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We cover mostly productivity-related iPhone apps around these parts, but if you’ve got a little one who could use some educational—or just distracting—games, MetaFilter founder, blogger, and dad Matt Haughey has rounded up 14 kid-tested, parent-approved iPhone games for kids.

It started out innocuously. We were waiting for a table at a restaurant, my daughter was about two years old and fidgeting. I checked the App Store on my iPhone for a kid genre, found a fake phone game, and let her go to town on it. It saved the day and bought us 20 min of quiet time. Since then I’ve downloaded a lot of games and educational apps for my daughter (who is now four and a half) and I’ve been meaning to write up the ones I think are worth a few bucks and have stood the test of time, and here they are.

They’re not all free (most are a couple of bucks), but they’ve saved the parents in the Haughey household from many a long wait with an impatient kid. If that sounds like something you might appreciate from time to time, head over to the post for his full run-down. Got a little experience of your own hunting down great, kid-friendly iPhone apps? Share your favorites in the comments.

Game developers are shifting their attention to the iPhone and starting to ignore the Nintendo Wii, according to Game Developer Research.

Developers creating games for mobile phones increased to 25 percent of all developers, up from 12 percent a year ago. Of those mobile developers, 75 percent are targeting iPhone and iPod Touch games. The total number of iPhone developers is more than twice the number making games for the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable.

That could represent a kind of crisis of Nintendo and Sony which will show up in a dearth of games in the future. Developers are like the canaries in a coal mine (meant to smell poison gas). Once they start leaving a platform, the games become scarce and the users eventually follow.

The data is based on a survey of 800 game developers in North America and is included in a 100-page report on the State of Game Development. About 70 percent of said they were making at least one game for the PC or Mac (including browser and social games), up slightly from a year ago. [photo credit: Kottkegae]

About 41 percent said they were making console games. Within that group, 69 percent are making games for the Xbox 360. About 61 percent are making games for the PlayStation 3. Both of those figures are within a few percent of last year’s results. But the Wii support softened, dropping from 42 percent to 30 percent. Electronic Arts chief executive John Riccitiello exemplified this sentiment last fall when he said EA’s efforts on the Wii had yielded disappointing results; Nintendo still essentially dominates that platform.

The report shows that the recession took its toll on game developers. As jobs disappeared at big game studios, many developers started smaller studios or began developing games on their own. There was a 7 percent uptick in the number of developers employed by companies with 50 or fewer people. The number of developers at companies with 500 employees dropped by 2 percent.

The developers said that their choice of platform depended most on ease of development and market penetration. Other considerations included the skills of their team members, how portable code is from one platform to another, and the costs of development kits and other materials.

The survey selected participants from those who read Gamasutra, subscribe to Game Developer magazine, or attend the Game Developers Conference. Check out our GamesBeat@GDC conference on March 10 during the GDC at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

[Disclosure: VentureBeat and GDC are jointly producing GamesBeat@GDC].

Apple made gaming a big part of its iPad tablet announcement today. That wasn’t a surprise; Apple has had its eye on the gaming market since it launched the App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch.

The company announced that iPhone and iPod touch games will be playable on the device, and it invited established iPhone game developers Gameloft and Electronic Arts on stage at its iPad unveiling event to show off two games in development for the device: N.O.V.A. and Need for Speed Shift.

Both demonstrations were put together in just a couple of weeks, but even this early they give us some sense of what we can expect from Apple iPad games. Here are our impressions.

N.O.V.A.

Gameloft has already released a version of N.O.V.A. for the iPhone; it’s a critically acclaimed hand-held first-person shooter in the style of games like Halo and Resistance: Fall of Man.

The basics of the control scheme are similar to those of the iPhone version. For example, an on-screen directional pad handles movement. But the tablet opens up some new multi-touch possibilities on its larger screen as well. In N.O.V.A. you can slide three fingers over a door to open it, slide two fingers across the screen to toss a grenade or draw a targeting box around an enemy.

Need for Speed Shift

Electronic Arts’ Need for Speed racing game series has appeared on just about every gaming platform under the sun. The touch controls make the iPad experience unique. You can tap the inside of the car to zoom out of a chase view and into a first-person driver’s seat view. From there, you can actually use your finger to switch gears on the stick shift.

Graphics in this game look better than iPhone graphics, but they aren’t as good as what you see on high-end PCs, the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3. They look comparable in detail to Nintendo Wii games, but the screen resolution is 1024 x 768, so we’re assuming that many of the games are going to be high definition.

Will the iPad Succeed as a Gaming Device?

We’ll have to see more games to know exactly what to expect, of course, but innovation is likely. Multi-touch on a 10-inch screen will open up new possibilities for interaction with games.

While 3D games were presented at Apple’s unveiling for the iPad, better graphics won’t drive tablet gaming. We expect that other kinds of games will make this device shine. For example, tech industry bigwig and celeb Jason Calacanis posted fake tweets last night talking about a FarmVille app for the iPad, but that actually sounds like something this device would be perfect for.

