In the debate concerning the impact of Adobe's Notus technology - which enables developers to make native iPhone apps using Flash - it's been mentioned that many App Store successes have been based on Flash games.

One such was web game Bloons.

Developed from scratch by startup Scottish developer Digital Goldfish, we caught up with MD David Hamilton to get his views about whether the new ease of converting Flash games would be a good thing for small studios.

Pocket Gamer: How useful will it be for you to be able to make native Flash apps for iPhone?

David Hamilton: When I first read the news, it sounded like an intriguing idea. However the more I've thought about it, the more issues I foresee.

In terms of porting Flash apps to iPhone, it would make the process a lot simpler. However I doubt we will ever develop any of our own games in Flash first and use this system to port them over. To get the best out of the iPhone's hardware I believe it is still best to code them in C.

Would this have made things easier for you in terms of the development of Bloons?

It would certainly shorten the development timescales but the ease of porting would be dependent on how it handles the differences in screen sizes, control systems etc.

Would you prefer Apple to open up iPhone so it could to do in-browser Flash games?

Personally I wouldn't like Apple to do this. A number of companies have managed to nurture the App Store as a market for small, fun, casual games. If Flash games were enabled on the device's browser, I think this would kill off that casual sector.

People would go online to play those games for free and would only visit the App Store for premium content. This would essentially mean only the big players, who are able to deliver such content would profit, and the smaller developers would die out.

What limitations will this system have compared to building native iPhone apps from scratch?

At Digital Goldfish, when we decide which games to port over to iPhone, we take a lot of factors into consideration before we decide to take the project on or not. There are some great games online which will work on the platform and others which we feel won't provide the same enjoyment without the use of physical buttons.

Bloons, for example was a perfect casual online game. We saw the potential in playing the game on a touchscreen and Bloons iPhone with the touch controls felt even more natural to play than the original.

Bloons Tower Defense, on the other hand, was a different experience. We had to sit down and go through numerous iterations of how to display all of the towers in the game on screen. The dimensions of the Flash games are a different ratio to the dimensions of the iPhone screen, so we had to completely redesign the way the interface worked on the touchscreen.

Overall though I believe that the biggest issue surrounding not building the native iPhone App from scratch is performance. To get the best performance out of the game there's no better substitute than re-writing the code and designing it to fully take advantage of the iPhone's hardware.

What effect do you think this will have in terms of the number of Flash games that will be released onto the App Store?

I think we'll certainly see a flood of Flash games released on to the App Store. A number of Flash developers will most likely cut out the middle men and try to take their games directly onto the iPhone themselves. However, as I have said, I believe there are a number of barriers which will hamper the user experience of these games.

I have seen console games companies failing to gain any type of success on the App Store and without the necessary experience of this market, it can be a really tough environment in which to sell games.

I just hope that if this takes off, a number of wouldbe iPhone hits don't get wasted due to their poor execution on a touchscreen device.

Thanks to David for his time.

Bloons Tower Defense is out now [App Store Link].

You can keep up to date with Digital Goldfish via its website.