So, where are the iPhone games?
It’s got a large screen, a wireless Internet connection, and a touch interface a bit like the bestselling Nintendo DS, which you’d think would make it an ideal gaming platform. But for some reason, in all the avalanche of hype, I’ve read little or nothing about iPhone games. What happened?
There are a few tidbits out there, but as yet, more tantalizing than substantial.
A few weeks ago, for example, a tech blog reported a rumor that Apple and Nintendo would soon partner to sell games for the iPhone over iTunes. Which would be groundbreaking news, but as yet, still remains unconfirmed. In January there was a lot of early interest in iPhone as a gaming platform, by EA and other publishers– but so far, the only titles on the market seem to be simple indy games that are actually Flash titles converted for iPhone use. (Watch this YouTube video, for an example.)
So far, then, the apparent lack of iPhone games seems like a giant missed opportunity by developers, one that we’ll be keeping an eye on at GigaOM. (I fully admit that phone games are not my main forte, so I’m playing catch-up just as much as publishers evidently are.)
But I should open the question to all our iPhone-owning readers out there: are you interested in gaming on your gorgeous new Jesus phone?
Screenshot credit: NoHeat.com.
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So far this a site I found listing iphone games
http://macmost.com/iphonegames/
Geeez…It’s only been out for a week, can’t have everything. I’m sure Apple needs this initial launch and millions of phones just to test, secure and make sure it’s stable/reliable.
Personally I’m not interested in having any games on an iPhone.
http://truemors.com/blog/?p=5985
Apple intends to launch several iPhone games at E3 in August 2007. id Software will be among the first game developers to publish for the new iPhone games platform and will exhibit at E3. Apple will also develop a small set of first party games that will be available for free and purchase. The games will be priced at $4.99.
With the crap battery life I’m getting on my iPhone, probably not. Just surfing the web hits my battery hard. Now if you add a flash game with graphics & sound…
We are working on several casual games, but the main issue I see is that sound is not enabled for games. Have you ever played a casual game without sound? I am sure this will be fixed.
The only way games in the iPhone would be interesting is if Apple opens the platform so that real apps can be develop for the iPhone. Web sites won’t do, even widgets won’t do, not even flash (and the iPhone still lacks the last two options, Steve knows why). Only a real app will be interested, but this won’t happen as Apple has jumped the shark and cave in.
I have an iPhone and don’t care if it ever gets games really.
No SDK, no games. A web browser remains the only method developers can use on the iPhone, so you’ll be limited to ported flash games. It will be interesting to see if this Nintendo deal gets Nintendo access to an SDK, or if it’s games are also forced to run in flash.
I thought the iPhone didn’t support Flash?
As several of the 12 standard apps consisted of only JPEG placeholders back in January, according to 2 reviewers who got to use it back then (Ikhnato and Pogue), I’d say Apple had its work cut out for it just getting the core feature set ready to ship.
(And they needed to second Big Brain(TM) Leopard engineers to achieve that.)
So, no resources left for games.
Now that it’s out, they can devote their attention to the secondary features.