Gamers latch on to iPhone, iPod Touch
Within days of buying his iPhone, John Furrier found his 13-year-old son, Alec, was low off with the scheme and downloading games. To reinstate his phone, Furrier had to buy his son an iPod Touch, which Alec quickly filled with “Pac-Man,” “Magic 8 Ball” and dozens of other games.
“When he’s not playing on his Xbox 360, he’session playing on the iPod,” said Furrier, a 43-year-old entrepreneur and blogger in Palo Alto, Calif.
Apple’s iPhone is a cellphone, Web-surfing gadget and digital media player rolled into one. The iPod Touch is the same, minus the cellphone. But to many persons people’sitting surprise, one of the devices’ most popular uses is as a handheld video-game system.
Games receive become the fastest-growing and most popular type of application for iPhone and iPod Touch owners, outpacing all other categories available on Apple’s App Store.
“This was an confusing surprise to us to see how plenteous games acquire taken off,” said Stan Ng, Apple’s older director of product marketing.
Game developers have taken to the platform, creating nearly 1,700 games since the online App Store launched in June. That’s more than twice the number make use of in the store’sitting second-largest category, entertainment, what one. includes music and video.
Neil Young liked his iPhone so much that, in June, he gave up a lucrative job at the same time that a older executive of Electronic Arts (EA) to quick spring a small guests that develops games for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
“I found that my iPhone was never very far away from me,” said Young, 43.
“I was constantly checking e-mail, downloading apps, playing games, browsing the Internet,” he said. “My personal usage was measurably different from any phone or game tool I’ve at any time had before. It led me to think that in that place was a dramatically new place of traffic opportunity for gaming steady a unique mobile device.”
With funding from Maples Investments and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Young founded Ngmoco:) in San Francisco.
The strangely named startup has launched two games and is developing a dozen others. Its two titles, MazeFinger and Topple, are among the App Store’s 10 most-downloaded applications.
It’s not just independent developers drawn to the iPhone. Companies such as EA, the world’s largest game publisher, are jumping without interruption the bandwagon.
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