The good news is that EA has released Rock Band for the iPhone and iPod touch, and you can pick it up from the App Store right now. The bad news is that it seems like a pretty tough sell -- despite the relatively high price tag (Tap Tap Revenge 3, a similar music game, is currently 99 cents and headed for free), there's not much new here.

Sure, there is four-device Bluetooth multiplayer, and that's something that Tapulous' game has never had. But other than that, it seems like this is basically EA's cash in on the tapping concept -- the draw of Rock Band has been getting together with your friends and jamming out the hits on those fake instruments, and touching a button-less screen by yourself doesn't have the same effect. Singing is included, but you're still just tapping out notes for that -- it seems like they missed a lot of potential fun there. And even some of the fun things from the console version like the drum fills for overdrive and the character avatars are missing here.

If you don't like the 20 songs included with the game, you can download others at 50 cents (in two-song packs for a buck each), but most people probably shouldn't even bother at that price -- just stick with Tapulous' game unless you really love Rock Band and its aesthetics (even then, I haven't seen my much-beloved Harmonix mentioned anywhere with this port, so I doubt they're even involved. Update: They are listed on the game's splash screen, however, according to our readers).

Even if you want to try this one, wait for the inevitable price drop -- if the game really lived up to its name as the premiere music experience you'll find on the consoles, it might be worth it, but all indications are, unfortunately, that it doesn't.

What's it going to take for us to get developers to release games for Apple products earlier than two years after the fact? The iPhone, apparently -- EA has announced that their soccer flagship FIFA 10 will be available for the iPhone this Friday, which is the same day the console game shows up in stores as well. The game will have everything the full versions have, including real teams and leagues, a licensed soundtrack, and all of the usual soccer standbys. One thing missing: online multiplayer, though local wifi multiplayer will be available.

Sounds good to us, especially if you're a fan of the sport all those crazy Europeans call football. The app should be $9.99, befitting of a premium EA sports app, though there will probably be a sale on it sooner or later. Now, about that actual Mac version...

Jeremy Laws at Cabana Mobile has an interesting little analysis up about mobile gaming that claims it may not be as big as it's cracked up to be. Laws says there's no way the mobile gaming market can hold up $5.4 billion, as was reported earlier this year by Juniper Research. Laws looks at the top 10 companies releasing mobile games (at retail -- that will become important in a minute), and claims that even if those companies make up 70% of total mobile games, the total amount of mobile game sales only comes up near $1.7 billion, far short of the Juniper number.

So where's the discrepancy? It's almost certain to lie in the App Store, where Juniper says growth more than made up for the dropoff of sales in other areas, like Java-based games. Laws does list companies like EA Mobile and Gameloft, whose games are selling on the App Store, but almost all of Laws' companies are old-school mobile developers, who created games for mobile phones before the App Store was ever open for business. Plus, his "retail" mention might mean the App Store isn't included in his calculations at all -- can you call the App Store "retail"? In fact, if any mobile games marketplace is going to make up over $3 billion in the mobile games market, it's got to be the App Store, right?

So this means a couple of different things: one, the App Store very well could be remaking the face of mobile gaming, to the point where old-school numbers are just plain insufficient to compare to modern App Store sales. Second, if there is a bubble, it'll likely be in the App Store: another recent report says that if you spend more than $40k on a 99 cent game, you're losing money. Laws may be underestimating the long tail of the App Store -- certainly no single developer has pulled in billions, but there are a lot of developers out there. Still, at the same time, $5.4 billion does seem high. And if games companies are convinced there's gold in the App Store hills, that's where the bubble will eventually burst.

Macworld has news out of CES that EA's mobile division president has good and bad news about the iPhone and gaming. The good news is that the iPhone is a terrific device -- but then again, you already knew that. But the bad news is that Apple's handling everything all wrong. By leaving out the actual distribution platform for gaming on the iPhone, Travis Boatman says that while Apple could be doing great things with games on the iPhone, they're actually hurting mobile gaming by delaying or refusing to turn the iPhone into a gaming platform.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Apple is sitting on a goldmine in terms of games on the iPhone (well, they're sitting on a lot of goldmines with the iPhone, but this is another). With multitouch, the tilt monitor, the microphone, the networking capabilities, and the camera, this is a device that Nintendo would dream about building (their DS has half the features and it's selling like it prints money). It's the greatest handheld gaming device ever made. And yet because Apple has been so stingy with the SDK, there's not one official native game on it.

Not to mention that the "distribution platform" Boatman is talking about is iTunes -- there's no better way to get your games sold and out there. Hopefully, we'll see progress on this as soon as MacWorld (and as late as February, when the iPhone SDK is set to be officially released). But Boatman is right: the iPhone begs to have some great gaming experiences on it, and Apple, so far, is just not opening the door.