Got a tip for us? Share it...

iPhone Dominates 2009 Mobile Game Developers Conference

Last week, game developers descended on San Francisco to take part in the 2009 Game Developers Conference (GDC). GDC was broken up into different segments with the first two days dedicated to Mobile gaming. The mobile keynote speech was given by Ngmoco's CEO Neil Young and was appropriately titled Why the iPhone just changed everything. Young's keynote described the dramatic change the iPhone brought to the mobile gaming industry which was previously focused on carrier negotiations and porting to all the different handheld variants.

Perhaps most telling was the fact that the iPhone dominated the Independent Games Festival awards in Mobile at GDC winning 6 out of 7 categories, including Best Mobile Game. iPhone winners included (app names link directly to app store):

- Mobile Audio Achievement Award: Zen Bound (Secret Exit)
- Technical Achievement: Real Racing (Firemint) - Preview
- Art: Fieldrunners (Subatomic Studios)
- Design: Galcon (Hassey Enterprises)
- Best iPhone Game: Zen Bound (Secret Exit)
- IGF Mobile Best Game: Fieldrunners (Subatomic Studios)

All iPhone finalists have also been listed by Apple on a special page in the iTunes App Store.

GDC also served to be the launching/demo ground for a number of notable future iPhone gaming titles including 14 new titles from EA, Paramount's Top Gun, Showtime's Dexter, and Ngmoco's Star Defense, Touch Pet Dogs, and LiveFire. Id software even recently released their classic Wolfenstein 3D to the App Store, with plans to port Doom in the near future.

Most notable is the fact that the App Store is less than a year old, so the iPhone had no presence at GDC last year.

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

38 months ago
That's some good news the iPhone has more and more presence.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
38 months ago
Wow there lucky! Thats a lot of people to compete with.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
38 months ago
What are the sales of the iPhone verse the iPod Touch? Whenever they refer to App Store gaming, they always refer to the iPhone. Just curious.

Go Fieldrunners!
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
38 months ago

What are the sales of the iPhone verse the iPod Touch? Whenever they refer to App Store gaming, they always refer to the iPhone. Just curious.

Go Fieldrunners!


Apple released numbers at the 3.0 event.

17 million iPhones
13 million iPod Touches

arn
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
38 months ago

Apple released numbers at the 3.0 event.

17 million iPhones
13 million iPod Touches

arn


That's a lot more Touch's than I thought. Jackpot for Apple.

Galcon is on sale for $1 this week! I was holding off, but it's a no-brainer now :D
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
38 months ago
It looks like the iPhone as a gaming platform is growing very quickly. I don't think Sony and Nintendo were prepared for it to grow so fast and be so good at gaming either.

Interestingly on "The Gadget Show", a UK tech show they did a handheld gaming test last week in which the iPod Touch beat the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP to be named best portable gaming platform.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
38 months ago
i guess i'm probably the only one who thinks this is stupid.

i wanted the iphone to be a smartphone first.....gaming, not so much. if i wanted to have a device focus so much on gaming, i would have bought a PSP or DS.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
38 months ago
wow, bitches be crazy or wha?
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
38 months ago
Nice. I've been thinking of my 1st Gen iPod Touch more and more as a gaming device then anything else lately. Can't wait to see the rest of the year's games.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
38 months ago

i guess i'm probably the only one who thinks this is stupid.


I don't game on mine either - I have dedicated machines. That's not to say this is stupid. I would like to be a dev pulling in $£$£$£ everyday from app sales.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives

[ Read All Comments ]