Apple Calls iPhone A "Gaming Console"

Oh, iPhone. You've been going through a minor identity crisis since your sleek, sexy 3G model launched back in July, ushering in the iTunes App Store and a mountain of weird puzzle games and middling console ports. Do you want to get serious about games, or don't you? There must be a ton of companies who would like you to be successful in the traditional mobile market, but you might be better than that. You might have a shot at a big ol' slice of the real handheld pie. You might be a contender!

For the moment, at least, Apple's on-again-off-again commitment to gaming is apparently back on. Last week, the company's Director of Technology Evangelism John Geleynse made some comments in which he referred to the iPhone directly as a "gaming console" and went on to say "it's not a phone, it's a console experience." Doesn't get much more evangelical than that!

This is just a month after iPhone marketing veep Greg Joswiak called the device's graphics performance "significantly greater" than that of the DS. Not an assertion anyone will debate, but meaningful from a corporate-strategy perspective.

Lastly, the Engadget story quotes an Apple press release announcing some good old-fashioned synergy with EA Games.

Throughout the month of December Apple Stores in New York, LA, San Francisco and Chicago will host special "EA Games Sneak Peek" events where Electronic Arts will discuss why the iPod touch and iPhone are amazing platforms for mobile gaming...

I've had an iPhone 3G since launch day and use it constantly--but never for games. The lack of traditional controls makes traditional game types--shooters and such--an unappealing prospect, and the titles tailored to the tilt and touch controls have seemed pretty hit-or-miss so far. As we've learned from the Wii and DS, consoles with weird input methods are at their best when developers are intelligently using those weird input methods. And we haven't seen enough of that on the iPhone yet, Monkey Ball notwithstanding.

Personally, I'm waiting to get excited about iPhone gaming till John Carmack drops something tasty on the platform. He's talked glowingly about the device's Dreamcast-like level of performance in the past, and if anyone is going to build something technically impressive, it's him. Whether id's iPhone games--or anyone else's, for that matter--can compete with the depth and breadth of gameplay on the DS and PSP is another matter entirely.

Do you game on your iPhone or iPod Touch? What titles have really grabbed your attention on the platform?