Apple is unconcerned about accusations that too many iPhone games is making it hard for gamers to find the pearls, judging by comments made by Greg Joswiak, VP of iPod and iPhone product marketing, in an interview with Edge.

"That's the beauty of the free market," he says. "The cream will rise. That's why we have a rating system that allows you to rate your experience with a game, and that becomes key to deciding what are the best games."

Although true up to a point, the argument would make even more sense if you could sort games by their average rating on the App Store, rather than just by name, release date or popularity (i.e. downloads).

Joswiak also addresses developer complaints about Apple's approval process, saying that the company's policies are "common sense", and that the approvals team "are doing the best they can and moving as fast as they can".

In the interview, he also continues to talk up iPhone's prospects against the PSP and DS, highlighting its multi-touch and accelerometer, and particularly the digital nature of the App Store.

"You've got to be really motivated to buy a game for a DS," he says. "Not only is it £25, you've got to go out to the games store to find it... There are all these issues with moving physical goods, which you don't have to deal with in the electronic world. This also means our games are much more affordable. Rather than being £25, most of our games are £6 or less - a fraction of the cost."

The obvious response, you'd think, would be to suggest that a) you can buy DS games online nowadays (or pirate them), and that b) both Sony and Nintendo are moving towards digital distribution of cheaper games for both devices. Apple is certainly ahead on that right now, but its rivals are by no means standing still.

In fairness, Joswiak does (kind of) acknowledge that: "Everything about the iPhone suggests where the future's headed, and I think a lot of the other guys are trying to scramble for what they do in response."

Elsewhere in the interview, he says Apple had games firmly in mind when creating the iPhone SDK; says the company doesn't feel the need to create any more first-party games in-house; and says Apple will continue its policy of not selling promotional slots on the App Store.

"As much as content holders would love to pay us to editorialise their content, we don't do it," he says. "We try to put up in front of the customer things that we think are genuinely good. Obviously a bestsellers list is a bestsellers list, but we try to feature content that makes the customer want to come back, where they know there’s an honesty to it."

Promote good games so people will come back and buy more of them. It sounds like an obvious strategy, but in the mobile games market, it's practically a revolution. Any operators reading?

Anyway, the full interview is well worth a read.