Through job listings and and interview comments, it's clear that Apple has finally taken an active interest in the gaming market. The company has been positioning the iPod touch as a gaming device in their advertisements both on the web and on television. Meanwhile, a recent job listing seeking a game developer raised the question of whether or not Apple might take matters into their own hands with game development.
Some weren't convinced that the game developer job listing necessarily meant that Apple would actually develop their own games, but another recently-discovered job listing further suggests that they may. In October, Apple posted a job listing specifically for a "Video Game Artist".
The interactive media group is looking for a skilled artist who wants to work as part of a small highly motivated team to work on interactive multimedia experiences on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The position on the team is to help design, visualize, enable and implement interface, 3D characters/environments, animation, texturing as well as original concept artwork.
The candidate must be able to model and animate 3D scene graph environments and be a strong environment and character concept artist. While you could argue that a game developer may simply be used to help Apple support their 3rd party developers, Apple's hiring of a gaming artist/modeler seems more telling.
Meanwhile, another Apple job listing reveals that Apple has been recruiting for an internal team called the "iPhone Games Group".
