Here comes a flood of iPad games

For all the talk about the Apple iPad as a cool e-book reader, it is appropriate to remind everyone that the most popular apps among the 150,000 apps in the AppStore are games. I would wager that games are going to be the most popular app on the iPad, which has the big screen to do gaming right.
Game developers are making the same bet, and today, a day before the iPad launches, the companies are able to take the wraps off their games. There are too many to write about in detail. (IGN lists 55 iPad games here). But it’s fun to see the strategy behind it all and to guess whether the pattern that played out on the iPhone will happen again.
Apple took the wraps off of about 2,000 iPad apps today on the AppStore, according to Flurry, a mobile analytics firm. Flurry said last night that iPad apps accounted for 22 percent of all new mobile project starts in the past 60 days. About two weeks ago, Flurry estimated that 44 percent of all new iPad apps were games (below).
Those who launched games quickly on the iPhone and iPod Touch saw a big pay off. Tapulous, for instance, stole a march on Activision Blizzard, the world’s biggest independent game maker and the owner of the Guitar Hero franchise, by creating Tap Tap Revenge, a Guitar Hero-like screen tapping app that became the No. 1 music game on the iPhone and turned the company into an iPhone software powerhouse.
While the iPhone game market is still tiny compared to the console game market, traditional game companies and big brands moving into the space will have a tough time dislodging Tapulous in music. Bart Decrem, chief executive of Palo Alto, Calif.,-based Tapulous, likes it that way and that’s why he’s going all out on the iPad. Today, the company is launching its Tap Tap Radiation music game designed exclusively for the iPad.
It’s a new kind of Tap Tap game, with lots more action across a bigger screen. You tap to the rhythm of a song and can choose from eight titles at the outset. You can install the app for free and pay to download extras such as new songs. Decrem said that his team pondered its options for two weeks after the iPad was announced in January. Then his team did a sprint to create a brand new game, designed exclusively for the iPhone, over six weeks. The graphics are a step up since the iPad has a faster processor and a bigger display. But Decrem adds, “The battleground has moved on from just providing AAA (outstanding) graphics. Now the games have to be more social in a group setting. It’s still exciting to see.”
Decrem isn’t worried that his app will get lost among a sea of new iPad games. That’s the life he’s been living for the last couple of years and Tapulous has proven itself to be a Darwinian survivor with tens of millions of downloads. He believes the iPad will sell five million units and play out over time. But it’s important to get an early start because there will be so many more believers this time who will try to position themselves on the ground floor.
Electronic Arts, one of the giants of the video game industry, has also believed in getting a good pole position on new Apple devices. EA has posted five new games in the AppStore for the iPad, in addition to a ton of older iPhone games that can be played on the iPad. The titles are Need For Speed SHIFT, TETRIS, SCRABBLE, Command & Conquer Red Alert and the iPad exclusive, Mirror’s Edge.
The company showed off its Need for Speed Shift for iPad game at Apple’s iPad announcement. It will be interesting to see how polished the game is now. Back then, there was some blurriness to the imagery on a big screen. But EA has been working hard on tailoring the titles to the iPad itself. While EA can easily crank out lots of games, the fact that it has some big franchises ready for the launch shows that it is a strong believer still. It is interesting to see that EA has priced its games pretty high, from $7.99 to $14.99 for the iPad games. I’ll be interested to see what happens with average prices on the iPad.
Warner Bros., which recently launched a Harry Potter game on the iPhone, has readied a bunch of movies for the iPad. But the film company’s game unit, Warner Bros. Interactive, has also launched Sherlock Holmes: Mysteries, a new game for the iPad.
Meanwhile, it is interesting to see some newcomers arrive. Big Fish Games is one of the titans of the casual downloadable games market. In that business, Big Fish Games runs a site where games can be downloaded for around $7. The iPhone has put pressure on that market, knocking down game prices to 99 cents or free. Big Fish Games is showing it is adapting to the new reality. The company is launching Amazon: Hidden Expedition for iPad (pictured left), a game where users search for hidden objects as they explore.
Among the more ambitious efforts is Aurora Feint 3 (pictured right).  This game is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online game where you can purchase virtual goods and you can expect to receive regular game updates. It will be the first game to tap into OpenFeint X platform, which equips games with features that make them more social. So far, OpenFeint has more than 1,500 iPhone games using its platform, with a total of 18 million users.
Jason Citron, chief executive of Aurora Feint, said that the game is a multi-chapter MMO and it is the first to integrate core components of OpenFeint X, which was announced in Feburary. The goal of OpenFeint X is to create a social network around OpenFeint games that makes the games more viral and easier to monetize. The hope is to make iPhone games as social as Facebook games, which have been much more lucrative for developers.
Companies: electronic arts, Tapulous