iGame Radio

Ever since the job posting on the Apple jobs site was discovered, the Internet has been speculating about what that might mean for Apple. Is Apple going to start developing games as a first-party publisher? That’s what everyone wants to know. That’s what many people want to believe.

But, according to an article at Slide-to-play, not necessarily so. Rob Fahey, a self-described games industry analyst, was interviewed and stated his thoughts that Apple was probably scrambling to play catch-up with making its iPhone APIs and platforms more game friendly.

“It’s leaping to conclusions to assume that Apple’s hiring suggests a secret internal game development team,” Fahey said.

According to Fahey, Apple moving into development would upset the balance too much to be worth it. It could cause burgeoning development teams to be outshone by the platform’s own creator.

“Even if Apple did have ideas about entering game development, it’s hard to see how they’d make it work,” he continued. “They’d end up alienating and annoying their developer community– not new ground for Apple, admittedly– and would face accusations of favoritism for their own titles in the App Store, no matter how scrupulously they obeyed their own rules.

Now, where I’m all for believing that Apple has no intention of jumping into first-party development/publishing of games…on the iPhone or Mac…I disagree with Fahey’s reasoning behind why. For one, I don’t believe that Apple would ever intend on getting into game development because Apple doesn’t see itself as a developer of software that doesn’t directly support its hardware or operating system. Consider that Apple could probably come up with a really good project management system (something to compete with MS Project, for example). But they never have. Because project management software doesn’t directly support the OS.

“What about iWork?” I hear you ask. Well, first off, iWork has been in development for years…not something that Apple is just now considering moving into a crowded market. Secondly, most everyone who uses a computer uses a word processor and some simple spreadsheet tools. Not so for project management.

“Ah,” I hear you say. “But what about iTunes!”

And to that I respond with my other reason for why Apple is not, and won’t in the foreseeable future, end up in the game development business. And it has nothing to do with Fahey’s ideas of “favoritism” in the App store (think Microsoft Games and Xbox Live Arcade). It has to do with favoritism within Steve Jobs. Jobs just doesn’t like games. He never really has. He *loves* music. Most every single keynote includes music of some kind, and Jobs has even been up there playing the guitar himself. He promotes music in software all the time.

But never games. The last time games were mentioned in a keynote that I remember was back in, maybe, 2004 (until Schiller’s keynote of WWDC this year).

I’m glad if Apple is working hard to make the iPhone a better gaming platform. Maybe they will actually work hard to make the Mac a better gaming platform as well. But don’t expect any games out of Apple anytime soon.