Microsoft has breathlessly announced several new game titles for Windows Phone 8. And once again, Redmond continues to disappoint.

But then, we're used to it. When Microsoft held its Windows Phone 8 launch event in October last year, the news felt incredibly stale. Jessica Alba made an appearance. CEO Steve Ballmer showed us his Start Screen. We'd already glimpsed the company's latest smartphone OS at its initial unveiling in June, and it took the spotlight at Nokia's and HTC's phone announcements in September. There were no surprises.

Except one.

"There is one app we wanted to announce, but we couldn't fit it on the slide. We're going to give it its own slide!" Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's manager of Windows Phone, exclaimed. People started whispering about Instagram. Did Microsoft finally score a heavy-hitting app? One that would actually woo people away from iOS and Android phones?

"Get ready for Pandora for Windows Phone 8, which we’ll have ready for early 2013!” Belfiore announced.

You could feel the room deflate. And very little has changed in the four months since. Pandora finally launched this month, and other apps have trickled in. But none have been the kind that make you want to switch to a Windows Phone. Addicted to Instagram? Not going to work for you. Want to try out Vine? You can't. How about play your favorite game? Yes! Finally! Well, no. Not really.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced six new game titles hitting Windows Phone 8. And yet again, it's an unsatisfying list. It includes 6th Planet, Propel Man, Temple Run, Orcs Must Survive, Fling Theory, Drift Mania Championship 2, and Ruzzle. Of the six apps, only Temple Run and Ruzzle are in the top 25 games on iOS and Android. And Windows Phone isn't getting Temple Run 2 or Temple Run: Oz, the latest hits. No, the best it could do is the original, which has been around nearly two years.

Cue sad trombone. Wamp wamp.

That's the shame of Microsoft. Windows Phone 8 is a stunning operating system. It has matured in functionality since Windows Phone 7, and it is very easy to use. Microsoft has quality hardware partners, too. Nokia's Lumia 920 is powerful, with a stunning camera, and HTC's 8X is one of the sleekest, prettiest phones available. As hardware, both can compete with the latest from Apple and Samsung.

The available third-party software is another story, and Microsoft's core problem: Windows Phone 8 has an app ecosystem weaker than convenience store coffee. Today's game announcement shows just how far behind it is. Microsoft is repeating the fiasco of its Windows Phone launch announcement, when everybody wanted (and expected) Instagram and got Pandora instead. Now, when everybody is expecting Temple Run: Oz or Candy Crush Saga, we're getting a handful of old or mediocre (or old and mediocre) games. It's a repeat of when Microsoft announced that Draw Something had come to the Windows Phone Store, long after the Draw Something craze had passed. The crowds are gone. All that's left is a lonely app.

The Windows Phone Store is only beginning to look like what the App Store did two years ago. That's a problem. Windows Phone is going down a beaten path, one iOS and Android have long forgotten. Instead of sprinting ahead, the company looks more and more like a poorly stocked used bookstore. Worse, Microsoft is trying to bill its app releases as something "new." It wants you to think these refurbished-for-Windows Phone games and apps mean its store is on par with the App Store or Google Play, and its phones compare to the best iOS and Android handsets.

The level of delusion would be funny if it weren't so desperate. Belfiore spent the last week teasing Twitter followers about new Windows Phone apps. "Been wondering about some of the apps I've been using on my phone? This will be a good week to find out! 1st answer comes in the morning," he wrote. The answer was Pandora. Sure, it's a good app. There's ad-free, unlimited music listening through 2013! But it's boring. Terribly, terribly boring.

"Bad news: next-fun-app-release delayed a few days. Still coming, just not today (Monday). Sorry!" Belfiore said in a follow up tweet. But he quelled any worries with another tweet, "Good news: we *could* have another pretty good app week here, BTW. Hard to know which publishers will hit which dates!"

Six fair to middling games constitutes a pretty good week for Microsoft?

The reason you won't see the latest hits, like King.com's Candy Crush Saga, on Windows Phone is based on pure lack of demand. Candy Crush Saga holds the No. 3 position in top free games on iOS and has No. 2 slot on free games for Android. It's also the top grossing app on iOS. There's definitely demand for the game, just not on Windows Phone.

"When we launched Bubble Witch Saga initially on iOS, we had a lot of request for an Android version of the game. It was a very marked increase in requests," Alex Dale, King.com's chief marketing officer, said. King.com responded to the demand by releasing an Android version. When the company released its second app, Candy Crush Saga, on iOS, the Android version followed a few days later. And Windows Phone?

"We haven't seen an equivalent wave of requests for Windows Phone," Dale said.

Windows Phone's app problem is hard to solve. It's a chicken-and-egg dilemma that won't get better without force and time. Users want certain apps – Instagram, Vine, Pinterest, Minecraft, for example – before committing to a new platform. Developers want a certain number of users and sales before building for a new platform. It doesn't help that Microsoft is using a proprietary graphics system, effectively creating a walled garden no one wants to go into.

"To me, it's an unproven platform, so why would we take all the risk if it's going to take us $50,000 to rewrite the apps just to use DirectX [Microsoft's proprietary graphics platform]. It's an unknown if we'd recoup that in sales," said Noodlecake co-founder Jordan Schidlowsky. "The people that I talk to, and what it seems like, say that the sale numbers aren't quite there yet. It wouldn't be profitable for us to go there."

Schidlosky also pointed out a purely technical drawback. All of Noodlecake's games, including the incredibly popular maker of the popular Super Stickman Golf and Super Stickman Golf 2, are based on OpenGL, an open and cross-platform graphics SDK supported by iOS, Android, Linux and even BlackBerry. But Windows Phone 8 doesn't support OpenGL. As much as Microsoft is lowering barriers to entry with its many middleware partners, that doesn't always work out for indie game developers like Noodlecake (which also happen to make huge, hit games).

Beyond supporting OpenGL, Microsoft needs to make itself a priority for game developers. It can't always play catch up. It must convince game developers that they should build for Windows Phone within months, if not weeks, of a game launch. We can't expect them to develop for Windows Phone first, but neither should they be doing so a year or more later. Instead of trying to wow us with yesterday's hits, Windows Phone needs today's hits today.

Give us Temple Run: Oz and Candy Crush Saga. Give us the latest from SEGA (Sonic Dash) and Disney (Wreck-it Ralph). Better yet, give us the games and apps that we'll be addicted to tomorrow.