RIM launches Gameplay, a cross-platform engine for indie devs

Blackberry maker Research In Motion has launched a cross-platform, open-source 3D engine aimed at indie developers.

Dubbed Gameplay, the tool supports Blackberry 10 and Playbook 2.0, iOS 5.1, Android 2.3+, Windows 7 and Mac OS X. Among other features, Gameplay offers built-in physics, particle and animation systems, a shader-based material library and a UI construction kit. For the full feature list, click the source link at the bottom of this story.

RIM's share of the mobile market has rapidly declined over the past couple of years and iOS and Android smartphones offered more intuitive interfaces and, crucially, easily accessible games. 

Gameplay would appear to be an attempt to attract videogame developers to Blackberry devices by offering a catch-all development solution across all major formats. Whether it will prove an effective strategy in a richly populated landscape of freely available, multi-platform development platforms remains to be seen, however. 

While the market-leading Unity currently doesn't offer Blackberry export, it's a feature that will likely show up at some point soon in Unity Technologies fast-moving road map.

Still, the open-source, free nature of Gameplay will no doubt make it attractive to many developers who hadn't considered Blackberry as a target platform up until now. 

Speaking at the GameHorizon conference in June, Thumbstar CEO and former Ubisoft Reflections MD Gareth Edmondson warned that it was too early to give up on Blackberry's viability as a gaming platform given its brand attachment in parts of the world.

Earlier in the year, RIM launched a $10,000 App World incentive, which guarantees developers of certified apps a minimum of $10,000 in earnings for the first year - if the app doesn't make that, RIM will front the difference.

Source: Gameplay