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There are now over 300,000 apps on Apple’s App Store in total, according to the latest data. The figure includes both free and paid game and non-game apps, as well as those currently inactive.

The Store crossed the milestone over the weekend and continues surging; in fact, as of press time there are 301,240 apps in total, as of Mobclix’s count: 207,063 paid apps and 94,177 free apps.

Games are the second-highest category among these in terms of volume; books account for 16.8 percent of the store, while games account for 16.6 percent, or 50,134 in total. The top five paid apps on the store, led by Cut the Rope and Angry Birds, are presently all games.

According to a report from VentureBeat, the first to notice the milestone, Apple passed the 250,000-apps mark on August 28.

But it also notes that Mobclix includes inactive apps in its total, pointing to other app counts that are a little bit different: 148apps finds there are 334,199 apps approved in total and 55,508 inactive ones versus 278,691 active apps.

For another example, AppShopper finds 335,257 approved apps, 55,282 inactive apps and 279,975 active apps. As the report points out, neither AppShopper nor 148apps counts apps released overseas.

Nonetheless, the App Store’s volume greatly outperforms Android’s; Google has said that as of last week there were 90,000 Android apps on its store.

Tags: app store, Apple, Industry News

[In this opinion piece, Gamasutra editor Kyle Orland argues that Apple's newly-revealed App Store Review Guidelines document is full of inconsistent and vague restrictions that limit app developers’ rights to free expression.]

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why Apple doesn’t just go the Android route and allow any app written by some yahoo with a developer account onto its iOS devices. Apple has an interest in guaranteeing that the apps it allows its users to download won’t be destructive, unusable, or misrepresentative of Apple or any other companies or entities.

The majority of Apple’s newly-revealed App Store Review Guidelines, which deal with these kinds of issues, are perfectly understandable.

But like so many other content reviewers before them, Apple has taken this little bit of reasonable restrictive power and extended it to unreasonable levels.

The company’s App Store Review Guidelines have the air of soundness and comprehensiveness about them, but the seven-page document is full of hypocritical, inconsistent and vague restrictions that limit App developers’ rights to free expression.

”If you want to criticize a religion, write a book.”

Let’s start right in the second paragraph of the introduction, where Apple lays out the rationale for restricting app content in the first place:

“We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app.”

While it’s awfully nice of Apple to suggest other avenues where developers might practice their religion-hating, sex-loving free expression, I don’t see why such speech is OK when it’s written or sung, but not OK when it’s made interactive.

Why would an iPhone version of a game like Bye Bye Mosques be subject to review (and likely denial) by Apple — while a book encouraging readers to blow up mosques would be theoretically allowed on their book store without review? Why can I download a Prince song about Little Nicky “masturbating to a magazine” from iTunes, but not download an interactive story app that lets me do it myself?

While Apple doesn’t explicitly say why it views apps differently than books or songs, one gets the feeling reading the Review Guidelines that it has something to do with their idea of “keeping an eye out for the kids,” as they put it. After all, children never read or listen to music, but Apple notes:

“We have lots of kids downloading lots of apps, and parental controls don’t work unless the parents set them up (many don’t).”

Even leaving aside the cross-media double-standard for a moment, here we have Apple making the incredible admission that their own parental controls have been made ineffective by an overwhelming lack of parental interest. Not just somewhat ineffective, but so completely ineffective that Apple has felt the need to take on the parental control role for themselves.

If parents really aren’t using the iOS’ parental controls enough, I can think of quite a few things Apple could have done to address this problem. They could have forced users to set up parental controls (or actively opt out of them) when they buy or upgrade an iOS device. They could have mounted one of their extremely popular ad campaigns to educate the masses about the feature. Instead, the company decided to skip the middleman and become surrogate parents for every man, woman and child with an iDevice, no matter their age or maturity level.

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Tags: app store, Apple, editorial, opinion

This week, Apple and its magical CEO Steve Jobs decided to loosen restrictions on the use of third-party development tools for App Store games and apps.

