14 DAY TRIAL // While some may already disagree with the headline, believing that dedicated handheld consoles do a much better job than the iPhone, Apple's VP of iPod and iPhone product marketing thinks the App Store is set to revolutionize the portable gaming market.
In an interview with EDGE (former next-gen.biz), Apple's Greg Joswiak claims the App Store has done very well for Apple so far. In fact, “In 100 days, we’ve had over 6,000 apps on the Store: mind-boggling,” he says. “In the same period we’ve had over 200 million customer downloads,” Joswiak adds. “It’s just amazing. And it’s games that turn out to be the biggest category of all, with over 1,500 different games already available. To put that in context, that’s more games than the Nintendo DS and the PSP put together, and this is 100 days in.”
Pressed to admit that many of the games available in the App Store don't even come close to the quality of PSP games, or Nintendo DS titles, Joswiak has taken a different course, saying “That’s the beauty of the free market. The cream will rise. That’s why we have a rating system that allows you to rate your experience with a game, and that becomes key to deciding what are the best games.”
However, besides Apple's unjust ways of approving or rejecting apps in the venue, the App Store rating system has also seen fire from the press. Some would go as far as declaring the system faulty all the way.
“What I love about that is that we offer the opportunity not only to all these big game developers who are doing a great job – EA, Gameloft, Sega, Hudson – but also the small game developer, who has an opportunity to create something too; people who would never have a chance at getting physical distribution,” Apple's VP continues to stress. “If they can get a title out and can get good ratings, they can see themselves rise up the bestseller list.”
Again, while that's very true in theory, real life scenarios have told a different story about the classification, listing and rating of products in the App Store. Trying to defend the company against such allegations, Apple's VP of iPod and iPhone product marketing explains that “The contract that we have has common sense elements spelled out. We’re not letting in [...] misbehaving apps, or things that come down to poor taste. That’s what our customers expect from us.”
Then, there's the time Apple takes to approve an app. Developers have long complained about Apple's strange ways of launching an app in the venue, some even accusing the electronics maker of favoritism. The truth, Joswiak goes on to say, is that Apple is getting just too many requests to handle them all in time.
“As far as the time it takes to get apps approved, as you can imagine, we get so many apps a day,” he admits. “The guys we have approving that are doing the best they can, and moving as fast as they can.”
Head over to EDGE for the full interview.