DS Effects offers 85 free iPhone games via its HTML5 portal

It's ironic that while Steve Jobs doesn't want the App Store to be filled up by free Flash games, his enthusiasm for the new web standard HTML5 will enable something that's likely to annoy him a lot more.

As demonstrated for the first time by Italian distributor DS Effects, games coded in HTML5 can be played on your iDevice's browser without any requirement to go through Apple approvals or the App Store.

In fact, you can even download a shortcut icon for each game to your home screen so you can play them exactly as you would play an App Store delivered app.

To be honest, the 85 games currently available via DS Effects aren't anything to get too excited about.

However, US studio Brainium has made an HTML5 demo version of its iPhone game Hand of Greed which plays exactly the same as the app, so as there's no reason that simple puzzle or arcade games couldn't be delivered in the this manner.

We'll also be fascinated to see whether the big Flash gaming sites such as Miniclip and Kongregate decide to launch HMTL5 portals of their own - something that would provide dozens of great, free games without any need to go through the App Store.

You can find DS Effects portal at www.dseffects.com/iphone.php