Late to the iPhone, Trip Hawkins' Digital Chocolate falls in love with it
We've written about how new developers are enamored with the iPhone. But Trip Hawkins (founder of Electronic Arts) admits that his mobile game company, Digital Chocolate, was late to the iPhone.
Context & Ripple Effects
The iPhone's credibility as a games machine has been building in stages: back in July 2007 the open question was whether there would be any games for the iPhone at all, and by December 2008 coverage was noting that major titles had started arriving and the platform was maturing. Business Week framed Apple as a soon-to-be mobile gaming force in November 2008, two days before Electronic Arts — the company Trip Hawkins founded — began cutting 10 percent of its workforce.
First-order effects
- Hawkins' admission means Digital Chocolate is redirecting its mobile development effort toward the iPhone after missing the platform's first wave, competing for visibility against developers who shipped earlier.
- The move validates what the Los Angeles Times reported days earlier: the iPhone is changing the dynamics of the game software industry, pulling even veteran studio founders onto Apple's platform.
Second-order effects
- Established publishers like EA, already restructuring after its late-2008 layoffs, face pressure to treat the App Store as a core channel rather than an experiment, since a founder-caliber rival has now committed to it.
- As proven studios flood the store, discovery and pricing pressure intensify for smaller iPhone-only developers who enjoyed an early-mover window while companies like Digital Chocolate hesitated.
Third-order effects
- If founders of the industry's legacy studios keep migrating to Apple's low-friction distribution model, the structural contest shifts toward direct-to-consumer mobile delivery versus the carrier- and console-gated publishing pipeline that defined mobile games before the App Store.
- A repeatable pattern — incumbent game companies arriving late, then reorganizing around the iPhone — points to Apple accumulating leverage over which platforms game talent treats as primary.
The trend: Game industry incumbents are being pulled onto Apple's App Store one laggard at a time, turning the iPhone from a curiosity of 2007 into the platform that sets mobile gaming's terms.