Really seems like a case of comparing Apples to … :)

Even though the iPhone ships in millions, it’s still small beer compared to the billion other handsets that ship each year, so will it provide a big enough ecosystem for many players? It’s pretty tough making money from mobile games, so although the hit rate is good at the moment on the iPhone, is this just new device euphoria where people buy a new game to go with their phone, or will it maintain momentum and provide a fertile enough ground for the bug guys to get a decent return?

Also, the price you can charge for a game depends on the public perception of the platform. The iPhone is a phone, so people don’t expect to pay more than a few dollars for a game, or probably expect it to be free. The DS and PSP are dedicated game devices, so gamers expect to pay a lot more. So, whilst we might see a ton of games arriving and being installed, whether that equates to a longer term good platform for monetizing game IP is another matter.

The big impact as far as I can see is that other manufacturers will start to include 3D in higher end phones more often. As a longer terms speculation, we might even see ARM, who supply the processor design, will emulate what Intel did on the PC and just bundle in graphics, making it a commodity, not a special feature.

Without a stylus, control buttons, voice activation there are a lot of games that would be much harder to do well.. eg- Nintendogs, Brain Training, Ninja Gaiden.

@Dan, I tried a couple of FPS on the first gen jail-broken iPhone and found them near impossible to control. As a proof of concept great, but as a workable game..not really. Any new ones that have managed to solve this problem?

@michaelportent; It’s possible that the game development might not be relegated to casual gamers. I’m curious to see how Bioshock works out, that might end up being what helps to decide how feasible the iPhone is for serious gaming. What people are failing to factor in is that the SDK is free, making it quite a bit easier to obtain than the dev kits for the other two handhelds.