iPhone 'Freaking Out' Sony and Nintendo, claims Trip Hawkins

Trip Hawkins, the original founder of Electronic Arts and now mobile gaming company Digital Chocolate, has heaped a ton of praise on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch platforms. Speaking with VentureBeat, he called the iPhone a "pleasant surprise," expressing that Digital Chocolate "had no idea it was going to be as good for us as it turned out to be." His company has launched five iPhone games since December and four of them have hit No. 1.

Hawkins continued, noting that the success of the platform has to be scaring handheld makers Nintendo and Sony: "It's by far our most effective platform. We make as much money with these games on one device as we do putting a game on 100 different cell phone platforms. Between the iPod Touch and the iPhone, I think the platform is freaking out Sony and Nintendo. Apple has sold 30 million units so far and it has created tremendous awareness. It has taken ground all over the world. But it has only penetrated one half of one percent of its total market."

Hawkins has also observed an interesting trend on the iPhone: licensed games don't typically sell that well. It's all about original content. "We notice that brands don't do that well on the iPhone, nor do generic games like poker or bowling. A lot of brands aren't going to cut it. I'd expect that original titles that are built for the platform will become the new brands on the iPhone. It's like the birth of the web. People thought Disney and NBC would dominate the web. That didn't turn out to be true. It's a new medium dominated by new brands," he said.

Former EA man Neil Young has been a huge evangelist for iPhone and his company ngmoco has fared quite well, but Hawkins doesn't believe ngmoco has the upper-hand just because they're devoted to iPhone gaming. He feels Digital Chocolate is far more agile as a company: "They may have a hard time scaling up. We have cross-platform agility. We've got games that have proven successful on a variety of platforms," he noted. "Few software companies have shown that agility, being successful on more than one major platform. We can take the games to social networks or mobile phones or put it on the web as a casual game. Technologically, we can do that without starting over on the game. We have studios worldwide and so we can make games at lower costs. They're starting from scratch on technology and costs. Omni gamers will expect that any platform they have will have the content they want or the content they have already paid for."