In a bid to get some games ready for the upcoming BlackBerry 10, RIM is offering developers cold, hard cash, along with some free devices, if they can port some gems over to the OS. It can’t hurt, right?
The deal comes in the way of a 36-hour Port-a-thon. It works like this: devs can submit of to 20 games for consideration. They can be brand-spankin’ new ones, or ports. For each game that’s approved, the dev will get $US100. If you’ve got two to five that get through, you get the money plus a free PlayBook. Between five and 10 (probably actually six and 10 to avoid overlap, but they say five) you get all that plus a Dev Alpha Device if you’re one of the first 100. Lastly, over 10 get you all that and a ticket to GDC 2013 in San Francisco.
Throughout the event, RIM will have experts on hand to help devs should they run into trouble, so technical difficulties should prove no excuse. It should be interesting to see what the turnout is on this, because even though BlackBerry 10 might not be the most appealing OS to develop for, cash tends to be a good incentive. If nothing else, it looks like RIM is following through on their musical promise to “keep on loving [their developers].” What that means for the gaming ecosystem of BlackBerry 10 though is still up for grabs. [BlackBerry Dev Blog via TechCrunch]