After a rather unsuccessful port to the DS, the first title in the Myst series is making another go at a new generation of gamers. The game’s developer Cyan has covertly announced that a small team is working on porting the point-and-click adventure title to the iPhone. It’s a very small team, consisting of only three people. Apparently the project is receiving outside funding however, which begs the question of ‘who’? It could certainly be Apple, given that every popular app that comes out for the iPhone pushes its potential further, especially since they’re trying to break into the handheld gaming market with the high quality visuals and touch-screen technology.

Between DRM, digital encoding, crackdowns on piracy and every copy protection procedure and technique out there it seems like every company under the sun is doing what they can to make sure nobody gets money for nothing. Unfortunately this can often get in the way of innovation or true entrepreneurship. Microsoft has officially stopped distribution of all Xbox Live-related iPhone apps. Why you ask? Are they worried about Apple getting some business leg-up on them? Not getting paid enough for it? Wanting sole control of Xbox Live integrated apps? Actually it’s a bit more unusual. Microsoft is insisting that all Xbox Live iPhone apps be made available to users free of charge. It’s hard to say what the ultimate goal of this little business strategy is, but you can be sure it’s not coming from some deeply-buried corporate generosity.

The capabilities of multimedia phones such as the iPhone and the Instinct have elevated the possibilities of cellphone gaming beyond the simplistic gameplay and poor quality graphics they’ve been restricted to for some time. The question of course is will this catch on? Monkey Ball says yes, it certainly can. A port of an existing title that sells for a mere $10 has pulled in $3 million with over 300,000 sales.

While a good portion of these sales might be attributed to the heavy ad campaign Apple ran to promote its application store and Monkey Ball’s headlining on many of those ads as a sort of ‘launch title’, it certainly shows potential for an industry here. It might not be able to rival the DS but it certainly says that plenty of people would be willing to play games on their iPhone, especially given the rise of ‘casual gaming’.

With the launch of the 3G iPhone along with the new 2.0 firmware update comes the App Store, featuring an array of different applications (and games in this case) that can be downloaded and installed onto the iPhone or iPod Touch wirelessly.

Well, EA’s hoppin’ on the bandwagon, recently announcing their full lineup of games you can expect to see at the App Store’s launch.

While we already knew that we would see a handheld version of Spore come September, EA has also announced that they will be adding SCRABBLE, Sodoku, and Tetris to their App Store lineup.

This news may not sound that exciting but remember, these games are to launch on a portable device and some could argue games like Tetris and Sodoku are the best games to play on those long train rides, or during those oh-so-exciting lectures.