Y’know, it’s funny; I grew up in a world where gamers the world over scoffed at Mac’s complete inability to play video games. After all, your nerd machismo rating is directly correlated with how well your machine can play the latest games and up until recently, Mac just didn’t have what it took to be a major gaming platform.

Of course, with the rise of the iPod and an increasing population of hipsters and graphic artists buying up Apple’s sleek little machines, game developers are, more and more, seeing Mac as a pretty attractive platform to produce for. Most specifically, I’m talking about the iPhone and the iPod touch.

This last week saw the announcement of a new Metal Gear Solid game for the platform, as well as the universally-lauded release of Rolando. IGN’s Levi Buchanan posted an editorial pitting the iPhone and the PSP against eachother, comparing what features the iPhone has that could help the platform do well in the gaming industry. All of this got me to thinking a lot about what kind of steps Apple will have to take in order to compete directly with current portables.

Obviously, the problems isn’t in the hardware. The iPhone clearly can stand up to the PSP graphically and its multi-touch interface and accelerometer lend well to new and creative ways to control games. No, the biggest hurdle that Apple faces in entering the portable ring is that, at its core, the iPhone is not viewed by the general public–or even the gaming community–as a gaming device. Sure, Apple has been taking steps to change this. The official website for the iPod touch proclaims that “Groundbreaking technologies built into iPod touch — such as the Multi-Touch display, accelerometer, and 3D graphics — immerse you in the action.” From what I’ve seen, though, there are very few people with iPhones that actually care about the device’s ability to play games. This probably stems from the overwhelming push from Apple that the two major functions of the iPhone are that it can make calls and that it plays music.

Still, the biggest problem that the iPhone faces has nothing to do with advertising. Every week, an overwhelming flood of new apps hit the iTunes store. While some of these apps are free, there are a fair amount that nickle and dime you with $.99 price tags. The issue I have with this is that there doesn’t seem to be any sort of quality control. I wish Apple would take the initiative to sort through the massive amount of user-created content and regulate the price of apps against their quality. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing some sort of “Apple Seal of Approval” for anything that costs money.

This isn’t to say that I’m against people releasing their homebrew applications on the iTunes store; I’m not. I just think that if somebody is going to have the gall to put a price on their product, there should be some sort of quality control.
Another thing Apple could do to improve the iPhone’s status as a gaming machine would be to encourage developers to release free demos for the platform. The biggest issue with this suggestion is that most games amount to little more than a demo anyway. Maybe, just maybe, this encouragement would have a treacle-down effect where developers would decide that, in order for a demo to have any sort of meaning, their game would have to have a little more meat on its bones. I know it’s wishful thinking, but hey, this entire article is just speculation anyway.

What do you guys think?