With the iPad's launch moving from our short-term to our medium term memory, it's time to catch up with some of the developers who released the first wave of games for Apple's wonder device.

The most successful studio in terms of launch games has been Australian outfit Firemint, which built on its already impressive reputation with two critically and commercially acclaimed HD versions of its iPhone games Real Racing and Flight Control.

CEO Robert Murray gave us his take on the situation.

Pocket Gamer: How long did you take developing your iPad games?

Robert Murray: We downloaded the SDK as soon as it was released. We spent some time upfront familiarising ourselves with it and doing pre-production, but it wasn't long afterwards that we started actual development. We submitted our games by Apple's deadline, so it was under ten weeks.

Apple provides some great development tools including the emulator, and of course a lot of things were very familiar from iPhone. It was a lot of hard work but we're very happy with the results. We included a whole lot of new content and features, but we still managed to give the games our usual high level of polish.

How have sales compared to your expectations?

We have been pleasantly surprised by the success of both of our games on the iPad, and sales of the iPad itself. The fact that iPad sold over 500,000 units in its first week is pretty incredible and a great sign for future growth.

We're thrilled that our games are at the top of the charts including the #1 paid game with Real Racing HD, and Flight Control HD has also consistently been in the top games list.

This is probably one of the biggest wins our studio has yet had, we are ecstatic to be leading the field at the launch of a completely new class of device.

Have you been surprised so many iPad games have been versions of existing iPhone games?

Not at all, we are actually surprised so many people are surprised. We expected that there would be very few iPad-only games. It takes a long time to make a great game and we're amazed how many apps there were on the first day; the development community really came through for a big launch!

Real Racing for iPhone and iPod touch was in development for over a year, and we only had about 10 weeks to build on top of that for something worthy of the iPad. It took a lot of long hours from a talented and dedicated team to pull it all off. Looking back on it now it still feels like a minor miracle that it all came together in time.

Has the iPad launch impacted on the development of future iPhone games?

A little, yes, because we pulled people off other projects so that we could do something special on iPad, but we work in small flexible teams so that's not terribly unusual.

Everything is back on track now though, and we hope we'll be able to announce our new games soon.

Going forward, do you expect to make future games universal apps or will iPad evolve into its own separate platform?

Our current approach is to lead with development on iPhone and create brand new games there. The iPad version is then a separate development effort that takes the core ideas of what make the game fun, and adapts them in a way that makes the best use of the iPad's unique features.

It's a new platform with new capabilities and we want to use those to the fullest. It's more work than trying to make a one-size-fits-all app, but we think it's worth the extra effort so we have two games that shine on each platform, rather than one that's just OK on both.

Do you think the iPad will be primarily a game device in the way that iPod touch is?

We see the iPad as more similar to the iPhone in terms of utility. While the iPhone adds communication features, the iPad's strength is in consuming all sorts of content, not just games, so we would be surprised if people didn't use all of its capabilities.

Having said that, it's one very sweet device to play games on; the big screen takes the experience to a whole different level.

What's your impression of using the iPad?

We absolutely love it, it's pretty hard to hold an iPad and not want it.

It's the first device that's both immersive and personal, and it packs some powerful hardware into a very accessible (and beautifully designed) package... we're all getting hooked on Flight Control all over again.

Thanks to Rob for his time.