Major iPhone players get together to discuss their games
Driving games, mostly
At a recent briefing in San Francisco, Gamasutra managed to pin down Apple's senior director of marketing for iPhone, Bob Borchers, EA's Patrick Gunn, Gameloft's Carmen Pearson, Ngmoco's Neil Young and a few other iPhone big hitters to talk about their role in the handset's future as a gaming console.
Borchers seemed to concentrate on a rather obvious aspect of Apple's gaming platform, but actually made an excellent point when discussing the opportunities for developers.
"If you're a hardware developer you've got two great platforms to develop for," he commented, highlighting the seldom mentioned iPod touch as a significant part of the company's gaming strategy. "Apple has worked very hard to develop [the SDK] in a very comprehensive way."
Driving games then seemed to take centre stage, with several companies all drawing attention to their iPhone racers. Gunn demonstrated EA's forthcoming iPhone port of Need for Speed Undercover before describing the third-party giant's growing relationship with the new platform.
"From our perspective of being in the mobile industry for a long time, the UI that Apple has delivered is so easy and so compelling that it makes shopping for apps so compelling, that it has us excited."
Gameloft flashed its own iPhone racer, Ferrari GT Evolution, and casually announced it's got no less than 18 apps currently adorning the App Store and that Apple is now its top customer.
Meanwhile, ngmoco, which was founded specifically to develop iPhone games by ex-EA employee Neil Young, chose to demonstrate the anticipated LocoRoco-esque platformer Rolando, and dropped into conversation that it's currently got a whopping 14 iPhone games in development.
Anyone who currently owns an iPhone (or indeed an iPod touch, as Borchers rightly pointed out) already knows the value of Apple's system as a gaming platform, but it's undeniably intriguing to hear such big name developers feel exactly the same way about it. Head on over to Gamasutra to check out the rest of the report.
