Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts, is no newcomer to the world of gaming. Yet he does admit that his company, Digital Chocolate, was late to the iPhone game. He recently sat down with Venture Beat’s Dean Takahashi, and announced that Nintendo and Sony should be “freaking out” about the iPhone.

Digital Chocolate is no stranger to mobile gaming, with releases for many other cell phones. But it wasn’t until last December that the company began releasing games for iPhone. It’s caught up, though — of the five games released since then, already four have hit number one on the top downloads list.

Hawkins credits Apple with selling more that 30 million units so far and gaining ground in a market — gaming — in which the company has not traditionally fared well. He cites the “genius” of the iPhone in the multi-touch display, which lets players directly manipulate action on the screen. “No one has duplicated it yet.”

Hawkins also notes that the iPhone’s centralized store makes viral, word-of-mouth marketing even more valuable. “You’re not going to tell your friends about a game unless it’s original and high quality.” This is certainly a problem many iPhone app developers have dealt with — with all games displayed in such close proximity to one another, its difficult to differentiate on anything except price.

(Via Kotaku.)

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