Are you a serious gamer on iPhone. If so, then there is a good news for you. Apple may be planning to add a new "premium games section" to the App Store which will offer games for the iPhone and the iPod Touch around the range of $20 USD after Apple recently noted that the store had hit a half billion downloads and was home to 15,000 applications.
This section will be open to a restricted number of commercial game publishers such as Electronics Arts, so that iPhone can be represented as a "serious gaming" hand held.
Most games in the App Store currently come from low budget publishers or casual coders, and many sell for 99 cents to $9.99 USD, so this initiative of locking out the smaller developers would appear to clash with the ideals by which the store has operated to date.
In an interview published this week, Apple vice president of iPhone and iPod product marketing Greg Joswiak spoke directly to this end, noting that the one of the benefits of the App Store is the low overheard required to become an influential player in the market.
App developers don't need a publisher, he said, "It's not somewhere you have to be represented by somebody; you have to be in the development programme, which is very inexpensive."
Asked if smaller developers are really competing with the established players, Joswiak said: "What we'd like to do is show off the games - the 3D and the casual ones. Everyone from the big developers is excited -- the EAs, the Gamelofts, Hudsons and Segas -- but what's also cool is the small guys.
"You get the one or two-developer shops like the Pangeas, who are doing a great business, with anecdotal stories like paying off their home mortgages after a month or two of being in the store," he said.
Apple has not confirmed the report, and neither has any large publisher, but it is believed that the Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) would be a likely launch date.
This section will be open to a restricted number of commercial game publishers such as Electronics Arts, so that iPhone can be represented as a "serious gaming" hand held.
Most games in the App Store currently come from low budget publishers or casual coders, and many sell for 99 cents to $9.99 USD, so this initiative of locking out the smaller developers would appear to clash with the ideals by which the store has operated to date.
In an interview published this week, Apple vice president of iPhone and iPod product marketing Greg Joswiak spoke directly to this end, noting that the one of the benefits of the App Store is the low overheard required to become an influential player in the market.
App developers don't need a publisher, he said, "It's not somewhere you have to be represented by somebody; you have to be in the development programme, which is very inexpensive."
Asked if smaller developers are really competing with the established players, Joswiak said: "What we'd like to do is show off the games - the 3D and the casual ones. Everyone from the big developers is excited -- the EAs, the Gamelofts, Hudsons and Segas -- but what's also cool is the small guys.
"You get the one or two-developer shops like the Pangeas, who are doing a great business, with anecdotal stories like paying off their home mortgages after a month or two of being in the store," he said.
Apple has not confirmed the report, and neither has any large publisher, but it is believed that the Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) would be a likely launch date.
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