Maybe Jobs had a change of heart (he hasn’t historically favored Adobe’s tools, for instance), or maybe Federal Trade Commission pressure nudged him in this direction. Whatever the reason behind the decision, it means that the thousands of developers experienced with Adobe’s Flash development tools can now (theoretically) port their games onto the extremely popular App Store more efficiently.

For many developers, the decision could open up an entirely new, gigantic and potentially lucrative market.

But iOS and Flash game makers that Gamasutra talked to weren’t overly optimistic about the announcement. While most developers we spoke with said the move was a step in the right direction, they were also largely cautious.

App Store ‘Still Falls Short’ For Flash Devs

“There will be a hell of a lot more apps submitted, but now that there are published guidelines people are more forewarned and shouldn’t be too surprised if apps are rejected,” said Chris Harris, co-founder of Bloons creator Ninja Kiwi.

“That said, it will be even more important to stand out from a production quality standpoint. It’s likely that the best apps will continue to be coded natively for some time, although being able to choose your tools from more than one provider will encourage competition and therefore better tools will evolve,” Harris predicted. “I’m all for low barrier to entry; it’s what’s made the Flash games industry blossom. Standing out will be the key.”

Jim Greer, CEO of GameStop-owned Flash gaming community site Kongregate said that Apple’s decision to allow for other development tools “is the way that Apple’s going to continue to get the best content on their devices.”

But he also said Apple’s change “still falls short of what you can do on Android right now, because obviously the Flash player won’t play on Apple devices.” Amid the public exchange between Jobs and Adobe regarding Flash support, in May Kongregate inked a deal with Adobe to bring several dozen Flash-based browser games to Google’s Android 2.2 OS.

Despite the negative Android comparison, Greer acknowledged “the fact that our developers can take their source code and use Adobe AIR tools to package it for iPhones means that the 32,000 games that we currently have will be a lot easier for developers to re-target and re-purpose. So we’re interested in working with our developers in doing that.” Greer did not go into any further detail on Kongregate’s Flash-to-iPhone initiatives, but did hint that something along those lines was in the works.

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Tags: app store, Apple, development, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch

Apple’s decision to relax its restrictions on the use of third-party tools in the development of its apps came as welcome news to many developers — but naturally, none welcomed the news more heartily than those tool-makers themselves.

As the company explained yesterday, developers can now build games using any third-party tools they like, so long as the resulting apps do not require code downloads. Apple’s previous iPhone SDK licensing agreement prohibited games developed using Adobe’s AIR Packager from its app store (which it had initially allowed), but the brand-new change will permit them once again.

“Apple’s announcement today that it has lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines has direct implications for Adobe’s Packager for iPhone, a feature in the Flash Professional CS5 authoring tool,” said Adobe in a statement today.

Packager was specifically created for development on the iOS platform, and the company says the feature is currently available for developers to use in Flash Professional CS5. Adobe also said it will “resume development work on this feature for future releases.”

“This is great news for developers, and we’re hearing from our developer community that Packager apps are already being approved for the App Store,” said the company. “We do want to point out that Apple’s restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place,” it added, touching on an ongoing tension surrounding the two companies.

Adobe isn’t the only one particularly pleased: “At Unity we applaud this move by Apple,” said Unity CEO David Helgason in a statement. “We are all about enabling people with the best tools imaginable so they can make awesome products.” Numerous developers use Unity’s tech to build small-sized or browser-based games, and it is likely that the tech has significant opportunity on the iOS platform.

“Unity games have indeed been continuously approved throughout the last months,” Helgason points out. “However, we are very happy for all those devs who can now join the party.”

Tags: app store, Apple, flash, Industry News, unity

Apple made two key moves on Thursday by freeing up restrictions on the use of third-party development tools on its iOS mobile devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) and also making its App Store review guidelines readily available to app developers for the first time.

By being more transparent with the review guidelines, Apple hopes to help developers potentially avoid frustration that comes when a game or app is rejected after a submission.

