It looks like the iPhone could be the beast to bring back the stagnant mobile game market.  EA Games executive, Neil Young, announced that he would be leaving the company to head Ngmoco, the newest mobile games startup to hit the scene.  Young believes that the iPhone has put the mobile game market in a position to reinvent the experiences and economics of the mobile games business.  To be even more specific  Young was quoted as saying,

We are finally at the place where we can reinvent the experiences and the economics of the mobile games business.” Young adds that the mobile gaming industry “has been stagnant for a few years. I feel the iPhone is a real opportunity to change that industry.’”

For those not familiar with Neil Young, his rise to fame at Electronics Arts started as the development executive for millions of titles including “Lord of the Rings”, “Sims 2″ and “Spore”.  After “Spore”, Young left EA Games to start Ngmoco and now the focus of the company has shifted entirely around iPhone gaming.  The plan for Ngmoco is to push the iPhone as a gaming platform and redefine the industry through the iPhone 3G and the App Store.

While Young is very optomistic for the future of mobile gaming and the iPhone, the iPhone will not be the lone savior in rejuvenating the mobile gaming market.  Young and Ngmoco are also looking into the possibility of using Google’s Android OS as another possible gaming platform worth developing, but they are waiting for an official release.  Currently developers are being forced to rewrite large portions of their code as the OS is constantly being updated which is making the viability of the platform difficult to gauge.

[Via VentureBeat]

Tagged as: ea games, neil young, Ngmoco