I’ve been screaming about it for a while now, 2007 to be precise. But the proof is in the numbers. More game developers are working on the iPhone and soon the iPad. The DSi’s lack of support for an open SDK is particularly nonsensical, given its reliance on less expensive games for download. But, the same can really be said for any of the new platforms offering digitally downloadable games. These games, to be profitable, must be cheaper to develop than their disk based counterparts. Developers know this and yet manufacturers continue to lock their hardware away, afraid it will go to prom with the bad boy.
Even developers seem to support (and prop-up) the idea that unrestricted this creates a deluge of crap. This does make some sense, but not if you recognize the fact that in the case of Xbox Live Aracade, MS still maintains a great deal of control over what makes it into the official stream. The same could be done for the DSi, PSP and Playstation Network. They still control the means of distribution. They would simply have more people working on games for them. At the same time, the commercial companies also marketing dollars that the amateurs simply don’t. Promote your game on the iTunes App Store. This will inevitably cause it to rise above those other applications.
Closed hardware also prevents the development of open source solutions to common difficulties in the game development process. Again, further reducing the cost of making games for these platforms and increasing the likelihood that developers will embrace them. Especially in the case of the DS, which has a significant engineering learning curve, open source tools would be hugely beneficial to those developers eying the “i” part of the DS.