First of all, understand that the iPhone games industry is still very much in its infancy. The iPhone itself is scarcely more than a year old, and the first iteration of any new tech product will have its glitches, bugs, and detractors. The iPhone version 1 had a few issues concerning the forced adoption of AT&T as the data carrier, and the sole reliance on the EDGE network which many deride as a less-than-robust system. AT&T is still in place, but the iPhone version 2 will feature the 3G mobile phone standard, which will make a lot of people happy.

The iPhone has also come down in price from $399 at retail to $199. This has caused those who have finally bitten the bullet in recent months and bought an iPhone to cry foul -- if they'd known a price drop was around the corner, they'd have waited. Apple is addressing these concerns. Finally, developers have been given the iPhone's SDK and judging by the most recent keynote, there are a lot of great apps coming down the pike that everyone should anticipate and get excited for.

So, what does all this have to do with games?

Well, for any game studio trying to decide whether or not to spend the time and money to develop a game for the Mac, the iPhone presents something of a conundrum. As mentioned above, with a little over a year in existence, there are only a couple of categories of iPhone users out there -- the dyed-in-the-wool Mac fanatics who will buy the latest and greatest hardware as soon as its shipped, and the more cautious late-adopters who prefer to wait until the hype and hubbub dies down to see whether or not purchasing an iPhone is actually worth the money. The first category of people stand a 50/50 chance of being gamers. They're the ones who evangelize the brand, and jump on any chance to make the most of their investment in the platform. At this early stage of the game, they might snap up any game that comes along just for the sake of supporting studios that develop for the iPhone, in the hope that the trickle-down effect will create a larger market for more and better apps farther down the line.

The second category of people are the ones who will bide their time, waiting for this first generation of games to shake out, knowing that later developers will use the lessons learned by this first wave to create games with more compelling play mechanics. While the SDK makes it easy for any decent developer with an idea to create an app for the iPhone, the larger companies might want to sit back and assess the market first, seeing how well these earlier, more casual games sell, before committing the resources of an in-house game studio to working on a new title.

Another potential obstacle in widespread acceptance of the iPhone as a gaming platform is its unusual interface. The primary method of interaction with the iPhone is by touch. There's no stylus needed; your fingers do all the work. This works really well for moving icons around and organizing static information, but, as owners of the Nintendo DS have come to understand, your fingers also obscure that area of the screen they cover. So, puzzle games work particularly well for this sort of interaction -- games like Bejeweled, Zuma, etc. -- but faster-paced action games will have to develop different strategies to make gameplay both viable and fun.

It's apparent that there are many considerations that game makers will have to face in order to bring a successful title to the iPhone, but how will simply having games on the iPhone affect game development for Apple's desktops and laptops?

Well, there's a unique opportunity here to turn non-gamers into gamers. If we proceed with the idea that most iPhone users are not gamers, as they might be, then the might be willing to try a casual game, with novelty being the primary draw. This could have the effect of making these people think of the Mac, peripherally, as a go-to source for games. On the other hand, if it becomes profitable to create games for the iPhone -- which surely has a shorter duration of development time owing to the relatively less-complicated control options -- that might pull more development houses away from creating for the desktops and laptops, leaving Mac gaming in the lurch.

What's more, it's publicized that iPhone app developers who choose to put their apps on the iPhone store will split all profits with Apple 70/30. That's a pretty attractive option for indie studios who might be concerned about having to strike separate deals with publishing houses just to get their game on the market.

So, what effect on existing Mac game development will the iPhone have? Keep in mind that the strongest reason to play games on the iPhone is the ability to play anywhere, anytime. But until there's a breakthrough game available for the platform, very few gamers will pay $199 just to play games (or whatever the price will be minus the AT&T plan, if that's even a possibility). It's not entirely unthinkable that existing studios could create a separate division of their companies just to create/port over an existing title -- in fact, the aforementioned Freeverse is doing just that with their upcoming Wingnuts Moto Racer. But in the end, gaming on the iPhone compared to the desktop is going to be a completely different experience. Whether or not the experience will drive iPhone users to try something more complex will be something we'll keep an eye on. My thought? Gaming on the Mac will keep growing in popularity, but gaming on the iPhone will have to go through a similar, though truncated history as the Mac itself went through, just to find its niche. Who knows? One day we might see a breakthrough MMO that begins on the desktop and carries over to the iPhone. Until then, I'm not shelling out for the iPhone.