As the year draws to an end, it's time to look back at what happened in the world of mobile gaming during 2009.
Equally, the lessons of history are useless without a future to demonstration what we've learnt, so as well as asking various notables about their view on the past 12 months, we're also getting them to look ahead to 2010.
You can see the full list of our end of year interviews here.
Co-founded by Adam Saltsman, Semi Secret Software released Canabalt, a game that as well as ranking in many people's list of top iPhone games of 2009, also demonstrated the value of Twitter and non-99c pricing on the App Store.
Pocket Gamer: What was the most significant event of 2009?
Adam Saltsman: Christmas of 2008, oddly. It completely changed the iPhone landscape forever; I don't know how many iPhones and iPod touches Apple sold in December 2008 and January 2009 but it was... a lot.
We sold more copies of Wurdle in January at #37 in the charts than we did in September at #7. Christmas 2008 changed everything!
What was the most significant event for Semi Secret?
The same thing, really. The surge of new iPhone owners at the beginning of the year had a dramatic effect on our development. A far second place would be the 3.0 and 3.1 OS releases I guess.
What was your favourite mobile game of 2009?
Drop7, because it's the best game on the iPhone. Avoid Hitting Piano is REALLY funny though.
What do you predict will be the most important trends in 2010?
I would be really surprised if pricing didn't continue to dominate developer discussions throughout the year.
If you could enforce one New Year's resolution, what would it be?
Keep making terrible games that nobody wants! Ha ha, I kid.
I would love to see people price their games reasonably and fairly, or else see the market expand to support niche games at insanely low prices. Either way, for a market this big to support so few developers seems really messed up to me!
Thanks to Adam for his time.
You can follow Semi Secret Software via web and Twitter.
Interview
Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
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