Sometimes an innovation comes along which changes how business is done in an entire industry. For the computer gaming industry, the iPhone (along with the iPod Touch) is such a device.

Just as the cellular telephone altered the way society communicated worldwide, the iPhone is changing the way we play computer games, and thus how those games are formulated and written. The era of the bigger, more complicated game may be over, to be replaced by the simpler but no less riveting game for mobile devices. This is likely a sea change for the industry.

It may have been in the back of the minds of the innovators at Apple when they were developing the first iPhone, but the importance of the iPhone and the iPod Touch as gaming platforms came as a surprise to a lot of people, according to an LA Times story. In the $40 billion game industry, a great deal of attention has been turned to the iPhone as downloads from the App Store near one billion, especially since most of the downloads are games. Figures like that are enough to get the attention of any industry.

One game developer, Neil Young, says, “The iPhone has changed everything.” Young left one of the industry’s biggest and best-know publishers, Electronic Arts Inc., to found Ngmoco, a San Francisco maker of iPhone games. Young is not alone in his perception. Computer game makers are moving to development for the iPhone in droves, attracted by the meteoric growth of the iPhone and the App Store.

One example of the rage for games on the iPhone is Tap Tap Revenge. One third of all iPhone users that have downloaded apps have downloaded this music game, an absolutely startling number of users. According to industry analyst ComScore, that makes it the most popular app ever for the iPhone and Touch. In fact, almost half of the most popular iPhone apps overall are games.

The upshot is that commercial game developers, including the biggest names in computer games, are beginning to divert resources from other platforms to the iPhone. It helps that the new iPhone 3.0 operating system, due to be released in June or July, represents a better base for the development of more complex games, and for layered ways of selling those games. Both represent avenues for better revenue from the iPhone, something which is sure to draw more developers into the fold.

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Entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 2:46 pm under Games, iPhone, iPod Touch.  Print This Post

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