Windows Phone 7 Sheds Backwards Compatibility

After having face to face talks with Microsoft, we have learned that Windows Phone 7 won’t run any Windows Mobile 6.x (and earlier) applications. The lack of compatibility talks during the Mobile World Congress made us think that this was the case, but now this is official.

Microsoft says that it had to do a clean break for the greater good – and they are probably right. Sure it’s annoying to the 6.x app developer because they will have to do some work (possibly a lot) to make their app work on Windows Phone 7, but this basically prevents the “easy way” of just leaving things the way they were.

Microsoft is counting on XNA, the popular platform for Indie and casual game on Xbox, Silverlight and .NET to be the foundation of most of the development. Microsoft did not want to comment on whether or not a C++ and DirectX approach was possible. More details will be revealed next week at the Game Developers Conference and on March at MIX, a Microsoft event.