Games writer shuns Android Market

SPECIALIST GAMES producer, Finblade, has launched three titles for the G1 Googlephone but has elected to distribute its products via Handango instead of the Android Market.

Finblade President, John Chasey, told the INQ, that his company was not shunning the Android Market entirely. "We're planning to hit the Android Marketplace, but right now there is no billing.

"So, rather than have some titles on it for free, then suddenly start charging for them, we felt the better approach would be to launch on Handango, then support the Marketplace once billing options become available."

This could be a very worrying trend for the Android camp given that the games in question were converted from running on the Apple Ithingey and are on sale via the Apple App Store.

"By using the Bedrock technology from Metismo we have been able to focus our resources on the content of the games and let the middleware take care of the OS issues," claimed Fergus McNeill, Finblade's CEO.

Another games producer plotting to convert its existing games portfolio over to Ithingey compatibility is Player X. It is already using the Xpress Suite from Javaground to covert games from J2ME (java) to Qualcomm's Brew.

However, Player X says it is anticipating that Javaground will soon introduce tools that convert from J2ME to Apple Ithingey and the Beast's Windows Mobile.

Incidentally Finblade's new games are Wordsearch, Movie Quiz and Tennis Slam. µ