent performance specs and personally I enjoy gaming on the device.

It has the right size and form factor to keep it portable. The speakers are smartly placed and perform well. The touchscreen is very sensitive and accurate. And, the GPU is powerful (and the same as the iPad) - we're seeing top of the line OpenGL performance as we port Star Marine: Infinite Ammo to PlayBook.

The only downside lies in the user adoption rates. Gaming on tablets is unfortunately still a one pony show.

In short, I think it's an excellent gaming platform with quite a bit of potential once consumers begin checking it out.

How are you finding the early version of BlackBerry 10 in terms of development?

Our developers are pretty excited about BB 10 and their experience with the code thus far has been positive.

We set out independently to see what kind of work would be involved in order to get our games running. We approached the first port as a bit of a side project, with a few hours dedicated here and there. But we had the build up and running within about four evenings.

On top of this, we were unaware of the open source projects/libraries that were available on Github (these would have saved us some significant time while we ported over our libraries!).

And once things were up and running, we found the build was super stable. Coincidentally, the process also enabled us to flip our other titles over to the platform as well - pretty much for free.

What are your hopes for the autumn OS and device launch?

I am hoping a respectable number of interested consumers adopt BB 10 devices and fuel some additional growth in the App World.

To ensure success, RIM is going to have to really wow people will the phone's intuitiveness and functionality. Some of the demonstrations at the BlackBerry World Conference infer that RIM understands this. Hopefully it can deliver.

What do you think is RIM's biggest challenge?

Its biggest challenge will be to win over anyone who has not yet switched to one of Apple's products. This includes anyone who currently has a RIM device and would be eligible for an upgrade in the fall. Some consumers' minds are made up well before they can execute their update.

I believe anyone who recently left isn't likely to be coming back, at least not for a couple of years. This leaves RIM with a small pool of potential customers to draw on. It will have to win a large majority of this pool.

Do you think RIM can find a place in the mobile gaming market?

I do think RIM will be able to find a place in the market.

Its store already favours a premium pricing model for games, which is quite attractive to developers, and I can only assume that devs will gravitate towards the opportunity to make some money.

The support from RIM, so far, has been excellent and App World is off to a great start thanks to additions such as the integration of BBM and Scoreloop. What is also reaffirming is the fact that RIM has a unique opportunity to build its storefront from the ground up based on lessons learned from older stores.

The mobile gamers out there are definitely interested in a better model for filtering out the noise and discovering the types of games they enjoy - this is RIM's chance!

Can you say anything about your plans for BB 10's launch?

We are in the process of bringing Star Marine: Infinite Ammo and Destructopus over to the PlayBook and BB 10, once it is available.

Following those titles, we will likely be bringing our current project, an in-depth action RPG titled Dragon Realm, to the platform.

Thanks to Rob for his time.

You can find out more about GlitchSoft and Dragon Realm here.