14 DAY TRIAL // Rubicon, one of the companies that decided to port one of their games to Windows RT, said that Microsoft’s new platform is simply “born to fail,” as sales of the Windows Store apps are shockingly low.
Rubicon’s Great Big War Game has made only $84 (€65) in its first week on sale, the company’s Paul Johnson said in a blog post, while the overall investments for porting the game to Windows 8 exceed $16,000 (€12,300).
Needless to say, Rubicon doesn’t want to work with Microsoft again in the future, not only because of poor sales, but also due to the lack of support received from the Redmond-based software giant.
“Microsoft on the other hand clearly do not value us at all. Even whilst there’s almost nothing to promote, they will not feature our title for bizarre admin reasons. And this is whilst their store is empty and they need developers like us to fill their store far more than developers like us need them to pay us £50 a week,” Paul Johnson wrote in a blog post.
As compared to Microsoft, Johnson said, Apple, Android and RIM regularly promote Rubicon’s apps, which usually leads to increased sales. Much more than $84 in just a single week, he said.
“If other developers get this treatment, that store is going to look mighty bleak for a long time to come. Please take this as a warning. I know I sound bitter and twisted and there’s a reason for that – I actually am. We have wasted a lot of time, resources and money on supporting this platform and all that happened was we got spat on,” he explained.
Great Big War Game is currently available in the Windows Store with a price tag of $2.99 (€2.3) and is exclusively available for ARM devices.
Update: Microsoft has contacted Rubicon and they're now working on the issue. Rubicon has removed the blog post and confirmed that a trial version of the game is in the works. More info here.