iPhone leads casual gaming

Distimo application store watcher says iPhone is becoming the portable gaming platform of choice, writes The Inquirer.

While most commentators have been concentrating on the lack of hardware and software features on the iPhone, the device is pretty well suited to casual gaming.

Nintendo itself has shown the power of casual gamers with its all-conquering Wii, but the handheld gaming king is being usurped by Apple.

It's been 16 years in the making, but Trip Hawkins is about to show the world an idea that's been playing in his head since the 1990s, says San Francisco Chronicle.

Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts and currently CEO of Digital Chocolate, is unveiling a Facebook gaming platform called NanoStar Social Games that he thinks will take social gaming into the next generation.

The idea relies on an old-school gaming form: trading cards. Hawkins believes an update to role-playing card games mixed with social platforms can expand gaming to a wider audience and can create true social interactions. "It's like Pokémon for adults."

Sites like Facebook, with an estimated 400 million users, and MySpace, with about 100 million users, are driving a social gaming craze that was in the spotlight at this month's 2010 Game Developers Conference, according to Reuters.

Heiko Hubertz, CEO of browser-based games portal Bigpoint.com, which is home to over 100 million gamers, says online game experiences were very solitary in the past.

"Now through social network gaming and browser-based games portals, gamers of all types can share their experiences and compete against each other,” he adds.