Apple's App Store continues to gain momentum. There are now over 100,000 apps available and around 20,000 of those are games. The iPhone is clearly driving the mobile games market, and DFC Intelligence recently forecast that iPhone would be largely responsible for the mobile games market exceeding $11.7 billion by 2014. Although the App Store is filled with third-party games, It seems that Apple is looking to get more involved in iPhone game development itself.
A new Apple job listing [thanks Joystiq] shows that the company is looking for a Game/Media Software Engineer. The listing says the applicant should be a "passionate gamer." The listing reads, "The interactive media group is looking for a skilled software engineer 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 and implement interactive multimedia experiences on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The position also requires a creative thinker who can contribute and comment on the design process as well as being flexible enough to aid in all aspects of production such as asset management and able to work to a deadline."
Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities believes the iPod Touch could potentially eat into the traditional DS/PSP market share, but EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich doesn't think the iPhone has what it takes to be a truly serious gaming platform.
1 Comments
November 19, 2009
People shouldn't read too much into this. Apple has ALWAYS developed some games in-house. In 2006 the Apple-developed 3D Breakout clone Vortex was released for iPods.