BlackBerry not great gaming machines says PopCap

RIM, in light of the launch of BlackBerry 6 OS, is making an effort to accommodate its platform to the increasingly important developer community.

Indeed, the company recently got some advice on the subject from one Steven Paul Job.

Still, competition breeds progression, and the threat of both iPhone and Android is resulting in RIM adopting a number of measures to encourage studios to create for its news devices.

New advertising and analytics tools, lowering the minimum app price and - if bullish talk from within RIM is delivered - new payments systems too are just some of the new initiatives heading the platform's way.

It's just as well, too, given a report by the Wall Street Journal suggests developers are increasingly ambivalent to BlackBerry as an OS for gaming, attracted by its sheer userbase especially in the US but put off by a set up that seems to turn its back on app culture.

Getting its game on"RIM today is really not on our radar," PopCap's director of mobile business development Andrew Stein told the paper.

"They're not great gaming machines."

Cited are the previous difficulties with paying consumers on the whole not keen on the PayPal set up and upgrading from a free app to a paid one, with users having to uninstall the former to employ the latter, losing all their data in the process.

As such, RIM's head of application development Alan Brennar's statement that the company "is so there" already might seem a little premature, but RIM is certainly aware that it needs to continue to take steps to make BlackBerry more developer friendly in the future.

The paper claims in-app purchases are also inbound, bringing BlackBerry in line with its competition.

Whether it can actually take the lead rather than merely follow, however, will have more of a bearing on its standing in the years to come.

[source: The Wall Street Journal]