Blue Mars abandons PC for iOS

Avatar Realities has announced its impending abandonment of PC support for Blue Mars, renaming the virtual world as the iOS friendly Blue Mars Mobile.

One the bright side, going mobile gets you up from the desk - although your smart-phone hunch probably doesn't need any extra work.

Avatar Reality CEO Jim sink described the mobile market as "a massive opportunity for our company and our customers."

"We already have a functioning alpha in house and we aim to release the first builds of Blue Mars on iOS next month," he said, on the game's official blog.

The new iOS client will begin as an "extension" to the existing PC version, incorporating social media functions, but will gradually absorb features and functionality entirely.

Future PC support will be reduced to major bug fixes, although use of the original client will be free of charge.

The migration has had greater ramifications than upsetting the hardcore PC virtual world fan; an unknown number of Avatar Realities staff including Sink himself have been sacrificed to "restructuring".

Thanks, Big Download.