Since I first bought an iPhone 3G and started downloading games for it, I’ve been of the opinion that iOS is the greatest gaming platform I’ve experienced. Having grown up during the 1980s, videogaming for me is at its most exciting when it’s about fun and novelty. Due to low barriers to entry for developers and low-risk for consumers (through iOS games costing way less than those for other platforms), iOS utterly succeeds in providing a gaming environment totally at odds with the mundane, pedestrian, focus-grouped-to-death output that plagues most other platforms.

Apple makes it hard to love sometimes, though. It’s too easy to lose (or be forced to lose) game progress, and Apple’s now decided to drop Game Center support from the second-generation iPod touch and iPhone 3G. I think that decision beggars belief, and it could have grave consequences for developer uptake and iOS grabbing more marketshare at the expense of Nintendo and Sony.

More on this in my TechRadar piece Game Center for iOS bombshell shows Apple still doesn’t get gaming.