At the event, Apple's Steve Jobs announced something called "Game Center" for the company's upcoming iPhone OS 4.0, and it looks an awful lot like Apple's answer to Microsoft's Xbox LIVE and Sony's PlayStation Network.

Imagine an online video games hub that fits in your pocket and follows you anywhere--not an emasculated subset of some other app (like ) but one native to the iPhone platform itself, integrated with the device's massive games library. Leaderboards, achievements, automatic matchmaking, friend invites, the whole caboodle. Now imagine that bolstered by over 50,000 games courtesy Apple's App Store, dramatically more than you'll probably ever find on the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP.

Another arrow in Apple's gaming quiver? Don't tell Nintendo.

Earlier today, Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime as a "viable profit platform for game development," adding that "[Apple] is not having an impact on Nintendo" and citing data that suggests iPhone gamers downloads apps, play them briefly, then move on to other things.

Fils-Aime is missing the point (and he's flat wrong that iPhone games 'aren't even a mouthful' when contrasted with DS games--Civilization Revolution, Final Fantasy, or SimCity anyone?). Even if it's true that iPhone gamers flit between games or don't engage in the same way kids playing Pokemon Gold or Silver on the DS do, people are still sucking down App Store apps en masse, and those apps are only getting more sophisticated.