Electronic Arts is releasing 14 iPhone titles this year.
After years of building large, graphics-intensive blockbusters, developers are starting to make shorter, less expensive games for the iPhone and its phone-less sibling, the iPod Touch.
Only a few years ago, bigger guns, badder enemies and louder explosives mattered most in video games. Now, small is beautiful, and Apple Inc.'s iPhone is largely responsible.
iPhone and its phone-less sibling, the iPod Touch, as hand-held game consoles has started to change the dynamics of the $40-billion game software industry.
Neil Young, a game developer who last year left one of the industry's largest publishers, Electronic Arts Inc., to found Ngmoco, a San Francisco maker of iPhone games.
device
online marketplace
25,000 software applications
thousands of publishers
multitouch screens
accelerometers
Web connections
six to eight of the 10 bestselling apps are games.
shoppers submit their credit card information once at Apple's online iTunes store, they can start buying apps through a computer or directly on their devices with a single click.
Video games that cost less than $10 are a big change.
a console or PC typically sells for $30 to $60.
hand-held games on Nintendo Co.'s DS, games cost $20 to $35.
Nintendo recently announced that owners of its DSi hand-held console will be able buy downloadable games for as little as $2.
Nintendo executives said their pricing strategy was formed independently from the App Store, and they were quick to point out how their business was different from Apple's
Nintendo is definitely paying attention
more than 17 million iPhones and 13 million iPod Touches in the market
They're seeing that small shops with one or two people can make a hit game
IPhone has taught them that small bets can pay off big
The iPhone is also giving developers reasons to rethink their creative approach to designing games
Instead of spending two years and more than $25 million to develop a title, some developers are looking at releasing multiple episodes over time.
The idea of smaller, cheaper, faster game development isn't entirely new.
Decades ago, the Sims, from EA, pioneered the notion of selling expansion packs that contained several dozen virtual items such as outfits, pets and furniture, said Bing Gordon, partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture firm in Menlo Park, Calif.And sped-up game development has its roots in the mid- 1990s with Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who taught his students to make lots of quick prototypes of their ideas, rather than trying to hone one perfect project."The real breakthrough is iTunes and the App Store," a section within iTunes, Gordon said. "It suddenly opens the floodgates" for consumers to buy smaller games in massive quantities.Lorne Lanning, president of Oddworld Inhabitants, a game developer in San Luis Obispo, said he liked
the iPhone's ability to reach millions of players who can give feedback on a game's features.
Developers can either take that information and refine current versions with software updates or build it into their next installment."As we head to the future, we need to start really small," Lanning said. "Get it out there, and let people help shape it. Learn from your audience."
