Game Developer Research has published its 2009/10 survey of video game developers, and the results are pretty impressive for the still relatively fledgling iPhone platform: The number of developers who are working on mobile games increased by 12 percent, and there are actually twice as many developers working on iPhone games as are working on the Nintendo DS and Sony's PSP handheld consoles.

That's a pretty amazing number, though it's not quite a surprise when you consider it. First of all, Nintendo DS and PSP publishing takes a much larger investment than Apple's $100 developer fee and an SDK download. Second, while the DS and the PSP are certainly selling a lot of games, they're not actually releasing nearly as many as the hundreds of thousands of apps on the App Store. Finally, new DS and PSP games sell for $30 or $40, while new App Store games sell much closer to 99 cents. So the fact that there are lots more people moving to the much more open and accessible platform isn't really that surprising.

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Yes, PopCap is at it again -- this time, their crazy addictive (just like all of their games) take on the tower defense genre, Plants vs. Zombies, is headed off to the iPhone. They just tweeted confirmation a little while ago, and released this trailer showing all of the flower vs. undead action that we enjoyed so much in the other versions of the game, squeezed into the smaller screen of the iPhone.

They don't mention a price point, but I'm guessing it'll come out at $4.99, since that's what most of their releases have debuted at (though if you're patient, it'll probably drop down in price after a while). I'll tell you that yes, if you've never played it, the game is more than worth $5, but even if you don't believe me, you can go play it online for free and see what you think. PopCap is the master of dropping colorful graphics, sparkling gameplay, and constant little rewards on your plate, so PvZ on the iPhone will probably be yet another meal you won't want to stop eating.

If the iPhone has a leading app genre, aside from gaming, I'd say the current surge of "check-in" apps is probably it. Sure, back when the App Store first opened up, Twitter apps were everywhere (and they're still being made daily, it seems), but in terms of a genre that can only exist on a location-aware device like the iPhone, "check-in" apps like Foursquare, Gowalla, and so on, are making their mark right now. Here's news on two such apps continuing to grow on the App Store skyline.

First up, Loopt [iTunes link] has announced a partnership with a company called Mobile Spinach to start trying to monetize this kind of app usage. Mobile Spinach delivers local ads, and Loopt says that it'll be using their location-based social networking service to bring specials and deals to users from wherever they check-in from. Note that while Apple doesn't necessarily want location-based advertising as the sole purpose of an app, it seems to be all right with location-based advertising as an extra feature like this. Loopt tells us at TUAW that it's a great deal for the company, as it is "an easier and cost-effective way to do online/mobile advertising," and that it means "Loopt users can get great free offers on everyday things they want in need just by walking around in the neighborhood." It'll be interesting to see just how useful this extra advertising can be.

After the link below, read about how MyTown finally got the success they'd been hoping for.

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Back during the earnings call a few weeks ago, it was mentioned that Apple has a jaw-dropping almost $40 billion just sitting around in cash. In the chat, we started talking about other companies that might have that much money in the hopper -- Google came up, but I don't think we were able to guess another one. But it turns out Apple isn't even the most flush company out there, and the name of the first might surprise you: According to this chart on Silicon Alley Insider, Microsoft is currently sitting on just slightly more money than even Apple, with Google and Intel coming close behind; although Apple briefly pulled ahead of MS at the end of 2008, the Redmond Revenue Racers had more cash through most of '09 than Apple did.

Well how 'bout that. Of course, the current curves are not so favorable to Microsoft (after the Win7 update push slows down a bit) so it may not be long before Apple's pile grows even bigger. We can probably look for some significant acquisitions from all of these companies very soon -- with the rest of the economy down and lots of interesting ideas looking to sell, odds are we'll see some of this money spent on worthy purchases.

[via Cult of Mac]

Jailbreakers ahoy! Yesterday brought the release of the Dev Team's pwnage tool for jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones equipped with the new 3.1.3 firmware. As usual, though, there are a few catches: first, if you don't need to update to 3.1.3, the dev team says you shouldn't bother anyway -- it doesn't do much that the old versions of the firmware doesn't, so if you don't need to upgrade, just leave your jailbreak as is.

3G and 3GS users especially should be leery of this one, since if a mistake is made, there's a chance you could upgrade your firmware and then not be able to unlock it again. They also have all sorts of other warnings and exceptions on their blog post. As they say, don't download and run those files without seriously thinking about what you're doing with your iPhone.

