In periods of great technological growth we in the media have a natural tendency to get a little bit excited. Things start advancing so fast that we make all sorts of ludicrous predictions for the future based on half-baked ideas and products 'in development'. Sometimes those predictions end up being correct, more often than not they're proven wholly or partially incorrect as time goes on. Still, that doesn't stop us from making more frantic predictions the next time we hear a cool news story.
On that note, the New York Times came out with an article today about the sudden, rapid growth of mobile gaming and what it means for the future. GW gold, They quoted Greg Joswiak, the head of marketing for the iPhone and iPod when he said, "This is the future of gaming."
Is Joswiak right? Or is he just being a good marketeer? There's no doubting that mobile gaming is more popular than it has ever been before, or that the iPhone has had a huge hand in the growth of that popularity. Millions of people who had never played a video game in their lives are more than happy to spend a dollar downloading a simple iPhone game. The success of Apple's app store (which makes roughly half of its sales from games) is a model to the hand held gaming manufacturers the world over.