Babaroga's Maris Herrington on Windows Phone's potential

US studio Babaroga has built up a strong reputation thanks to its development on Microsoft digital platforms, including Xbox Live games for Windows Phone.

So, with things picking up in that ecosystem, as well as its iOS work with publishers such as Glu Mobile, we caught up with Babaroga's Maris Herrington to get her take on how 2012 was looking.

Maris Herrington: Babaroga was founded in 2001 to deliver the highest quality content to mobile devices.

Mobile phones were just beginning to take off at that point, and we saw a great potential to grab a place in the market early.

The mobile market had a lot of untapped potential in which we could carve our niche. Later on when the current generation of smartphones arrived, you could tell that something special was happening in the market.

Now we are glad to have positioned ourselves in the area of gaming that is seeing huge volumes of growth - and happy that we have been here long enough to use our experience to avoid the many pitfalls that come along with mobile game development.

Our motto has always been to make great games that people love to play. Whether that comes from original IP or tried and true licenses from bigger publishers is really not as much of an issue as figuring out how to use the potential of mobile to hit people where they love it most.

The best situation you can be in is where you have a strong enough relationship with a publisher that you can keep the IP for content you develop with them.

Microsoft is doing great things with Xbox Live integration - both as a gaming service and as a quality standard with its Xbox Live-branded titles.

It's this type of dedication to the gaming community that has made working with Microsoft such a delight. As this has become more and more apparent to consumers, we have been seeing a definite increase in our game downloads.

Windows 8 is when it will all really come together. We've been seeing where Microsoft is headed with its Xbox Live service, Metro interface, user networking, platform connectivity, etc.

I imagine Windows 8 is when we'll see these really click together as a unified whole.

Freemium - more and more freemium, balanced against extremely niche premium titles.

The mobile world is becoming divided between core gamers that will pay premium rates for games that they know will deliver the in-depth content they desire, and more casual users that want to play their games for free and maybe pay some money down the line if they get hooked in. Finding a way to retain both groups is part of the magic formula.

Asynchronous multiplayer will also become much more common with services like OpenFeint providing a much easier entry point for developers.

I think it's a fantastic model that allows players to pay what they feel a game is worth. It provides a level of control and honest market value that hasn't existed before.

Given more experimenting needs to be done, we feel confident that free-to-play games will only grow in popularity and quality.

There is a long-standing history of great games development in the UK. The mobile market may not be quite as large by volume in Europe as it is in the USA, but certain genres of games are much more popular such as football (soccer) games, lifestyle apps, and gambling portals.

Part of our business strategy is to understand where each market is headed, and make sure we are positioned to be there when it arrives.

We are wrapping up an amazing racing game for a major publisher that's really pushing the boundaries of 3D mobile gaming. Look for it in the App Store soon.

Also, our continued support of Windows Phone and all things Microsoft will be shown with new and familiar titles in the near future. Babaroga has big things in store for 2012.

You can see what the company gets up to via its website.