certainly shaken up the ecosystem for developers on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

We pinged our friends at Appy Entertainment to get their views on how they thought the shake up would affect their business.

Paul O'Connor, Appy's brand director, took up the challenge.

Pocket Gamer: What's your reaction to the iPhone 4.0 SDK announcement?

Paul O'Connor: We were hoping for details and a release date for the next generation of iPhones, but we'll just have to keep waiting along with everyone else.

The OS upgrade look like Apple will improve the user experience on the iPhone and it addresses some longstanding issues. We will certainly be supporting the new OS from day one.

How will the Game Center change things?

The Game Center announcement was a surprise but I think it's a wise move for Apple. Tying together Game Center data with iTunes info will let Apple put together an even more complete profile of its customers.

It's probably a hard day for the guys over at OpenFeint though, which is a shame because they've a very good platform and have been excellent partners for us. We will continue to use OpenFeint in our games for now, but like every other developer we'll have to see what Apple offers with this new Game Center.

Having all that stuff work out-of-the-box as part of the SDK is going to be very compelling for developers.

Do you think the iAds will change things in terms of the viability of ad-funded games?

It's still too early to tell, but this is an area where any change or consolidation would be welcome. We spend a lot of time tweaking our ad systems and if Apple can create a single standard that works better for everyone, then we would certainly jump on it.

We're not especially great fans of ads in our apps - we've thought of our Lite apps primarily as a means of letting players try our full games before they buy. But ad revenue has become an increasingly important part of our business and if Apple can make this world even better for us, then bring it on.

IPhone 4.0 SDK marks further fragmentation of the iDevice platform. At what point do you think this becomes significant?

We've been in a fragmented environment for some time. FaceFighter and Appy Newz leverage iPhone's camera, but there's no camera on the iPod touch. Our Bluetooth multiplayer for FaceFighter requires iPhone 3G/3GS or a second generation iPod touch.

Many of iPod touch players haven't updated their OS because they don't want to pay for it. Tune Runner uses the player's music library to make game levels, but not everyone has a lot of music on their phones. And we just released an iPad version of FaceFighter that has its own unique peculiarities.

So sure, OS 4.0 will introduce another level of exceptions and interface adjustments that we will have to make as we try to serve the largest possible player base. It's nothing new - PC game makers have had to deal with this stuff for years. But it's just a cost of doing business on cutting edge hardware. We'll be fine.