'Sides, most of the better apps in the app store use hand drawn looking, stylized sprites. (especially in the RPG end).

And you won't need a 3GS to play some of the ported classics from the Dos era or old consoles, which are some of the best things out there.

This keeps them price competitive, increasing their consumer base, which in term increasing developer support, which, again, helps increase the consumer base. And at about the half way mark of the life cycle (so about 2.5 years in) they start to develop the true next gen successor, but they don't release it until the 5 years or so are done, because historically at that time the increases of the consumer base start to slow down, but also because they can repeat the cycle with the new hardware, which, because it would have been designed 2 years or so BEFORE release, will have fallen in manufacturing costs by time of release. And again, from day one, Nintendo makes money off of hardware because they keep costs down.

Apple could learn from that sort of thing, IMHO.

A lot of what iPhone users hated about the iPhone have been solved via software (namely, OS 3.0). Hell, a lot of iPhone owners don't even have any idea of the CPU/GPU upgrade in 3Gs. And Apple's costs have risen on the manufacturing side. And they're still supporting the older model by selling it at $99…so expect the 3G to keep increasing in sales.

It would be better, business wise, if they had simply concentrated on 3G for another year or so, and THEN release 3Gs. But that's only my opinion, of course. There's a lot to be said for the longer life cycles employed by the Nintendo's of the world.

Anyway, the video game home console and portable game system markets operate on ~5 year life cycles for a product BEFORE a new, true next gen successor is released to market. Contrast that with 3Gs. It's been two years. But, yet again, that just shows how the iPhone/touch is NOT a portable game system in competition with DS or PSP, but a mobile platform in competition with the Nokia's, Androids, BREWs, and Windows Mobile (which will come to include ZuneHD) of the world.

The majority of iPhone owners (and iTouch owners) do NOT buy games. There's a sizable minority that do, but they are not the majority of the userbase. This minority is large enough to where game apps are the single largest individual percentage of sales in the App Store…but even then game apps themselves do not make up the majority of app sales…only a sizable minority percentage.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it has been suggested in reports that the consumer base of App Store gamers is actually made up a larger number of iPod touch owners than iPhone owners. So there's a larger contingent of game consumers who own iTouch devices than iPhone devices (possibly due to the former skewing younger than the latter).

As such is the case, focusing primarily or even, as is the case, exclusively on 3Gs owners with all new, exclusive developments may be a foolhardy venture. Granted, you'll have that userbase to yourself…but it's not that sizable a base considering a small percentage of that base is made up of game consumers.

There are various good reasons for the ~5 year life cycle employed by video game home console and portable game system manufacturers (MS, Nintendo, and Sony with the former, Nintendo and Sony with the latter). One is to maximize the userbase as much as possible, the other to extend the revenue generation from the technology (as manufacturing prices fall, etc.). For devs, it allows them to maximize as much as possible hardware that is "set" for a half decade or so, therefore concentrating more on game design and less on tech (as they become comfortable with hardware, they get more out of it, so they focus less on that and more on simply designing games).

Contrast that with PC development, and, now, mobile development. The drastic changeover in tech in PCs year in year out has led to more devs going with the more stable home console dev paradigm, and as far as mobile is concerned, the bi-yearly changeover to wholly upgraded true next gen specs goes against the sort of business model employed in other sectors that has proved quite lucrative.

What I'm getting at is this: Apple probably would've been better served waiting a year or so to add in the new CPU and GPU and doubling the RAM. That said, once the 3Gs based touch hits, I'm in line to buy one.