I like you, iPhone, just not your effect.

This week saw the raising of a worrying question: is there a shift taking place in portable gaming that will drive core gamers away from the hand held platforms?

Those of you who stick firmly by Windows or Linux probably didn't notice anything beyond perhaps an iTunes update, but it's been quite an exciting few days in the Apple world. The company voted "most likely to cause a generation of damaged hearing" held a special media event to reveal their intentions for the future of the iPod and iPhone range. During his remarks to the gathered press, co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs described their phenomenally popular products as legitimate contenders for the portable gaming throne.

Speaking at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Mr Jobs made reference to the growing library of games available for the iPod Touch and iPhone, which now totals over 20,000 titles, and described the iPod Touch in particular as a dedicated gaming platform.

The DS and PSP's games collections were held up for comparison. The DS now counts more than three and half thousand releases, while the PSP lags behind with just over six hundred. The implication, it seems, is that these "rival" devices are cast into shadow by the App Store's incredible cornucopia.

I don't think I'm going to stir up much controversy by saying "rubbish". I'm by no means an Apple fangirl, but my primary work machine is a Mac and suits my purposes very well, and our household would probably grind to an unhappy halt if the iPhones were removed, so I don't think I'm having a biased anti-Apple reaction when I say that in their present state, the iPod Touch and iPhone are no closer to dominating the core portable gaming market than free flash games are to luring PC gamers away from Steam.

Four games were demonstrated for the crowd; Assassin's Creed II, Madden NFL 10, a racing and music combination called Riddim Ribbon, and something called Nova, tellingly (and somewhat amusingly) being described by Apple-dedicated websites as Halo-like.

None of these four interesting titles looked anything like the absolute garbage filling the App Store's games' section, which I estimate to account for about 90% of that 20,000 mentioned before, and am probably being generous.

For every genuinely interesting title on the App Store that approaches the standards of a DS or PSP release, in being able to hold a gamer's interest for more than five minutes, lasting more than the aforementioned five minutes, and not being a blatant clone of an already successful game, there are at least a thousand others that do not.

Nevertheless, the comments are disturbing. While I'm tempted to laugh it off as the usual hyperbole of those with little or no contact with the games industry, I'm concerned that the backing of the format by respected developers is indicative of a growing trend, as evidenced by the DS' tendency to shovelware, and the potential for an App Store-like situation with the recently announced PSP Minis.

To repeat my initial concern: is all this part of gradual change in portable gaming that will push core gamers away from hand held platforms?