Gameloft's arcade racing series, Ashphalt, is now in its eighth iteration, and 'Asphalt 8: Airborne' is now available on Windows Phone. Built around a collection of luxury sports cars, your focus is on creating some of the most spectacular airborne jumps, twists, and moves, as possible.

Retaining many of the controls systems seen in Asphalt 7, Asphalt 8 packs in a new rang of vehicles to drive, and gives you many more options to do your best to escape (albeit briefly) from gravity.

Some of the features in the game include:

• 47 high-performance cars (80% of them NEW!)
• Perform barrel rolls and wild 360º jumps
• Maneuver through the air, pulling stunts while racing
• Race in 9 different settings like Venice, Guiana & the Nevada Desert!
• 8 seasons & 180 events in Career mode
• Simultaneous multiplayer action for up to 8 real opponents!
• A heart-thumping mix of amazing licensed music for your game, featuring real tracks from Bloc Party, Mutemath & The Crystal Method!

Once more, we have a leading title for Microsoft's mobile platform that is not being released under the Xbox Live branding. This has a number of advantages for Gameloft, including a less onerous testing regime and an easier route to market. And for the majority of gamers, they have Asphalt 8 on their handset.

But Xbox Live is sidelined once more, without a badged release since September. It's an interesting choice, as 'Airborne' switched to using Apple's GameCentre on the iOS release instead of Gameloft's own cloud gaming service.

Asphalt 8: Airborne is now available via the AAWP App Directory, with an 819MB trial version (so you're downloading over Wi-Fi) and the full game is 79p/99c.