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You had an existing relationship with Apple, because you had games on iTunes already. Did that make it easier to transition into proper iPhone development stuff?
DR: Apple's pretty compartmentalized, so in some sense it probably made it easier, but we weren't really at a particular advantage with any of the iPhone stuff. As everybody knows, they're obsessively secretive and careful about that. Internally, PopCap had a bunch of ex-Apple people who were running the ranks here, and I still don't think we had any more of an advantage.
But we do have a soft spot for Apple, so we committed to the iPod stuff. We did start on that one really early. We did start on that one. It's been great. That's been good for us, but it was a lot of work, to do the iPod stuff.
JV: And we had the first iPhone game -- the browser-based game -- with Bejeweled. We just kind of whipped it out because we thought it would be cool.
DR: That wasn't because of a special relationship with Apple.
JV: Yeah. It was funny, though, because our special relationship with Apple is that... I think Bejeweled is now on every single... you go to apple.com and go to the iPhone page, you will see pictures of Bejeweled. It's completely ubiquitous in their marketing.
At some point, someone said, "Ooh, that little gem game looks interesting. We're going to put it out and market it."
Click on the link below to read the full Q&ADR: Apple's pretty compartmentalized, so in some sense it probably made it easier, but we weren't really at a particular advantage with any of the iPhone stuff. As everybody knows, they're obsessively secretive and careful about that. Internally, PopCap had a bunch of ex-Apple people who were running the ranks here, and I still don't think we had any more of an advantage.
But we do have a soft spot for Apple, so we committed to the iPod stuff. We did start on that one really early. We did start on that one. It's been great. That's been good for us, but it was a lot of work, to do the iPod stuff.
JV: And we had the first iPhone game -- the browser-based game -- with Bejeweled. We just kind of whipped it out because we thought it would be cool.
DR: That wasn't because of a special relationship with Apple.
JV: Yeah. It was funny, though, because our special relationship with Apple is that... I think Bejeweled is now on every single... you go to apple.com and go to the iPhone page, you will see pictures of Bejeweled. It's completely ubiquitous in their marketing.
At some point, someone said, "Ooh, that little gem game looks interesting. We're going to put it out and market it."
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