iPhone Games Hits 13,000

It's no mystery that the iPhone and iPod Touch Apps Store has exploded with games, something Apple didn't anticipate. But exactly how many are there? Most analysts believe there are over 13,000 games and one look on the App Store will not change your mind. It was also estimated that there were only 6,000 last March. That means there was over 7,000 gaming apps submitted within 3-4 months, and with the App Store just turning 1 year now, that means a lot of games are sure to come. But is it a good thing that there are this many games available?

One comparison to the amount of games on the iPhone is the same thing that happened on the Wii. The first couple of years, the Wii got a lot of "crap-ware" or games that were made just for a quick buck and had no real quality game play. Few games that were considered "crap-ware" at the time like Cooking Mama and Carnival Games manged to be diamonds in the rough, selling a lot and becoming popular. But the fact still stands that there are a lot of under developed games on the Wii and the same for the iPhone. One reason that I believe the "crap-ware" will stay on the iPhone App Store for a longer period of time is because anyone can download the tools to create an iPhone game, it's very low risk, and it only costs $100 for a year to become a developer. Basically the $100 means you can put as many games as you want on the App Store for a year. Compared to other gaming platforms, $100 a year is nothing. The other problem with the crap-ware on the iPhone is that people can make their game free, which means it doesn't matter if it sells good or bad, they will continue to make games because they aren't interested in money.

What is good is that it's easier to find reviews about the iPhone games than other platform's download content. With the amount of sites that have a special section for only iPhone Games and that iTunes uses the same commenting system on games they do on songs will help people find the better games out there.