Apple iPhone applications on the App Store went from 500 to over 15,000 in the first six months. And the Apple iPhone has become the handheld console of choice for casual game developers and consumers.

So what’s the catch? With so many iPhone games to choose from, Apple’s iPhone honcho Eric Jue has admitted “it’s a little bit harder to find” the good ones. Understatement alert. Does Apple have a plan to fix it? Find out after the jump.

“We’re all learning as we march down this road together,” Eric Jue, Apple iPhone Worldwide Product Marketing, told Pocket Gamer. “With 15,000 apps out there, it is a little bit harder to find applications.”

Overall, Jue says the best apps rise to the top and we’re inclined to agree: we even highlighted the fact in our guide to making a profitable iPhone app, but as Pocket Gamer and Kotaku both point out that with so many iPhone games to choose from, what is missing from the iPhone’s App Store is filtering to pick out the best – a better user-ratings system, recommendation technology, tiers by price, genre etc.

Apple is already using several strategies to highlight new iPhone games as they come onto the store, although Kotaku points out that the system is easily fooled by developers – who simply alter the description or any other minor detail on old Apple iPhone games to make it look like they’re new.

But Jue does hold out the possibility that Apple will use a variant on their Genius music recommendation software built into iTunes: “It’s a good idea. We already do it for music, so it’s certainly possible to do.”

There has already been talk of Apple offering a premium games store to cut through the clutter already piling up in the App Store.

Elsewhere in the interview, Jue talks about the future of Apple iPhone gaming as possibly involving community features, like Xbox Live. And about the iPhone’s GPS and camera functionality as opening possibilities for location-based gaming: “you could do a Dungeons & Dragons type thing on the city streets.” Location-based gaming has been touted as a potential killer mobile gaming app since the days of the Gizmondo. But does it appeal to you? Answers on a postcard please. Along with your favourite iPhone games…

Out now | from free with contract (from £342 Pay & Go) | Apple iPhone

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  • Anonymous Merchant

    If you’d ever used the App Store you’d know full well that you can browse the top 50 games.

  • http://www.gravatar.com Simon Munk

    Fair point, well made AM. I don’t own an iPhone. So I was relying there on Kotaku, who normally are very accurate at this kind of stuff. Sadly, they have let me down this time. Yup, there is a Top 50 browsable. But with so many games and so little way of differentiating them, other than browsing individual user reviews or searching out mobile review sites, the main problem does stand.

  • Mike

    Even if you can see the top 50 games on the App store is doesn’t mean that you aren’t missing out on a game which may be higher priced so doesn’t sell as many units. There have been some improvements to the App store but something like a premium store is needed to sort out the really good apps from the ‘wobble’ type apps that are not worth having.

  • D9

    My most recent favorite game is iDracula, a RPG with decent graphics and good game play, all for a $1! It’s a game that uses the iPhone accelerometer to navigate and engage. I’m not big on these types of games, but I’ve become enthralled…what do you have to lose but $1?!!

  • loki

    you must look at mmtrg to find the best games on iphone.

  • TashaG

    What’s really starting to hurt the app store games is the complete lack of real organization. They let the Developers decide what category their game goes into, which leads to this mess of games that are completely miscagegorized. It makes finding the right game down right difficult if not impossible.

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