According to a recent study by Game Developer Research, the iPhone OS has surpassed both the Nintendo DS and the PSP as a handheld gaming development platform. The study showed that 19 percent of all developers are coding for the iPhone/iPod Touch, which is more than double the stats for both Nintendo and Sony.

If you think this isn’t a big deal, consider the following: handheld games are now 25 percent of the total gaming market, up from just 12 percent before the iPhone came on the scene. That’s some huge growth, even if you figure most iPhone gamers are playing simple things like Bejeweled 2 and Tap Tap Revenge. Sure, there’s no Scribblenauts, not yet anyway, but the platform has enough support from both gamers and developers that I’m sure we’ll see more serious titles in the future.

The problem for me is still the lack of physical controls. I know the touch thing is cool, but it’s also completely frustrating to cover your game screen with your thumbs. That’s not enjoyable. I’m still waiting for that universal controller add-on to launch.

Source: Electronista

Someone needs to sit down with John Koller, Sony’s hardware marketing manager, and give him a quick lesson on cause and effect. He seems to think the iPad, as with the iPod Touch and iPhone, will drive PSP sales for customers looking for “deeper, richer console.” Personally, I think he’s nuts.

The numbers look good – the PSP and PSP Go have tripled in combined sales since the launch of the iPhone. But that doesn’t make the two related. My guess is the price of the PSP has gone down so much and the units have been hacked so many times that it’s become accessible enough to encourage a lot of gamers to buy.

I talk a lot on Gadget Teaser about the death of dedicated devices and the future of the all-in-wonder. I think handheld gaming is following the trend toward multi-purpose machines. Apple has simply put together a better system for supporting that kind of platform. If Sony doesn’t make some changes, I wouldn’t be surprised to see PSP sales plateau in the next 2 years.

Source: WSJ

This little bit of news will have you wishing someone would just make a standard controller peripheral for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Epic Games has successfully ported its Unreal Engine 3 to Apple’s mobile platform.

Anandtech got a chance to play with a demo of some familiar weaponry and level design. The demo looks really smooth, as the video over at Anandtech shows, though Epic said this shouldn’t be taken as a sign that the developer is getting serious about the platform. My guess is that it’s because of a lack of hardware support. The engine requires Open GL ES 2.0, a feature only available to the newest iPod Touch and the iPhone 3GS. Without wider adoption its probably not worth it to spend time developing a game that would only reach a portion of possible iPhone gamers.

Check the video over at Anandtech.

Zodttd, the intrepid developer behind the Game Boy Advance emulator on the iPhone, says he’s working on an N64 emulator for the 3GS and the new iPod Touch. Just imagine playing GoldenEye on the iPhone. Just imagine trying to strafe!

It sounds pretty cool, but really the controller could become a problem. Where do you put the Z button? And the C buttons? It’s a lot to try to cram onto the iPhone’s screen. I’m impressed, though, that the 3GS is fast enough to run most of the games. Zodttd did say that the higher-end games won’t run just yet, but that sounds to me like he’s got plans for them in the future. Now if someone would put together a standard controller accessory, everything would be just fine.