PopCap’s Stein: ‘iPad has the potential to kick-start a whole new wave of creative innovation’

PopCap’s Andrew Stein has been speaking to Gamezebo about Apple’s new iPad device, and on the whole seems to be pretty optimistic about its latent gaming potential.

“The iPad looks like an amazing piece of technology,” he gushes. “We’re very excited to start playing around with it… having a much bigger, high-resolution screen does get us thinking about the new experiences we could create that just aren’t possible on the much smaller iPhone screen.”

Stein reveals that although his company doesn’t actually have any iPads to play around with as yet, it's working with development software and is already actively investigating what kind of titles will be possible on the new hardware.

Naturally, one of the biggest questions regarding PopCap’s involvement with the machine is whether or not the firm will choose to mine its incredibly lucrative back-catalogue for potential iPad releases.

The strategy has paid dividends on the iPhone, where PopCap has launched games like Peggle and Plants vs Zombies to astonishing critical and commercial acclaim, long after they originally made their respective debuts on the PC.

“There's absolutely the possibility of existing games being re-released for the iPad; this doesn't mean they'll be showing up tomorrow, however,” reveals Stein.

“We tend to take longer than most game makers in bringing our games to new platforms, but when they do show up we like to think they're as optimized and customized for the platform in question as they can be,” he continues.

He goes on to explain some of the various issues surrounding touch-screen development: “We’ve already spent huge amounts of time adapting our games to be great touch experiences on the iPhone - this isn't necessarily an easy task as we have to take into account things like the fact that flesh isn't transparent so we need to account for fingers that might be blocking part of the screen - so we think the iPad gives us a bigger, more powerful canvas to experiment and explore new ideas.”

All in all, Stein seems incredibly positive about the iPad’s gaming future, which bodes well for Apple when you consider that many critics have been quick to brand it nothing more than an oversized iPhone.

“As a consumer, the iPad has the potential to kickstart a whole new wave of creative innovation similar to the wave kicked off by the launch of the App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch,” he says.

“Apple is definitely entering a market segment where there hasn’t been a clearly successful product yet - whether this is because previous products just haven’t met customer’s needs very well or because consumers aren’t interested in that type of device is not clear, but if any company can create a new market with a tablet-like product, it’s definitely Apple.”