Games are one area of the iPhone App store that surprises me, even though they're actually the biggest category of apps available.
They're a surprise because I think the phone's touch screen is simply rubbish for playing all but the most simply controlled of games - iShoot, iDig It, Noughts and Crosses, Flight Control, Harbour Master etc. In contrast, I've bought and played a couple of racing games, flying games, Wolfenstein Classic... even the Terminator Salvation platform game, and have felt that those games have really suffered from the poor options available with the iPhone's on-screen displays.
Modern consoles - from PSP to XBOX 360, have a d-pad, an analogue d-pad (or two), shoulder buttons, double shoulder buttons, and four further action buttons. At least. The iPhone struggles with even a quarter of that, yet sophisticated (in the complex sense) games need sophisticated controls, and the iPhone can't deliver.
This is why something like the iJoypad needs to happen. Check the video below for the pad in use with the Sony PSX/PS1 emulator and Wipeout XL. Awesome. But at the moment that game on an iPhone would require all sorts of terrible controls and tilting or shaking that don't work.
A snap-on peripheral would open the floodgates for gaming on the iPhone, and would simultaneously destroy, or rather completely and utterly decimate, the Sony PSP. (The iPhone's processing power already completely trashes the PSP, it just needs a decent graphics chip, which is highly probable in a future version.)
If Apple is serious about gaming on the iPhone, then please, please, please design and release something like this.
[engadget]
