How Apple conquered games

The jury might still be out on whether anyone can really make a long-term business model out of App Store sales. And, yes, ‘discoverability’ remains an issue for some, driving developers big and small to game the charts with free or cheap apps that dominate the best seller lists.

But whatever criticism you might make of it, no one can deny that in just a year the App Store has made some fundamental changes to the traditional business model in the games industry – and even put the emerging digital distribution channels to shame.

Thousands upon thousands of apps; millions of phones sold; billions of downloads – we thought it was only right to look back at how Apple so quickly carved a key space for itself in the minds of games developers and the mobile market…