The majority of comments I’ve seen related to iPhone gaming is the lack of physical gamepad controls. True the iPhone does not have physical gamepad controls, but the accel/touch based controls should not be underestimated, they have great potential for certain game genres.

OS X Reality has posted up a their take on the whole iPhone Gaming thing:

No one controller type fits all game genres, take PC vs consoles for example. Console gamers can argue all they want, but a gamepad will never give you the level of precision a mouse will for RTS or FPS gaming. Case in point, in Shadowrun they had to nerf the PC gamers to keep the playing field even between Xbox and PC players, this is exactly why developers do not like mixing console with PC gamers, even though technically there is no reason they can’t, its really just a matter of fairness.

On the flip side, a keyboard will never give a gamer the level of control needed for racing/flight/fighting games. Imagine for a moment if you were racing around a track with a variety of turns that range from light bends to sharp turns, with a gamepad joystick you could adjust your turns easily by moving the joystick less or more in the direction of the turn, with a keyboard there is no middle ground, either you are doing a full turn or no turn at all, the closest you could get to adjusting your turn with a keyboard is by tapping the turn key, sounds fun doesn’t it?

Read OS X Reatlity: iPhone Gaming: Play to your Strengths