Among those review guidelines (obtained by Gamasutra and separately posted by Engadget [PDF]), are several notes about the newly-released Game Center, a networking service that links iOS gamers together by adding community features such as matchmaking and achievements.

The Game Center guidelines are generally common sense rules designed to protect users, the hardware and Apple’s services. Games that utilize Game Center, for instance, cannot “send unsolicited messages, or [be used] for the purpose of phishing or spamming”.

They also cannot “attempt to reverse lookup, trace, relate, associate, mine, harvest, or otherwise exploit Player IDs, alias, or other information obtained through the Game Center.”

There are also a number of ground rules related to offensive material in apps and games. For example, “‘Enemies’ within the context of a game cannot solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity.”

Additionally, “realistic depictions of weapons” that encourage illegal activity could also lead to an app’s rejection, and games and apps with “excessively objectionable or crude content” may be cut, as well as apps designed “primarily [to] upset or disgust users.”

The company is vague in describing where exactly it draws the line between acceptable and objectionable content. The guidelines state, “We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’ And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.”

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Tags: app store, Apple, development, Industry News

[The following article was written by Tom Curtis and originally appeared at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra.]

The Australian government announced plans to impose classification fees on game apps in the iTunes marketplace, sparking notable resistance within the development community.

The government plans to require developers to submit their games to the Australian Classification Board before they hit the iTunes store, which would cost developers between $470 and $2040 per game.

The government requires all films and games to pass through the Classification Board before they can reach the public, and Board officials believe that they must mend the loophole that allows developers to sell smartphone apps via online marketplaces such as iTunes.

App developers have lambasted the government’s plans, saying the classification fees will discourage small teams from releasing their games in Australia altogether.

Nick Lowe, of Let’s Make Games, told the Sydney Morning Herald, “Applying the same fees for classification of mobile phone games will impose a disproportionate burden on smaller developers, who often develop games in their spare time and on a shoe-string budget.”

“It’s likely that most developers will simply choose not to release their games in Australia. This could be incredibly demoralizing, particularly for indie developers.”

Other developers argue that the blurry line between utility and game apps renders the argument for classification invalid.

Bjango founder Marc Edwards said, “It’s very difficult to define what’s an app and what’s a game. What about if a utility has some kind of game as an Easter egg? Does that mean that all of a sudden it becomes a game? And what about desktop applications? They’ve never been classified.”

Edwards also noted that the sheer number of apps on the iTunes store would place a significant burden on the Classification Board.

The Australian government issued a statement explaining that despite the ambiguities in the iTunes store, the definition of “computer game” does “not exclude games distributed or playable online or on mobile phones.”

The matter has been taken to the May Standing Committee of Attorneys-General meeting, and has been declared “out of session,” meaning officials will consider the issue sometime before November, when the next meeting for classification issues will take place.

The Australian Classification Board has imposed strict limits on the games industry in the past, by rejecting new rating systems and barring the release of violent games in the region.

Tags: app store, Apple, Industry News

Apple has added a way for users to view iPad titles on its App Store by release date, a viewing method that reveals there are presently 1,422 iPad games available.

The new feature, and the game count, was discovered by consumer weblog Kotaku. As noted in the report, users previously were forced to use the “search” feature to see games that were not chosen for Apple’s “New and Noteworthy” or “What’s Hot” categories.

Visibility has been something of a challenge for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad developers in the massively crowded and competitive App Store. And the launch of the iPad saw a further rush for App developers putting titles on the service.

The iPad sold one million units in its first month on sale, reaching the milestone twice as fast as the iPhone. Many companies who’ve found success with their iPhone games now see iPad as a unique new frontier for development, searching for ways to use the device’s upsized screen, tilt sensitivity and “living room” format for game designs that can’t be achieved on the popular iPhone.

Companies with prominence in the iPhone space, like Electronic Arts and Ngmoco, were eager to seize on the new opportunity and backed the iPad with hundreds of games at launch. Technology companies like Unity have also been quick to extend support for iPad developers.

