Will iPhone games need connectivity to prosper?
There are three obvious things about Apple's App Store as it stands. One: some genres are already well stocked (to say the least) with games.
Two: there is downward pressure on prices. And three: connected games haven't really made a splash yet, and connected features are notably lacking from the games of established mobile publishers.
Some developers and publishers are clearly making good money from their iPhone games, of course - I've seen one report estimating that Pangea made as much as $1.2 million from its Enigmo game in a single weekend.
But there's still a challenge for established mobile publishers: how do they make their iPhone games successful, when cheaper, less rich competitors are seemingly more popular with users?
Gameloft is attacking the problem head-on by reducing the price of its games, especially those sitting in crowded genres. Now TechCrunch has a really interesting article suggesting connectivity should also be higher on the agenda.
"Without a compelling existing brand or a really innovative product with protectable intellectual property (some of the games fall into this category), the only chance these apps have for long term success is to start thinking about ways to have users interact with each other in order to build network value," says writer Michael Arrington.
He's right about some games being protected - Super Monkey Ball isn't realistically going to have its sales threatened by a cheap Marvellous Gorilla Sphere me-too game.
But this idea of the network effect is still bang-on. In theory, iPhone should be one of the easier mobile platforms to create connected games for. It's one device (okay, two if you count iPod Touch), with wi-fi and 3G both on board.
Why haven't publishers taken advantage of this from day one? Is it because the iPhone SDK arrived too late, or because they were cautious about what games to launch in the early days of the App Store, or is there another reason?
I wonder if there's an element of existing mobile publishers being trapped in a bit of a box. Putting connectivity into Java games is such a hiding to nothing that this feature has sunk low down their priorities lists - a state of mind that they haven't broken out of for iPhone.
That would explain why it's the smaller developers - the people behind Aurora Feint for example - who've come out with connected games first.
Arrington thinks the first breakout hit for iPhone will be "a multiplayer game that is played real time or asynchronously, with each user installing the app on their own phone". He cites the examples of asynchronous multiplayer chess or Scrabble as potentially cool, too.
I say look at Facebook, and some of the most popular games there. Games where you take it in turns to play, or games where you send challenges to friends for them to take on in their own time.
Connectivity will hopefully be a big part of iPhone's future when it comes to gaming.
The question is how long we'll have to wait, and whether existing mobile publishers - used to thinking of themselves as quick and flexible compared to console goliaths - will be beaten to it by even speedier and more flexible small developers or social games firms.