Ahead of the Ottawa International Game Conference, I got some time to talk with Anders Jeppsson, the global head of gaming at BlackBerry. Between GDC and BlackBerry Live over the last couple of months, we’ve been in pretty regular contact, but there was still a fair bit to talk about.
He’s recently completed his move from Sweden to Canada, so we touched on the differences in developer ecosystems and culture. We also talked about Unity going free for BlackBerry 10 developers - the private beta just wrapped up, so expect to see an influx of some awesome 3D games in BlackBerry World soon. Anders went so far as to say that we're in a golden era of gaming because initiatives like this really level the playing field. I prodded Anders before we started rolling about whether they’ll have something in place with Havok, who announced a similar program for mobile devs at GDC, but all he had to say was a coy “We’re talking with everybody.” Speaking of teases, Anders also hints that we'll see some cool stuff for gamers in the 10.2 software update coming up.
Then we broadened up a bit, and talked about BlackBerry’s larger strategy for winning over developers. He surprised me when he said that there are many that are looking to develop on BlackBerry first and go from there since the toolsets for BB10 are standards-compliant and accessible, making it an easy jumping-off point.
Anders is giving a talk at the conference here in Ottawa, so I’m excited to hear how many developers will be hooked into getting on board with BB10.
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