@ crumas2: Nope. No chance. Marketing a new and successful gaming platform requires vastly different concepts, resources, and ideas than marketing something like an iPod.
For one, it requires a disruptive market strategy, of which Apple has none for the iPhone. The iPhone's feature list clearly target it toward the power-user; or, in other words, the type of person who will go out and buy a multimedia handheld device anyway. The iPod, by contrast, was/is simple and intuitive. It does one thing, and it does it well. Thus, you'll understand why one might compare the iPod to the DS and the iPhone to, say, the N-Gage.
Second, it requires a price point that's affordable to the casual consumer. I can't see Grandma or little Bobby running out to plunk down $400 + a monthly fee on an iPhone.
Third, it requires an in-house development studio. The few companies that have attempted to create a gaming platform without an in-house studio, including Apple themselves with the Pippin, have all failed miserably. Now, while it's theoretically possible that Apple could create an in-house studio, they have no experience with the video game market. Therefore, I wouldn't hold my breath on it being any good even if they did.
Furthermore, the iPhone as a product isn't nearly as successful as the iPod. Whereas Apple basically created an entire market with the iPod, something which not even industry giant Microsoft has been able to make a dent in, most recent reports show sales of the iPhone at about 15-20% of smartphone sales on a month-by-month basis. That's respectable, sure, but far from groundbreaking, especially since the smartphone market isn't exactly huge.
@ plaupius: I doubt it. The most it'll do is give iPhone users a few new toys to play around with. The only reason why developers are signing on to making iPhone games is because it's low-risk. All Sega is doing, for example, is a port of Super Monkey Ball, and EA will probably just port a few DS games. That way, even if the games only garner a few thousand sales, they won't be in the hole.
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
