Mimi wrote:
I have never understood gaming on mobile telephones in general.
The difference with iPhone is that the device is more powerful than the consoles you cited, and also has a whopping great, high-quality screen. I interviewed the guys who did Super Monkey Ball, and they said that while they initially approached the game like a typical mobile outing, they rapidly realised that was a bad idea and switched to creating a fairly normal (if truncated) console game.
I guess what Apple's realised is that with iPhone and iPod touch, it has a device that's powerful, easy to develop for and easy to get affordable stuff on to. The gaming space is the one that's really exploded, thanks to the DS, and if Apple can cunningly position itself alongside, it could benefit. After all, while I agree that most people think like you—"I can't imagine any situation where I'd think to myself 'ooh, I fancy playing a game now' whilst in transit when I didn't have my DS"—what if your iPod was capable of playing games just as good as those on your DS?
The problem currently, obviously, is the limitations forced by iPhone/iPod touch's hardware, meaning it's neither a truly portable gaming device half the time (try playing tilt games while on public transport) nor a device capable of a wide enough range of games (Ms. Pac-Man on iPhone is hateful, for example).