[This news item was written by Leigh Alexander and originally appeared at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra.]

Tags: app store, Apple, Industry News, iPad

Apple has reached into the world of video game journalism to head up editorial content for the game section of its iPhone and iPad App Store, hiring longtime IGN editor Matt Casamassina for the position.

Casamassina announced on his personal weblog that today was his last day at IGN, and that he will be starting at Apple as the App Store’s global editorial games manager next month.

Extrapolating from his comments, Casamassina’s responsibilities appear to include serving as a tastemaker for the growing game-playing audience that owns Apple’s various mobile devices.

While some highlighted games are part of charts that are automatically assembled by sales figures, others such as ‘What’s Hot’ and ‘What We’re Playing’ — as well as some standalone custom-compiled App store pages — are editorial choices made by Apple staff.

“In a nutshell, I will be leading the charge for games on the App Store,” he wrote, “so whether you browse through iTunes, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, the games content you see will be handpicked and organized by me and my team.”

Casamassina’s last position at IGN was editor-at-large, but he is best known as one of the key figures behind its editorial divisions dedicated to Nintendo platforms, where he served his first 12 years out of his total 13 years with the online publication. He was originally hired when his website, N64.com, was acquired by IGN.

[This news item was written by Chris Remo and originally appeared at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra.]

Tags: app store, Apple, Industry News

Our story so far: indie developer Tommy Refenes rants about the iTunes App Store at the 2010 Game Developers Conference, calling it “the Tiger handheld game of this generation.” Days later, Refenes’s $400 joke app Zits & Giggles is removed from the App Store for unspecified reasons. Apple offers no explanation when questioned.

This week, Refenes responds with Super Meat Boy Handheld ($0.99), a Tiger-inspired take on his upcoming WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade, and PC title Super Meat Boy.

“Do you like Super Meat Boy?” Refenes asks. “Can you not wait to play it on a gaming console? Are you so much a fan that you love the brand more than the game? Do you only have a dollar? WELL SIR…YOU ARE IN LUCK.”

Described as featuring “all the branding of Super Meat Boy without a lot of the FUN,” Super Meat Boy Handheld emulates the simple LCD gameplay of Tiger’s handheld games. Two different games are included, one of which (seen above) is clearly inspired by Nintendo’s Game & Watch game Helmet.

I personally enjoy that simulated grime and scuff marks around the edges of the gameplay screen. Tiger games are always incredibly filthy whenever you encounter them at thrift stores, for some reason.

Tags: Action, app store, Apple, retro, super meat boy handheld, tommy refenes

Mac Rumors has obtained access to the App Store’s sales charts for iPad-specific applications, revealing a number of games potentially launching alongside the device’s U.S. retail debut on April 3rd.

The leaked chart shows a number of titles known to be in development — including iPad versions of Labyrinth 2 and Flight Control — in addition to previously unannounced HD versions of Cro-Mag Rally and Firemint’s Real Racing.

The chart also reveals that many iPad-optimized apps will sell for higher prices than their current iPhone and iPod Touch versions.

Potential iPad launch games discovered by Mac Rumors and App Annie include the following:

• Ammion HD ($0.99)
• Boggle iPad Test ($2.99)
• Bugdom 2 for iPad ($9.99)
• Cro-Mag Rally for iPad ($9.99)
• Enigmo Deluxe ($9.99)
• Flight Control HD ($4.99)
• Labyrinth 2 HD ($7.99)
• Manic Marble 2 for iPad ($3.99)
• Nanosaur 2 for iPad ($9.99)
• Otto Matic for iPad ($9.99)
• Piano Lesson PianoMan for iPad ($2.99)
• PuzzleManiak for iPad ($0.99)
• Real Checkers ($0.99)
• Real Racing HD ($9.99)
• Sherlock Holmes Mysteries ($2.99)
• Sparkle HD ($2.99)
• Sudoku Real Edition ($2.99)

Tags: app store, Industry News, iPad, Upcoming