Windows Phone 8 to finally support in-app purchases

Newsbrief: The Windows Phone platform will finally support in-app purchases for games when its next update, Windows Phone 8, releases this fall. Competing mobile platforms like iOS and Android (as well as Amazon's Appstore marketplace for Android) have offered in-app purchases for some time now, allowing free-to-play games to flourish on their services. Most of those services' highest-grossing games are free-to-play. This capability will come with Windows Phone 8's new Wallet feature, which stores credit card information and requires users to enter a PIN when making in-app purchases. The operating system update will offer several other additions beneficial to game developers, too. Microsoft announced today that one major developer of microtransactions-based games has already signed up to release its titles to Windows Phone 8 -- Zynga will bring its titles to the platform for the first time, starting with Words with Friends and Draw With Something, this year.