MANILA, Philippines – The Apple iPhone is the next big target for video game developer Anino Games.

The company, one of the oldest firms to get into the game development business in the Philippines, already has one game that became a top 10 most downloaded game in the Apple App Store.

In an interview, Anino Games CEO Niel Dagondon said their Turbo Subs game was their first foray into the iPhone platform that also became its first success.

Turbo Subs was published for the iPhone by I-play, a division of Oberon Media.

Turbo Subs is essentially a time management game wherein players have to feed guests in sandwich shops around New York City. It follows the same concept as the popular online casual game Diner Dash.

Dagondon said the company already has two other games that it is developing for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

He attributes the device’s success as a game platform to its touch screen sensitivity. Likewise, the iPhone’s operating system allows developers to create just one "build" of an application that will run on all iPhones.

“The iPhone is a great platform to develop for. It has moderate graphical and processing capabilities. Having touch screen input is somethine everyone can use,” Dagondon said.

On other mobile phones video game and software developers have to create separate builds of the same program to run on different mobile phones, even if they are running on the same operating system.

By reducing the time to build different versions of the same game, game developers can focus on creating various games for a single platform. He also said it is cheaper working on the iPhone since applications can be downloaded from a central source, the Apple App Store.

“Our developers were able to be up and running only after three days of research. To develop for the iPhone platform, we only needed a Macintosh computer and an iPhone,” Dagondon said.

But the ease of developing for the iPhone is also its biggest challenge, according to Dagondon. Many applications developers churn out thousands of applications and the volume of content vying for user attention is greater.

Currently, there are about 70,000 applications available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.