The hardware is certainly there. But I wonder if the market for full priced games is. Certainly a lot of iGames are selling very well but almost all are under $10. If a full priced game ($30-$40) launched then we would have a far better idea. To be fair the platform is young, the AppStore less than 6months old. Also Apple unlike Sony and Nintendo does not provide hardware early to developers which means that they are only just now starting to get somewhere. Personally I think Need For Speed will go a long way to saying whether this platform is viable. Nevertheless, I think this is the first time mobiles even have a chance of being more than a miniscule segment. We shall see...

I doubt many full priced games will sell well on it. I was looking up all different games and apps the other day, and oh my god there are so many stupid, pointless, cheap games. :P I got a few cool free ones, but I sure as hell wouldn't pay for a game on it unless I heard from others that it was good.

I bet the iPhone and iPod Touch are going to get pretty nice software sales, but keep in mind that almost every game is less than 5 bucks. Most of them I saw were 99 cents, $1.99, or free.

As others have already stated, I don't believe the 23 million iTouch number. A source would be nice. iTouch numbers seem to be hard to find anyway. One thing to remember regarding the LTD iTouch numbers is that the update to iPhone OS 2.0 is not free for owners of older iTouches, so not all of those devices are even capable of downloading from the App Store.

But, on another note, here's an interesting article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122644912858819085.html

Some key points from the article:

-Nearly 2000 games available in the App Store already.
-According to Simon Jeffery, the U.S. president of Sega: "games sold via the App Store are the most profitable in terms of any of the formats we work on"
-Super Monkey Ball has sold more than 500 000 copies to date.
-over 200 million downloads from the App Store, about quarter of which are games. Most downloads are for free.
-Id Software is developing 2 titles for iPhone/iTouch

I think those are perhaps the most interesting points, although Carmack also goes on to note that the lack of physical buttons is limiting and the lack of tactile feedback makes on-screen buttons less effective because players' fingers tend to drift off.

I feel that the most important comment overall is what Simon Jeffrey said. If iPhone+AppStore indeed is the most profitable platform, it is going to draw in developers, no matter what else happens. I don't think that the revenue of profits can yet challenge dedicated gaming platforms, so Jeffrey must mean the ROI. Hopefully some companies will put in money and effort to make games that have quality content and a lot of it, and I hope they will find an audience to buy their games so that the overall industry will continue to grow.

As far as hearing about quality, I would suggest reading the reviews on the App's page. One hindrance to full priced games is the lack of physical media. I for one couldn't care less, but clearly there is a huge market of people who want a neat little box. Also the length of most iGames is short even by handheld standards. The install base and hardware could make things interesting. If APple really wants to get into the biz they should offer a few high end games bundled or self-produced and availible cheap. If people see it as a gaming device it could do quite well, esp. since everybody needs and MP3 player and the Touch certainly is a nice one. In a year or so I think we will see what the future holds for Apple's "gaming" platform.

I agree. Actually, although it's only been around for a few months, the price points seem to have settled: a full priced game in the App Store is $9.99, and anyone wanting to sell their game for higher will have a lot of explaining to do to convince customers that their game is worth it.

One thing to note, however, is that most iPhone games don't get any marketing at all. The devs seems to think it's enough marketing that the game is in the App Store... but I expect this to change with time. With the number of titles rising fast, devs can't just hope for their game to stand out from the mass of crappy games without any marketing. Word of mouth and viral marketing only work for a very small minority.

Trying to get information out of Apple? That's optimistic, they make Nintendo look like a blabbermouth

@Oyvoyvoyv

OK, admited, I was wrong when said that 23 mln iTouches was sold in period Q3 2007 - Q1 2008, suppose that was total sales of iPods at that time. Thanks for correcting me.

@wfz

Certainly, full priced games won't sell on iTouches, obviously games for these devices is a secondary function. But personally, I'd be glad if casual games on DS won't go retail, instead digital download it would be nice for a price around $10. I hope DSi make it true. Retail casual games tend to cost too much for it's game value, they should be downloadable to be successful.

@Plaupius

Thanks, that was interesting article, but still no exact game sales numbers. Here's few more key points:

- 13 mln iPhones sold so far.

- Apple considered as a threat by Nintendo, but Sony won't admit this (they never do, unfortunately for them).

I suppose casual gaming via digital download is a key to success. But still mobile and handheld markets are quite different, Apple won't release gaming handheld any time soon, Nintendo won't release anything but gaming device any time. So I doubt it's a direct threat.

@scottie

May be I'm very optimistic ^_^ still hope to find any info according game sales for iTouches...

Apple is quite obviously very happy to go on with the iPhone/iTouch, they don't really need to make a dedicated gaming device. It is enough for Apple that the release of games, and other apps as well, leads to more HW sales as the lure of the platform is what they care about. I guess one way to look at it is that Apple is in competition for the developers, and right now it seems that they have by far the best offering for small studios. Whether they can garner a significant number of big studios behind them is a wholly different matter. Still, I've heard anecdotal evidence that there are over 20 000 registered iPhone developers, and considering there are 5000+ apps in the store now, it seems the influx is not going to slow down for some time. Sure, a part of the registered devs won't ever release an app, but the business seems so lucrative that a good number will.

I bought my Itouch about 3months ago. before my purchase, I was thinking of getting a regular Ipod nano and then spending some more on either a psp or a ds and I am kinda glad I didn't.

The games may not be mega awesome, like the psp games or ds, but they are still very much fun to play and mess about with. The fact that you are literally playing peanuts for these games means you won't mind paying a little money to test a game.

I have downloaded and played over 40 games now in my ITouch and yes, it is that good of a casual gaming device. It also has this mmo called Aurora Feint, and it is the first time i have been stuck playing and enjoying an mmo.

It has 3d graphics, tilt controls, touch screen, wi-fi connectivity, you can play custom soundtracks and a huge library of games that are dirt cheap or free. I can see a lot of reasons why psp and ds should be worried.

Note, that this is just the games applications you can do good with, not taking into account the hundreds of other cool apps you can download such as; google earth, Remote, Ifooty, Movies etc.