Device aside, there are also problems emerging with how games are purchased. The App Store is accessed through iTunes which, like the iPhone itself, was not built with games as a first priority. “I’m very much in favor of the open platform and the ability for everyone to get their content out there, no matter how small their game is,” says Oliver.

“Obviously that abundance of titles is going to make it hard for good content to stand out. As it grows, the App Store will need continuous refinement – browsing is already a cumbersome process.” Another limiting factor inherited from iTunes is pricing: it simply isn’t possible to charge over £10 for a game in an environment where the traditional price point is 79p – and price inevitably has an effect on dev budget.

“The question isn’t whether iPhone gamers want to play those types of game but whether they are prepared to pay to play them,” says Farley, who notes that many developers are already slashing their prices to get on the crucial best-seller lists. “For the smaller developers it’s going to be a huge risk to spend PSP- or DS-sized budgets on a title that retails at £2.99. That’s a lot of units to sell to break even.”

Ultimately, however, many of the problems with the patchy early software can be traced back to one central issue: there are no firstparty titles on the iPhone, and not much to indicate that Apple is hugely engaged with gaming. While Penn argues that “Apple would be mad not to care about games and supporting the iPhone as a platform,” he adds that, at the moment, it’s clear that the device “could really do with a Nintendo to support it.”

Given Apple’s history with digital downloads, its low-key approach is understandable – Steve Jobs didn’t need to write any songs to provide content for iTunes’ launch, after all – yet it suggests that the company may not entirely appreciate that games are very different from the music and movie businesses, and a new platform, particularly one as eccentric as the iPhone, means thirdparties require a lot of initial guidance.

Without the likes of Brain Training and Yoshi’s Touch & Go, we may still be seeing racing games with touchscreen steering wheels and tragically literal ports of console titles cropping up on DS, rather than the lateral-thinking side-stories and nebulous lifestyle software which fits so well.

Almost every console launch in history has had a firstparty showing the way – outlining the vision for the platform, while providing a showcase for the hardware. Perhaps much of the muddle and disappointment of the current App Store line-up may be down to developers doing their research and development in public. When you combine that with Apple’s tendency towards secrecy, a picture emerges of a somewhat bewildering device with an equally bewildering submissions and review scheme.

“It’s very much a one-way street,” suggests Andy Qua, the developer of Cube Runner, one of the more popular free iPhone games. “In my experience, Apple communicates as little as possible with the outside world – and even less so to external developers, bar a few exceptions. You write your application, upload it to the iTunes store and then wait until you get the ‘available’ or ‘rejected’ email. You have no idea of how long the review process will take or what the criteria are.