Gameloft his week made an announcement that will have almost every IT manager that supports executives using Blackberries, going out and canceling the service. It plans to put serious games on the Blackberry.
We would have thought that it was every CEO’s nightmare to support a mobile platform that allows personal gaming, but it appears that Blackberry is welcoming Gameloft into the BlackBerry ISV Alliance program
The only explanation is that Telcos think that they can shift Blackberries to the younger generation instead of budding, hard working, committed executive types. After all Research in Motion, the company that brought us the Blackberry, exists primarily because its users are so important that their email must reach them no matter what they are doing, or where they are.
Michel Guillemot, president, Gameloft said, ‘Given the technology advancements embedded in smartphones such as the BlackBerry Pearl and BlackBerry 8800 and RIM’s rapidly growing customer base, we believe now is the ideal time to bring our quality games to this award-winning platform.’
‘More and more people are embracing BlackBerry smartphones for both work and play,’ said Jeff McDowell, Vice President, Global Alliances, Research In Motion.
Well we hope for his sake that he’s right, but the fact is that other smartphone handset platforms are overtaking RIM function, and all offer push email, and entire systems are available cheaply from Nokia and Microsoft. And it is this that may have begun driving the Research in Motion strategy, and it may force the device to try to become something it’s not, and then it may well lose its way.