Bolt Creative's Castelnuovo: iPad is the ultimate virtual chess board

Continuing our series getting feedback from high profile iPhone game developers about the potential for iPad, we turned to Dave Castelnuovo, founder and CEO of Bolt Creative, the company behind the two million-selling Pocket God.

Dave Castelnuovo: I think it bridges the gap between portable units and consoles. You can basically sit on the couch and play a Wii quality game on your own personal 10-inch screen.

It's not quite portable where you would take it with you wherever you went but definitely portable enough to bring with you around the house.

What game ideas does iPad inspire?

I actually have an image of it as being the ultimate chess device.

Imagine having an iPad on a table between two people as each player takes a turn pushing their pieces on the iPad. It's the perfect virtual chess board. All those demos that made the rounds for Microsoft surface can now be realized in a compact and affordable form.

The form factor. It just looks like a beautiful device. I can see myself kicking back, reading some comic books, then getting into a nice tactics game.

I still don't have any idea whether people will accept it. On one hand I wouldn't want to bet against Apple and there are a lot of talented app developers that will try their hardest to make the device cool. But I can't help to think that this may be considered a luxury item by most people.

The promise is that this can be a cheap replacement for your laptop (if you only view content and send email). But I think it will take a lot to convince people to give up a completely open environment for a device that they don't have complete control over.

I think the price is great. The lowest priced model is just a little more expensive than the high end iPod touch. I had guessed it would be around $800 but I didn't consider Apple would make 3G an option.