Steve Jobs could sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo.  Apple fanboyism is at an all time high these days but you don’t have to be a fanboy to appreciate the amazing sales numbers from the iPhone and iPod.  The iPhone 3G has outsold its original counterpart in a single quarter and Apple has already beaten its self-imposed goal of 10 million units with the Holidays still ahead.  The iPod has also had it’s highest sales numbers in a non holiday quarter.  Why am I dropping all these sales figures you ask?  Well, it’s not just about the iPhone and iPod anymore, for me it’s also about Apple’s iTunes App Store.

The App Store has been a huge success in terms of creating revenue for third party developers that never would have had a chance in a regular market.  Simple applications that cost as little as $0.99 are making it easy on developers to generate extra revenue to make bigger and better applications.  As we speak, the App store has had over 200 million downloads of various applications and over 5,500 different applications to choose from.  That number should exceed 10,000 in less than two months.  Many questions still remain to be answered as to how many of these applications are free and how many are games.

Apple has been promoting the iPod touch as “the funnest iPod ever”.  Yes, the slogan is awful, but when consumers hear this, they should think gaming.  The iPhone sales coupled with the iPod touch sales have created a huge market for game developers.  People are jumping at the chance to play games on their mobile devices.  There is a convenience factor here, but also the pure simplicity of a touch screen coupled with the graphics power and accelerometer in both devices that creates huge possibilities.

With all of this success comes shovelware.  There are some fairly awful games in the store and an alarmingly high amount of copycat games out there.  How many of you want to play the same puzzle game thirty different ways?  Even with all of the bad games, there are some extremely high quality ported games.  For example, my recently reviewed Enigmo, which is a port of the original Mac OS game but it seemingly works even better on the iPhone/iPod touch.  What everyone wants is original content and that will hopefully start to pick up sooner rather than later.  Some of the big name developers are working on this very thing, but we can’t forget about the little guys.  My favorite example of this is a company called ngmoco.  The company was started by two game developing vets who decided to make games only for the iPhone/iPod touch.  They have two of games already out there and a couple waiting to be released.  Developers like these are catering to the mobile market, creating fun games that can be picked up for a few minutes and put down when you have to go.  The iPhone/iPod touch won’t be able to take off as a gaming platform unless there are great reasons to play games on the device and a great reason would be original content.

The App Store and iPhone/iPod touch aren’t all peaches, of course.  The App Store itself has a difficult time displaying some great content.  Only the best selling games get the center stage even though there are better games out there.  Some of these fantastic games are getting released and buried immediately unless word of mouth gets out about how great they are.  The other real problem at the moment is most of these games are short term, puzzle type games.  I enjoy some of those, but I need more variety please.  There are developers working on bigger and better style games but there just isn’t enough of them to make a dent.  The touch screen can be a gift and a nuisance all at the same time.  I love tactile feedback and hopefully Apple answers this call.  It’s not that I want buttons included on the devices, I just want to know if and when I have hit the virtual button.

With all of this information and personally taking the plunge into iPhone gaming, I have seen what could be a great alternative to all of the other gaming devices already out there.  I see the potential of the App Store along with the two devices and I find myself wanting more everyday.  If you haven’t already tried gaming on the iPhone or iPod touch, I highly recommend it.  I am not speaking of these average free downloads that everyone uses to try and show off to their friends how cool their iPhone is.  Go spoil yourself and purchase a $4.99 game, get into as you would with your PSP or DS.  Who knows, you might enjoy it so much you won’t need more than a single device when you leave the house.