[Ironcell]

I started a thread about the iPod touch being considered the best gaming device on the market. I was totally amazed by the amount of excellent responses listing both pros/cons of iPhone/iPod touch gaming compared to Nintendo DS and Sony's PSP.

The discussion revolved mainly around controls, many pointed out because the iPod touch had no real gamepad it could never really compete with DS/PSP, while on the other side, some of you made great counter arguments that the iPod touch's controls had potential.

I was reading an article called iPhone Gaming: Play to your Strengths the other day and it really got me thinking about what kind of game genres would work best on the iPhone/iPod touch and which ones would just be horrible.

So lets talk about this, what games do you think would naturally be at home on the iPhone/iPod touch and what game genres would be a disaster?

I'll kick things off, Flight Sims would be awesome on the iPhone/iPod touch, StarSmasher although it's really basic, is proof of concept that flight sims do work well with accelerometer based controls.

[Chuckit]

An FPS would suck — hard. Actually, I don't think any kind of action game would be very good. Puzzle games are a natural fit, as are driving/flying games. I think an RPG could be done well on the iPhone.

[moep]

There was this rumor about an attachable gamepad which I thought was a great idea — most of you probably already heard of it.
Unfortunately it turned out to be a hoax:

http://toucharcade.com/2008/09/02/be...-in-the-works/

I’d love to see some casual platformers on the iPhone and IMO those just don’t work well with onscreen buttons.

[Ironcell]

It just crossed my mind, a lot of web games would have a pretty easy transition onto the iPhone, mainly b/c a lot of web games use the mouse, that would just be perfect for the iPhone's touchscreen.

I have mixed feelings about adding physical gamepad support to the iPhone, mainly b/c not everyone will have one, and not everyone will want one, lots of people buy the iPhone for anything but gaming.

It'll also make the lives of gaming developers tougher, designing a game for an unknown gamepad can be tricky, each gamepad may have a different button configuration or number of buttons might differ, major headache if you ask me, from a games design standpoint.

It's also extra bulk you have to carry around, if they ever do start selling gamepad addon controls. One of the biggest strengths of iPhone gaming is the fact that it's so convenient, the iPhone is so compact, it's thinner than both the PSP/DS and smaller overall than the PSP.