I know many people that buy lots of games on the iphone. These guys are hardcore gamers. Not casuals. One is even buying games on it instead of DS games now. Yes I know its all anecdotal evidence, but It'll be interesting to see if it becomes more popular in that regard. BTW said people seem to be buying a lot of the tower defense style games.

On another note, every single iphone/ipod touch add that I've seen in Australia showcase the products gaming capabilities. Apple is definitely looking at finding a new way to get all the ipod owners upgrading again.

The only thing that really matters here is that the interface of the iphone and ipod touch is just ridiculously poor, and will make half the genres in gaming (FPS, Platformer, Action-Adventure, any RPGs but turn-based, anything that requires precision like an RTS and SRPG) completely unplayable and invalid.

People call(ed) the Wii and DS gimmicks, but they can play every genre in gaming. This is not in any way true with the iphone and ipod touch, and they will be little more than cute distractions in the market if that. They have no more effect on the actual gaming market than the millions of crappy cell phone games have in the past. Now they are just crappy cell phone games with prettier graphics.

This would be why people go for iTunes. People like to actually own their music.

Any new console/platform should get a warm welcome from the gaming community. We came pretty close to a Sony monopoly these past few years and a world with one single console is not a fun place to be. I don't think gaming should be a "winner takes all" market and there's always room for more players, especially if they bring something new to the table.

Consider Apple entering the gaming arena as a win-win situation. We'll either have some great games to play with or we get to see them crash and burn. The iPhone runs on hype and apparently hype sells. More than 13 mil. iphones world wide in the first 15 months.

Having said that I recommend you take a look at the charts of iPhone games (at the Apple site). This is what casual gaming looks like. Games that you can pick up and play for less than a minute and with no learning curve whatsoever. Are they fun? They look like they are! Innovative? Some of them are. Cheap? Dead cheap. You can buy the whole top10 for less than 24 USD.

Is this good for us? Cheap never hurt the consumer.
Is it good for Apple? They make money anyway.
Is this good for the developers? If you are new and small this very good because it looks like the iphone leveled the playing field. If you're big (call me EA, ) can you really afford to develop games for a 0.99 market?

Except the songs you really get to keep cost $1.50 and have a reduced selection.

Alternatively, you can break the law and strip the DRM out of the $1 songs, consoling yourself that you did actually pay the artist and their record label.

I thought itunes was moving away from DRM? Either way I still buy physical cd's and listen to them on my antiquated cd player. I also have a record player for home use. Records > cd > mp3

Apple also announced that their Vice President is completely and totally confused.

The iPod was created in 1996 and had video. A whole music video was dedicated to it, and was finally revealed for a few seconds at the end. The slogan for Apple was "doing it's thing".

Here's the link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvUoQPCvkzY

If they so