For decades, there have been terrific games on the Mac, but they always took a back seat to the best games on specialized game PCs and dedicated game consoles. At Tuesday’s event, Apple may have shown its hand on the Next Big Thing, games, according to ReportonBusiness.

While the attention at Apple’s "Let’s Rock" event was focused on music, the iPhone and iPod touch are ushering a new era and a new platform for mobile gaming.

"By bringing established titles such as (the coming) Need for Speed and Super Monkey Ball to its platform, Apple is threatening to chip away at the lead held by Nintendo’s market-leading DS console and Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP), Matt Hartley wrote. "Video games are the early stars of Apple’s App Store - an online marketplace where iPhone and iPod Touch users can download games and other software to customize their devices."

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After the event, Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior V.P. of Worldwide Product Marketing, told Reuters in an interview that 700 of the roughly 3,000 apps in the App Store are games. That’s the largest category.

"Apple tends not to think in terms of demographics," Mr. Schiller said. "You are likely to see more people using iPod nano than a Touch in athletics. If you are a kid who plays lots of games, perhaps you would be more likely to own a Touch."

Apple’s emerging business model for games is proving to be quite different than the console games, and whether it will be successful is open to question. "The difference between Nintendo and Apple is that Apple treats content as a commodity and Nintendo treats hardware as a commodity," Billy Pidgeon, an analyst with IDC. said. "That’s why I would be skeptical about Apple’s potential as a real force in the games business. It does play against the traditional razor-razorblade model employed by the gaming industry."

However, Andrew Ayre, the CEO of the company that developed Super Monkey Ball pointed out that Apple is, in a variation of Mr. Schiller’s comment, actually targeting a new demographic, mobile games. "From a development standpoint, it’s very easy and straightforward to develop for and certainly the graphics and the features such as the touch screen and the accelerometer are pretty unique," Mr. Ayre said.

While Nintendo has sold more than 23 million DS systems and Sony has sold about 13 million PSPs, Apple’s installed base of iPod touches and iPhones could quickly eclipse both, creating a game industry that Apple may have never intentionally planned, but might end up leading to market supremacy, according to the author.