Fruit Ninja slices up the Windows Phone 7 competition

The incredible popularity of the melon-slicing shaolin shows no sign of abating as the monstrous success of Fruit Ninja on the App Store is translated onto Windows Phone 7.

After clocking up 2 million downloads on iOS back in September, developer Halfbrick decided to port its arcade slash-‘em-up to Android and more recently to Microsoft’s nascent mobile platform.

Meteoric rise

Sales of Fruit Ninja on Google’s operating system followed a similar meteoric trajectory to that on Apple’s handsets, the top position on Android’s Market secured within a day.

Now the Aussie game maker is cutting a swath through the Windows Marketplace, thanks in part to Fruit Ninja’s headline performance during Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote last week.

Commenting on his game coming to fruition so quickly on Windows Phone 7, Halfbrick’s marketing director Phil Larsen told VG247 that “it was released on December 22nd, so it’s only a couple of weeks old, and it’s done really well so far. It’s the number-one selling game on Windows Phone 7.”

Developmental pains

Yet despite the early prosperity on Microsoft’s newest OS, Larsen was at pains to point out the relative complexity of the Redmond-based company’s QA process, in comparison to Apple’s more hands-off approach.

“If you’re an official Windows Phone game then you have to go through Microsoft certification, dealing with the account managers,” said Larsen. “They have their team testing, and you communicate with them back and forth. Whereas Apple, you submit the game, it gets passed, and you’re done.”

Going into further juicy detail on producing a Windows Phone 7 title, Halfbrick’s marketing man reiterated one of the difficulties plaguing Android publishers: “The challenge for developing for Windows Phone and for Android as well, I guess is that you need to accommodate for different devices, with different specs. Whereas iPhone is usually one thing.”

[source: VG247]