BlackBerry encourages game development on BB10

BlackBerry seems to want to bring a bigger focus on games in the BlackBerry 10 OS. In an interview with Polygon, Sean Paul Taylor, the team leader of BlackBerry’s games division, talked about encouraging developers to make games that can be played on BB10 using gamepads. According to Taylor, this is an attempt to bring real handheld gaming to the platform.

The Moga Pro controller is one of the more popular ones out there

Taylor talks about the Ouya and GameStick and how they aren’t doing much for gaming. “We looked at a lot of trends that are going on, and you see the Ouya and GameStick, and they’re not doing that well with the game sales because, while some people thought it was cool at first, you essentially have to keep two Android devices,” Taylor said. “You can’t bring the console to your friend’s house and keep going. If you play on your phone on the bus and get a high score, you come home and the same game on the console is out of sync. So our approach is to make something where you can continue your gaming.”

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Devices running on BlackBerry 10 have in-built support for many popular mobile game controllers, including the Moga Pro Game controller and the SteelSeries Free controller.

BlackBerry has been pushing to get games on BB10 quite a bit. Recently, the company announced that the versatile Unity Engine now works on the platform. This brings BB10 in line with Android, iOS and Windows Phone 8. Unity is the base of many of the most popular and critically acclaimed mobile games, including titles like Organ Trail: Director’s Cut and Knights of Pen and Paper.