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Written by Hattori Hanzo Friday, 24 April 2009 07:43

Industry

Yesterday evening saw Apple cross a threshold that certifies it as one of the most influential entities the games industry has ever seen - the one billionth App Store download.

In less than a year, Apple has succeeded in establishing not only a new games system, but a whole new concept in game controls, user interaction, software distribution and game development and publishing. And it's now crossed the one billion downloads mark we've been waiting for.

On July 11th 2008 Steve Jobs casually announced that Apple's new mobile phone had over 500 third party titles ready to launch the new online application store. No one - not even Jobs - estimated the impact this new software distribution system would have, but after only one month Jobs was back on the air announcing that the iPhone and iPod Touch had seen two million downloads per day since the store went live.

It was a pretty remarkable occasion, but nothing in comparison to the months that followed. The world was plunged into global recession and game companies across all formats suffered badly during a sudden economic collapse. But the App Store, with its astoundingly cheap (and free) games, made so easily accessible, flourished in the light of the world's financial collapse. Despite their desperate insistence to the contrary, Nintendo and Sony saw the handheld gaming market transform right in front of them, and have spent the last eight months desperately trying to quantify it, understand it, and join in once again. But being taken by surprise by the iPhone left them without a software leg to stand on - their every effort to drag the portable games market back to its previous, stagnant position only pushing further into obscurity, and pushing Apple further ahead.

Now Apple is transformed. It's no longer a compute or music player manufacturer; it's the company that not only changed the way games are played, but changed the way games are created and sold. In 1984 the games market collapsed due to avarice and complacency from the industry's major players, and the recent economic downturn threatened to do exactly the same again - except this time we had a new player and a new type of game ready to bolster the entire industry.

An estimated 37 million iPhones and iPod Touches are now out there, with homebrew programmers becoming overnight millionaires thanks to a software catalogue of 30,000 titles - and all before the platform's first birthday.

Anyone who suggests the iPhone and iPod Touch are not dedicated games systems needs to re-evaluate their definition of what a games system really is. The concept changed last year, when Apple blended the multimedia player with the netbook and handheld gaming console, and once that new system begins counting its software base in billions, history has been written.

Congratulations to Apple, to the legions of developers supporting the system and to the 37 million iPhone and iPod Touch users who voted with their fingers to make the iPhone the leading platform of the new millennium.