Growth in the Popularity of iPhone Game Development

Due in large part to the success of Apple's iPhone software platform, mobile support shot up to 25 percent of developers, nearly doubling last year's 12 percent. Of these mobile developers, nearly three quarters of that group are targeting iPhone and iPod touch development, a number more than twice the reported support for traditional handhelds like Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.

The survey was conducted with a sample size of 814 users of Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra, and attendees of the Game Developers Conference, and can be projected to the overall game development community with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.

Meanwhile, the choices of development platform showed relative stability. Just over 70 percent of developers said they were developing at least one game for PC or Mac (including browser and social games), rising slightly from last year, with 41 percent working in consoles. Within that latter group, Xbox 360 was the most popular system with 69 percent of console developers targeting it, followed by 61 percent for PlayStation 3.

While those figures stayed within a few percent of last year's results, the change in Wii adoption was much more significant: reported developer support for the system dropped from 42 percent to 30 percent of console developers, suggesting a recent softening of the Wii market.