Just like the Wii and the Nintendo DS — the two most popular pure gaming devices in the world today — the iPad will attract casual gamers who appreciate new ways of interacting, even if they’re not the most precise. We don’t know how many units the iPad will move, though, and until we do we won’t know if it will be worth it to developers to go nuts with this thing.

Keep your eyes open and your ears to the ground, gamers; it’s at least going to be interesting. If it does catch on, you’ll have a whole new kind of console to play with.

Tags: app store, apple, Apple Tablet, bay bridge, electronic arts, gameloft, ipad, iphone, nova, software, video games

Filed under: Gaming, Software, iPhone, App Store

Our friends over at Touch Arcade have put together their list of the best iPhone games of 2009, and if you happened to unwrap an iPod touch or an iPhone yesterday, that’s as good a place as any to start hunting for your favorite games. Spider: Secret of Bryce Manor [$2.99, iTunes link] topped their list, and we agree that it’s an excellent showcase for original iPhone software (there’s also a promo version if you want to try the gameplay for free).

Other than that, there’s a few of our favorites missing from the list (no Ramp Champ? No Galcon Labs?), but there are plenty of terrific games to download and play on into 2010. It’s been a fantastic year for iPhone gaming — if you haven’t yet jumped in and checked out some of the best the platform has to offer, what are you waiting for? Get downloading!

TUAWTouch Arcade picks their favorite iPhone games of 2009 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 26 Dec 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Opinions seem somewhat split on the upgrades Apple made to its iPod line yesterday. A particular point of contention, though, is the lack of significant hardware upgrades to the iPod touch line. Expectations were high for the inclusion of a camera in the device, but Steve Jobs says that the camera was left out to make the iPod touch an inexpensive, affordable gaming device.

In an interview with The New York Times, Jobs reiterated that Apple sees the iPod touch primarily as a gaming device. Therefore, the goal with the latest revamp was to bring the cost down as low as possible—during the event yesterday, the company announced that the lowest-end iPod touch was now going for a mere $199.

Apple has both quietly and not-so-quietly been going about the business of tackling the portable gaming market. Perhaps presaged all the way back to the original iPod’s hidden easter egg game of Brick, the iconic and primarily music-playing device has acknowledged the powerful role of fun on a portable device.

Of course, with the advent of the App Store ecosystem and the iPhone/iPod touch lines of hardware, Apple’s ability to go head to head with the likes of Sony and Nintendo went up more than just a notch.

The “Funnest iPod ever” ad from about a year ago exemplifies Apple’s strategy in the marketplace. The focus is purely on fun, the target demographic extends way beyond the typical range of the “hardcore gamer,” and the easy over-the-air access to thousands of game titles is starting to set the iPod touch apart from Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PlayStation Portable.

Today’s Apple event continued the company’s push into more traditional portable gaming territory, with an entire segment from SVP Phil Schiller on how the iPod touch stacks up against the portable playing field.

Image courtesy of Engadget

Phil reminded everyone that the PSP and DS have “no multi-touch, expensive games, and no app store.” As compared to the mostly sub-$10 pricing of iPod touch/iPhone games, typical handheld titles for those two consoles can run from $25 to $40 a pop.

Speaking of titles, Phil shared an interesting statistic about the number of games available on all 3 platforms. Here’s how it stacks up:

Sony PSP: 607 games
Nintendo DS: 3,680 games
Apple iPhone OS: 21,178 games

Wow. Even given that a large percentage of those iPhone/iPod touch games are relatively simple and casual titles, it’s still an impressive number. And with some full-featured AAA titles already out (take Civilization Revolution’s faithful translation of the console version of the game as a prime example) and on deck as well, the iPhone OS ecosystem is looking impressively like a viable handheld gaming experience even to the more hardcore gaming set Sony and Nintendo regularly compete to win over.

Schiller’s segment included a number of game demos as well, with Gameloft’s upcoming first-person shooter named Nova (pictured, below) looking very Halo-like, with stunning graphics and excellent framerate. Phil said much of what’s coming next to iPod touch gaming is possible because they’ve built-in support for OpenGL ES 2.0, “great for those next-generation games.” Blockbuster publishers Ubisoft and Electronic Arts also shared the stage to demonstrate two franchises already hugely popular on consoles, Assassin’s Creed and Madden ‘10.

With both established major console publishers and insanely talented independent development teams all lined up to make games for Apple’s platform, Sony and Nintendo had better be concerned. The latter has already indicated that Apple’s iPhone ecosystem is having an impact on its business. Sony seems to be a little bit slower in understanding the market shift, or at least continues to put on a brave bluster in public.

What do you think: is the iPhone OS ecosystem giving traditional handheld gaming a run for its money? Have you already or would you consider the iPod touch or iPhone as your handheld gaming rig of choice?

Tags: apple, handhelds, iphone, iphone os, iPod Touch, nintendo ds, playstation, portable gaming, Sony PSP