Yesterday’s delisting of Turn N Run – literally the night before our review went live, and only six days after the game’s release – highlights a large and ongoing problem in the world of Xbox Windows Phone games. Since the debut of Windows Phone 8, incompatibility with the new OS has been discovered among a number of Xbox WP7 titles. Each of these games has been completely delisted from the web version of the Windows Phone Store, and either partially or fully removed from Store searches on actual Windows Phones. Read on to learn what games have been affected so far, and how Microsoft may be mishandling the Windows Phone 8 incompatibility issues in more ways than one.

Missing games from Windows Phone 8 First, let’s look at the list of Windows Phone 7 games that aren’t compatible with Windows Phone 8. As stated earlier, every single title’s Windows Phone Store page is was offline: Best VPN providers 2020: Learn about ExpressVPN, NordVPN & more Big Buck Hunter Pro - Review Contract Killer Dodonpachi Maximum - Review Fable Coin Golf - Review Full House Poker - Review Ghostscape - Review - (Update 6) Glow Artisan - Review The Harvest - Review Hasta La Muerte KenKen (Update 2) Need for Speed: Undercover (Update 10) OMG: Our Manic Game - Review Orbital - Review The Oregon Trail - Review Pac-Man Kart Rally - Review Pool Pro Online 3 - Review Sid Meier's Pirates Splinter Cell Conviction - Review Tentacles - Review Zombie Attack 2: Second Wave - Review After this article's publication, this list has alternately grown and shrunk over time. Games whose Windows Phone 8 compatibility has been restored We added this section to the article after its publication in order to make tracking newly compatible games easier. See the full update list at the bottom of this article. Babel Rising 3D - Update 12 Chaos Rings - Update 11 Crimson Dragon: Side Story - Review - Update 3 Feed Me Oil - Update 7 Fruit Ninja (WP7 version) - Update 13 The Harvest - Update 13 Parking Mania (Nokia Exclusive) - Updates 4 and 7 Risk (Nokia Exclusive) - Update 4 Spy Mouse (Nokia Exclusive) - Update 5 Turn N Run - Review - Update 6 Shuffle Party - Review - Update 8 iBomber Defense (Nokia exclusive) - Update 9 Trivial Pursuit Shoot 1Up (Update 1) Only partially gone

Follow the store link pages for the above games and you'll encounter this message. Many of us have been operating under the assumption that these games have been completely pulled from the Windows Phone Store. As it turns out, that’s not quite true. Yes, their webpages on the Store are gone, prompting us to believe the games were taken down as well. But most or all of these games can still be downloaded by searching for them directly from a Windows Phone 7 handset. On WP8 devices, they do not appear in searches. This method of preventing incompatible software purchases by WP8 users is pretty obviously flawed. As I said, removing the actual webpages makes the games appear to be completely gone. You might guess the reason Microsoft does that is because the Windows Phone Store’s website lacks the ability to differentiate between titles that are compatible with one device and not another. But that’s not the case at all. The few existing Windows Phone 8-specific games like Angry Birds Star Wars have their own dedicated Store pages, despite the fact that they can’t be used by WP7 handsets. Even before WP8 came along, Nokia games like Mirror’s Edge have been viewable on the Store. They can’t actually be purchased from the website, but at least everyone can tell the games exist at a glance. Clearly Microsoft could opt to use one of these existing solutions for WP7-specific games, if they weren’t trying to sweep their existence under the rug.



Not many gamers will be sad to see bug-laden Contract Killer steer clear of WP8

How this affects developers We contacted the developers of the semi-delisted games to find out what they knew about their titles’ WP8 incompatibility and Windows Phone Store status. Here’s where things get a bit upsetting. In all but two cases, the developers had not been made aware of their games’ Store pages getting taken down. Of that large group, one developer knew their game was incompatible with WP8 and was already working on a fix, but the partial delisting still came as a surprise to them. A few anonymous quotes from affected developers: “WOW! We had no idea about this... we'll have to give MS a shout ourselves, but in the meantime, you might as well ask them yourself too ;)

Yeah, nobody from there gave us any sort of heads up that *I'm* aware of... maybe it's just a temporary issue? Maybe they're phasing out all WP7 only content?”

Yeah, nobody from there gave us any sort of heads up that *I'm* aware of... maybe it's just a temporary issue? Maybe they're phasing out all WP7 only content?” “Unfortunately, we do not know anything about it, and Microsoft did not alert us. We can only guess that it is indeed associated with Microsoft's attempt to clean away all the apps are not compatible with the WP8.”

“In regards to WP7 games being pulled, I had no idea that was happening. We hadn't heard anything from the guys at Microsoft that handle [the publishing of our game], so we've sent them an email asking for details. I would like to get it back onto the store, but we'll see what our guys at Microsoft say.”

“We had not been notified that this would be pulled. We will investigate and see what we can do.” Pulling a game’s Store page without notifying the developers may show a lack of courtesy, but that’s not the big issue. The real problem is that because these developers did not know their games don’t work on WP8, they could not begin the process of developing patches to correct those mistakes. Yes, several of them were eager to do so after we gave them the heads up, but that’s really Microsoft’s job as the Windows Phone Store owner, not ours. Whoever made the decision to partially delist these games without telling the people who made those games seems not to care about whether those games get updated to run on Windows Phone 8 or not. Ouch. Considering the large number of affected games, getting them up and running again should be a priority for both Microsoft and the developers.