Should Nintendo be wary of an iPhone gaming platform?

apple-iphone-3gIt’s hard to find fault in the Nintendo DS or the company’s incredible stranglehold on the handheld gaming industry, but all these iPhone dismissals from Big N execs had me thinking of what happened in the N64 era.

As a brief refresher, Nintendo arrogantly dismissed the new-at-the-time CD-ROM format as an inferior substitute for the tried-and-true cartridge. Mis-take! Sony subsequently owned them for such arrogance and it took Nintendo until the DS and Wii to regain their industry dominance.

Now we’re hearing the revamped iPhone 3G might have a 3D chip, and that Apple is quietly hiring games developers in Cupertino. The iPhone is no joke, folks, and while I don’t think it’s even remotely close to the DS or even the PSP in terms of its chops as a “serious gaming platform,” but there’s something coalescing there from Apple, that’s for sure.

The headline is a question for you guys, not Nintendo, who I am sure is far wiser about such things than me. What do you think?