Two articles that were published this morning on our sister site Pocket Gamer provide food for thought on the question of what makes an effective annual roadmap of iPhone games for a publisher.

On the one hand, Digital Chocolate's Trip Hawkins says his firm plans to release 100 iPhone games in a year. On the other, Gameloft's Michel Guillemot says his firm is spacing its releases carefully: "We're not in the volume business, we're in the experience business."

Contradictory strategies? It sounds like it, although that's not to suggest that Digital Chocolate will be rush-releasing dozens of poor-quality games as a result of its roadmap ramp-up.

We suspect that the 100 games may include Lite versions, which would bring the actual number of new games down to 50. Even so, DChoc's well-deserved reputation for quality will be tested by such a rollout.

The reason this is an interesting debate, though, is because publishers are breaking loose from accepted thinking about how many mobile games they should release in a year.

It used to be defined almost entirely by the mobile operators, certainly for the larger publishers, who would release as many games a year as the operators would accept. It's not so long since this meant 10-12 titles a year.

You can see the logic in both DChoc and Gameloft's approaches to iPhone, though.

Spreading your release net more widely, particularly if you're making casual games, gives you more shots at having big hits, and making enough money to cover the misses.

However, with evidence in recent weeks suggesting that more premium-priced iPhone games are making it into the upper reaches of the App Store charts, there's equal appeal in publishers spending more time and resources on a fewer number of games.

The fascinating thing about the App Store, of course, is that publishers can try these different strategies and see which works. Naturally, we'll be keeping a close eye on DChoc, Gameloft and their rivals' success in the coming months.