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Game on: BlackBerry 10 not just for business, says games head Volker Hirsch

Tackling ease, scale, and monetisation

Game on: BlackBerry 10 not just for business, says games head Volker Hirsch
Following BlackBerry 10's official unveiling in New York, director of business development for the newly-rebranded BlackBerry gaming division Volker Hirsch has stressed that the platform has been designed with developers in mind.

The comments – made as part of a forthcoming Mavens piece for PocketGamer.biz – were made in response to claims the BlackBerry brand is far too business focused to really appeal to gamers.

In Hirsch's view, however, the BlackBerry 10 platform is perfectly placed to play host to a library of games that both meet the needs of consumers, and offer a profitable environment for developers.

We mean business

"One could deduce that the only people using BlackBerry in the past were business people, but nothing could be further from the truth," said Hirsch.

"The demographic BlackBerry caters to globally is - and has been for some time - way broader than what some of you seem to perceive."

Hirsch believes BlackBerry 10 is already "well positioned" as far as enterprise goes – noting that the "old notion that business people don't play [games]" is likely out of date - leaving him free to tool the newly launched platform to better suit the games community.

"When I looked at our gaming proposition, I tried to approach it mainly from two angles," said Hirsch. "Firstly, through the eyes of the user and, secondly through the eyes of the game developer."

'Easiest platform to address'

Hirsch states that BlackBerry decided to focus on three areas with developers in mind – ease, scale, and monetisation.


BlackBerry Z10

"Previous iterations of BlackBerry OS were, for game developers, certainly not all that easy to address," he admitted. "BlackBerry 10 is VERY different in this respect."

Hirsch states that, as well as "slick, powerful and beautifully spec'ed" hardware, BlackBerry's proposition to developers has also been aided by a "clean, well-documented, C++-based OS" backed up by a "variety of inroads to come on board - from HTML5/Webkit, via Adobe Air to various tools and engines."

"Look up on the web and I think you will find that most devs who have actually tried found that we are the easiest platform to address," added Hirsch, pointing to the 70,000 apps available on BlackBerry 10 from day one.

"There are lot of game developers who do try it, who develop for it, port to it, publish on it - after all, we didn't make those numbers up."

Shop talk

Hirsch also cited improvements to BlackBerry's app store – BlackBerry World – which he claims already "monetised a little better than most others."

"We also have some angles to it that I would posit no one else can offer, all of which impact directly the monetisation of games and apps. On the pure billing side, you can bill to carrier bill; currently some 85 or so carriers are connected to that," he concluded.

"The process for developers is simple: it is a single API you integrate, and you, the developer, get 70 percent irrespective of the billing channel a customer chooses. With 5 billion actual mobile users globally and (only) 1.8 billion credit cards in the world, there is a huge delta to be addressed."


Angry Birds Star Wars is on BB10 from day one

A large body of notable developers have already thrown their weight behind BlackBerry 10 – Rovio, EA, Halfbrick, Disney, Fishlabs, ZeptoLab and Sega, amongst others, all on board – with attention now switching to how the platform performs at retail.

The 4.2-inch BlackBerry Z10 is already available in the UK, with launches expected in Canada in February before roll out in the US in March.

With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font.