Tira in Tears?

Are they no more? I haven't called or sneaked around their offices, so couldn't tell. However, my much more investigative fellow blogger from the MobileGamesBlog seems to know more: according to him, Tira Wireless is no more.

Tira Wireless had a bit of a mixed following: there were the ones who didn't believe in the black box (one build in, builds to support 500 handsets out), and there others who thought this was the best thing since sliced Siemens phones. Now, I admit I ranted mercilessly on a panel (ironically sponsored by Tira) at MEM back in 2005 or so against the black box approach, and the width of their endeavours might have killed it (if it did then; no one can confirm or deny as yet...). To use one build and port it across to handsets from the (in)famou

s T-610 to the N73 is hitting natural constraints, and this is arguably a reason why they never got their hands on the heavy hitters of the sector: their customer list doesn't show a Gameloft, EA, Glu, Digital Chocolate, Hands-On, etc, etc...

A leaner (meaner?) and more focussed approach can get you there as is currently shown by mobile games veteran John Chasey's (of IOMO and Finblade fame) Metismo: not another black box, they don't even claim to being able to do everything under the sun and then some more; theirs is a cross-compiler from J2ME to native C++, and this alone is worth quite something. Smart coding and development environments can and do ease the pains of handset fragmentation, and to have dedicated experts for this makes sense, considering the significant cost contribution of porting to the overall cost of producing a mobile game.

Anyone with more solid news on Tira's fate, please call, e-mail or comment on this thread... Thank you!