@ GDC: iPhone Is The Best Platform For Games, Kind Of

Yesterday at GDC Mobile, Tom Hubina said he was so fed up with the mobile game industry that he was going to leave it, that is, until he heard the iPhone was coming. So, three months ago, he started Amplified Games, a company focused on selling iPhone games and already has four games and 6,500 registered users.

He said the iPhone solves a lot of the headaches in the industry because the phones have a great browser, and everyone has unlimited data plans, and there's no carrier deck. The outcome of all of that, is that he works directly with the customer, and typically promotes his games through the Apple iPhone Web site, or through his own Web site called Fat-Free Games. "The customer knows who we are and what we are doing and we can use that to promote additional titles," said Hubina, Amplified's CEO.

However, for as many benefits the iPhone has, he said it has its negatives, too. The iPhone's touchscreen creates new challenges. There's no cursor on the screen, and the touch screen has a lot of latency, because it waits to see if a person touches the screen twice to signify a double-click. That means it won't ever be appropriate for an action game. And, because the games must be built in the browser, there's other downsides. The browser doesn't support sound, it has poor graphics performance and you have to use a very different programming language, he said.

But Hubina said he's very excited about the prospects. "I've never talked to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), and to do a contract with Apple can be very intimidating, but they are definitely looking for ways to enable the application developers to do stuff, and they are going to be doing things to grow the user base and market."

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