I'm at E3 in Los Angeles all week for TUAW's sister site Joystiq, and this afternoon we got to see the Electronic Arts press conference at the Orpheum Theater. Among bigger EA games like Spore and Dead Space, Travis Boatman (who has graced these pages before talking about mobile games on the iPhone) of EA's mobile games division came out on stage to talk about iPhone gaming. He said that obviously there is "a lot of interest" around mobile gaming lately, especially around the iPhone, and that EA is committed to capitalizing on that interest.

They premiered three games in the App Store at launch (Sudoku, Tetris, and Scrabble), and Boatman pointed out that they've tried to innovate in all three -- Tetris features a unique piece-drawing system, and Spore (full name: Spore Origins, a mini version of the bacteria stage of the game, complete with a creature creator) will use the accelerometer to control its creatures. Additionally, EA wants WiFi to be a big part of their games on the iPhone -- they're planning on releasing a patch to the Scrabble game that will allow people to play together online.

Finally, Boatman hinted that they were aiming to do a lot more with the iPhone's processing power -- they plan ports of Tiger Woods and Need for Speed on the iPhone. As Mac gaming fans, EA isn't exactly our favorite game developer, but getting big developers behind real innovation on the iPhone will help lift the tides of the software in the App Store.

Magnetism Studios, the guys behind Insanely Great Tees, have just launched four iPhone apps, which they are dubbing "Magnet Apps."

Two of the apps are $4.99 and two are $2.99.

Here are the details:

Tile Sudoku ($4.99)

Sudoku is a popular puzzle game choice for iPhone devs, but Tile Sudoku has a neat little twist. Instead of selecting a number from a list, you drag numbered tiles to the correct space on the Sudoku grid. If you make a mistake, you can move the tile to the correct space or back to the tile bar. I haven't used any of the Sudoku iPhone apps yet (I have played some of the web-based versions), but this seems to make a lot of ergonomic sense.

You can buy it from the App Store here.

Mr. Shuffle ($2.99)

It's Mr. Potato Head on the iPhone! Mr. Shuffle lets you create funny faces out of cartoon parts. You can then add speech bubbles or captions to customize the images further. While all that is cool, the most fun part is probably the feature that lets you add elements to pictures you take of your friends from the iPhone camera.

You can buy it from the App Store here.

City Transit ($2.99)

Everytime I visit New York City, I dread having to carry around a transit map guide like a tourist. And even then, you never really know where the closest station is to your location or if there has been some sort of service change. City Transit aims to change all that. For $2.99, you get officially licensed MTA subway maps, a GPS-based station finder to find the nearest station (and it is integrated with Maps so you can get walking directions too) and service advisories from the MTA website, so that you know can quickly out about any line changes.

Magnetism has designed City Transit to have an expandable architecture and in the future you should be able to download maps for buses and commuter rail lines. This really looks like the perfect app for anyone who commutes to NYC.

You can buy it from the App Store here.

File Magnet ($4.99)

File Magnet, which right now will only work in conjunction with Macs running Leopard, is a way to transfer files to and from your Mac from your iPhone or iPod Touch over Wi-Fi and then view them. It supports PDF, DOC, TXT, RTF, RTFD, HTML, PNG, TIF, JPEG. GIF and iPhone compatible movies and audio files. Support for Excel and iWork files is coming soon. So instead of having to e-mail yourself PDF files, you can just load the File Magnet Uploader on your Mac and send it directly to your iPhone.

It does require Wi-Fi to transfer files back and forth, and is not compatible with Windows.

You can buy it from the App Store here.

touchArcade has a quick look up at Ambrosia's new version of the old Sudoku game for the iPhone, coming soo to an App Store near you. It looks like Sudoku to us -- there's numbers, squares, and entering one in the other with the touchscreen to fill out the puzzle. Yup, seems like if you want to play Sudoku, you'll be able to do it. Not a lot of extra flair, especially for $10 (there is a free version already on the web), but we'd guess it's not really needed in this case.

And Ambrosia is also working on a version of Mahjong, called Aki Mahjong Mobile for the iPhone. They don't have video of that that we've seen, but work, they say, is progressing steadily towards an App Store launch.

In terms of innovation, there's not a lot to find in these two games but every new game platform needs a few standbys to fill out the library (we'll almost certainly see Pac Man and Frogger clones in the App Store at launch, not to mention that we'll have to see a good poker game as well), and it looks like Ambrosia's ready to fill the quota for these two traditional games.

A few weeks ago, PopCap released Bejeweled for iPhone. Today, Freeverse follows their lead, releasing iPhone Sudoku. The game brings the same great Big Bang interface you've come to expect and love. Sol is this game's host, with all his fire-filled glory. The game is relatively easy to play, although I find the buttons a little small in portrait mode and the screen needs continual scrolling in landscape mode. That aside, a big thank you to Freeverse/Big Bang for this nice gift.