Game Changer?

Perhaps more importantly, the case simply isn't proven as yet that throwing money at development equates to success in the App Store market. Thus far, success has come not to the highest-budget games on the App Store, but rather to those which effectively utilise the form factors and capabilities of the device to create a compelling experience.

On a new platform with radically different control methods and functionality to existing consoles, innovation is prized over shoe-horning existing franchises onto the system - not just by critics, who always fetishise innovation, but by consumers, who have voted with their wallets for games which truly understand how to make fun happen on an iPhone screen.

This will, of course, change - but not because of the iPad. It will change simply because developers will start to understand how to speak the language of these devices, turning today's innovation into tomorrow's defaults, at which point skill at turning out polished, professional games could begin to outweigh brilliant new ideas.

Yet lower price points militate for innovation, even as the sector matures - customers who treat their purchases as throwaway, low-cost "toys" are arguably more likely to try out a weird new idea for $1.99 than they are to buy yet another straightforward racing game for $4.99. Marketing, too, is going to have an increasing impact - although again, with the low price points limiting how much can realistically be spent on customer acquisition, marketing is going to have to focus on intelligently driving word of mouth, and word of mouth is very hard to drive if your product isn't actually very exciting.

Fear that the iPad is about to draw the curtains over the age of indie iPhone development is, therefore, misplaced - not least because, of course, the iPhone form factor will remain the dominant one for App Store users for several years, even assuming iPad is a fabulous success.

What a successful iPad would actually do, however, is to fragment the market. This has already happened to a small degree, since Apple's various iPhone and iPod Touch devices do have different functionality, but iPad will be a major new branch on the tree - a different form factor, a different screen size, more powerful chipset and different usage profile.

At present, the assumption is that developers will simply have to create versions of their games for both iPhone and iPad - and it's not entirely clear how the business model for that will function, whether the App Store would, for example, allow owners of an iPhone version to get a discount on the iPad version, or if a universal binary that works on both devices will be plausible.

Yet I suspect that this approach will not deliver the kind of gold rush for which Apple and its developers are hoping. The iPad is, fundamentally, a new device. It's not a pocketable device like an iPhone, which you can take out and use whenever you have five minutes to kill on a train journey. It's not designed to be held in one hand and used with the other for long periods of time.

Realistically, it's not designed to be used standing up, at least not for significant periods of time. You hold it further from your face, propping it on a desk or your lap, and that changes interaction in a more meaningful way than simply putting a bigger display on the thing ever could.

In other words, developers need to start thinking again about how they approach App Store games. Some games, of course, seem to work on every device under the sun - I'm thinking specifically of things like Bejeweled and recent favourite Peggle here - and they will undoubtedly make decent sales on the iPad. However, an approach which simply makes high resolution versions of existing iPhone games and pushes them out with a new price point is unlikely to be a successful one.

Here, once again, smaller developers can have the edge. The glass ceiling inherent in this device will keep the playing field broadly level, while the big upsets are going to come from great ideas which properly leverage what the iPad can do to make experiences fun. Helpfully, there's no corporate monopoly on great ideas. Assuming that the iPad is a success, I anticipate that those fearing an end to the indie-led iPhone market will be pleasantly surprised - Apple's new gold rush will once again see small, creative teams striking the richest seams.