If, after all of that thinking, you decide it is time to crack open your iPhone with the 3.1.3 firmware, the jailbreak will put together a custom 3.1.3 IPSW for you to restore back on to your iPhone -- here's a quick how-to to start with. Good luck, and be careful out there!

[via Engadget]

Amazon has run into more trouble with its pricing -- after Macmillan and HarperCollins, a third company has pressured the online book retailer to raise prices on their Kindle eBooks. This time it's the Hachette Book Group, and their CEO in an internal memo says that the company will switch to an "agency model" for eBook sales.

What's an agency model? Why, it's the 70%/30% split between platform and content provider currently used in the App Store, and the same model that's planned to be used in iBooks on the iPad. And it's important to note that this is exactly what Jobs said would happen -- that publishers would move away from Amazon when they had another system to go with.

What we don't yet know is where prices will end up on the iPad -- Jobs said that prices would be "the same," and it's looking more and more like the $9.99 bestseller price is going to be abandoned for $14.99 or even higher. But that's only because Amazon is fighting shadows with the iPad right now. If they can actually woo some content back to their side when the iPad actually releases, we may see prices get a little more competitive. Until then, the iPad hasn't even come out and it's already shaking up the ebook industry completely.

This video of Woz talking about the "revolutionary" idea of putting color into computers is amazing. It sounds like an LSD trip -- he says he was awake for four days in a row, plunged into some sort of television screenglow madness, and somehow emerged from this zeroes-and-ones induced frenzy with a cheap way to create color screens (which we presume eventually found its way in the Apple II).

This is why Woz is really the preeminent geek for our times -- he's done some brilliant things with computers, really helped revolutionize the industry, and invented from scratch some of the most amazing things in this already amazing age, and when asked how he did it, he doesn't credit his own intellect or any personal insight. He says he stayed up for four days, and "sometimes, you're not sure if it's going to work because it didn't follow all of the methodology, all of the science that's in the books... but in this case it did." That is quintessential Woz -- way before marketing types put together the "Think Different" slogan, this guy was living it.

[via Cult of Mac]

For all of the back and forth about the iPad over the last week, only a handful of people (including Stephen Colbert) have gotten to actually touch one. Fox News, of all the outlets out there, posted a pretty clean and objective hands-on with the iPad earlier this week, and you can get a pretty good idea of what it's like to actually hold the device in your hands from them. They say that it works well -- the keyboard is about the same as an iPhone keyboard (though they don't say whether they try the hunt-and-peck of the iPhone, or actually try to lay their hands down as if on a laptop), and they agree to what we've heard elsewhere: that while the iPad is a nice computer, it's much more of an iPhone extension than a full laptop or even desktop replacement.

One of the most interesting notes is that the much-discussed camera might not be the biggest omission from Apple's tablet -- Fox says that an SD slot or a USB port is a much bigger exception, meaning that if you want to actually do anything with files (view photos or print PDFs) from the iPad, you'll have to transfer them to and from another computer first. Of course Apple is introducing an SD addon with the device, and I thought that I'd heard the Bluetooth connection would print from the iPad, but then of course you've got to have a Bluetooth-enabled printer, and as you already know if you've ever depended on Bluetooth, even then it may be a crapshoot.

Still, the device sounds about like what we all predicted a tablet would be: a MacBook Air sort of satellite extension to your household web browsing and minor computing. I still can't wait to get my hands on one -- hopefully we'll get to see a unit in person at next week's Macworld.

[via MacDailyNews]

Apple's excited about mobile advertising (and it certainly seems like they're setting up a plan for local ads), but to devs, they say, "not so much." Apparently they've sent out a message that says location services should only be used to provide "beneficial information," not targeted advertising. Any apps that include ads targeted to where you and your iPhone are will be rejected posthaste, says Apple.

There's a few things going on here -- Mobile Entertainment wonders just what "beneficial information" means. Certainly apps like Foursquare and MyTown provide business information based on your iPhone's location, and Foursquare especially is working on local deals with places that you've checked-in to -- is that considered advertising?

And a few developers, including our friend Craig Hockenberry (MacNN messed up Chock's name in their post) say that Apple wants location-based ads for themselves. Kind of a jerk move by Apple, but if that's where the money is, I guess you can't blame them.