Apple has lost its internal games man, with Graeme Devine, the man responsible for the massive growth of iOS gaming over the last few years, heading to pastures new.
Devine was also Apple's only internal games development rep, so it may seem strange that he has decided to quit the company, following the immense success of iPhone and iPod touch gaming in his tenure at Apple.
There's nothing like leaving a company on a high, on the other hand.
Devine told gaming site Kotaku: "My job there was basically to make gaming on the iOS devices fantastic.
"Basically that meant looking at the technologies involved and making sure the software played well with the hardware, to look at upcoming hardware/API and say 'Yup, that is a good thing'.
Kick Ass iOS gaming
"Apple didn't have an in-house game designer before me so I think it was pretty unique, game technologies touch everything from the graphics stack to touch latency to push notifications," Devine explained.
"No other app type covers so many technologies and having someone there to validate and help shape that was basically my day job. It was pretty kick ass."
Which still begs the question: "If your job was so 'kick ass', then why leave?"
"I wanted to get back to the actual business of making games and while I loved my time, the people, and the platform I worked on at Apple I am ultimately a game designer that wants to make games.
"When I first got an iPad I was sold on it being the ultimate piece of science fiction technology for gaming. I think it is the most interesting new technology product I've worked on in years and I really wanted to make games for it."
Fair enough. Let's just hope that the former-iOS gaming boss can come up with the next Cut The Rope or Angry Birds in 2011.
Via Kotaku
