truly mind boggeling 

Update: see below for an updated graph that supercedes this one.

How big is iOS as a gaming platform? I wondered to myself on an idle rainy afternoon. After all, we hear a lot about how the App Store has passed eleventy gajillion downloads, or how it makes people richer than astronauts, but I wanted some context around these numbers -- something to make the abstract mean something. I chose a subject close to my heart: games. And then I compiled the data that lead to the graph you see above.

iOS has nearly three times more games than the previous twenty-five years of gaming combined.

Now, I have to admit that there are some caveats to this data. The iOS count is just a scrape of the App Store's active titles in the "games" category; there is a lot of double counting in there from demo versions of games. The same thing applies on the other side of the balance for multi-platform games -- there must be at least half a dozen versions of Street Fighter 2 and Doom. I've ignored some smaller console platforms that were hard to obtain numbers for. I couldn't consider games played on computers as there is little reliable data for platforms that don't have the strong publisher control that characterizes game consoles; for example, World of Spectrum lists 9,544 games for the popular 8-bit home computer series. Clearly, including those would change the graph around completely.

That aside, I still think there is a message here, which is that the App Store is a huge force in gaming. Apple has tapped into a massive market that was previously going largely unfulfilled, and plenty of developers are making piles of cash out of it.

Of course, more software doesn't equal better software, and if it did, we'd all be using Windows instead of OS X. I don't think there are any iOS games in my personal top 50 games of all time list. That isn't to say that I don't play a lot of iOS games, or that I don't enjoy them; for me, they just tend to be pleasant diversions rather than the sort of experience that compels me to stay up until 3AM playing just one more turn. (There's an honorable exception for Civilization Revolution on the iPad, though.)

newgrounds.com isn't the only source of Flash games 

there are Hundreds of thousands of flash games on the nets found all over the place. 

how does that negate that fact that newgrounds has over 40,000?

It would be nice to get some context for these numbers like the average amount of revenue generated.

So this list only counts games released in NA, and completely ignores DOS/windows a bunch of other notable systems.

unfortunately DOS/WIN data that is reliable and complete is virtually impossible to come by so even tho the are more than likely far more games on the platform it's virtually impossible to track, I would be nice if they tried tho. As for NA only well that's just unfortunate but I don't see anyone compiling the data globally for all platforms. You want to volunteer?

This does not suprise me. Back on the Commodore and Amiga their were little restrictions and to be honest gaming flourished. Every programmer wanted to develope a game. This lead to massive over saturation which movedthe whole industry to the brink of extinction.

Atari was one of the biggest problems having allowed way to many games. So since then all the console manufacturers have put quality control limits on software. It used to be anybody who knew how to program could make a game. All these people made games without needing to worry about publishers, so many independants created software. Untill Nintendo , Sega , Atari and later Sony and Microsoft stopped allowing just any software on their systems.

Today IOS has a big advantage as they have re-created the enviroment games flourished in. Any programmer can now make a game, they don't need a big publisher they don't need a million dollars. They can download programs like Game Salad and in weeks have a game in the App store.There is very little quality control present and anybody can do it.

This means that every programmer out their can now make an IOS game. Since Apple restricts use of Flash on its devices it encourages Flash developers to create content for IOS instead. Not to mention flash developers who used to offer their games free of charge can now make a little money back.

I'm really not shocked at all. Also remember that the majority of these IOS games won't sell nearly as many copies as even some of the worst selling console games. Also at such a cheap price point its easy to see why so many consumers purchase IOS games.

It's a different sort of market. I think the best sort of games that are on iOS are the kinds that require little immediate time commitment. I think games that will eventually come to be hugely successful are games that essentially are continuously going, having players continuously build a city or an empire of some sort.

Although there are some very nice looking iOS games coming out that seem to be more like Wii games. There is that Rage game that is beyond the level of Resident Evil UC. It's also an excellent platform, even though the phone itself only has a very small percentage of the mobile market, it has its compliments in the iPod and Tablet markets - and unlike other mobile platforms, developers do not need to port on even close to the same level as all other mobile platforms; there are only three screens to worry about old-iPhone, iPhone 4 (which I assume will be the general screen res for the next 2-3 iterations at least), and iPad.

Although, despite this, I don't think it will ever be in direct competition with the mainstream videogame systems, at least not in the foreseeable future. Going in the interface direction required for a DS or PSP would be a huge mistake for a mobile phone (remember N-gage? That was also by the mobile phones giant Nokia which has sold billions of phones - last year alone it was 472 million phones and $70 billion for Nokia), and that is the only way it will directly compete.... Although there is no reason why it should, as the mobile market phone is WAY larger than the videogame market.

So?

Take away 41,000 useless, rubbish, trash apps and you're left with 1000 apps that are actually useable.

What is the averge price of an iOS game, and the averge price of a console game?