The 4 things gamers need to know about Apple's Rock 'n' Roll keynote

Though today's Apple 'rock 'n' roll' themed keynote was meant to address a number of improvements on its musical fronts -- from DVD-menu-like interactive album art now available in iTunes, to the new models of video/camera-added traditional iPods -- the company still had a number of games-related announcements up the sleeves of the newly returned Steve Jobs (event images borrowed from GDGT's excellent live coverage):

1.) Apple is finally making improvements to the iPhone/App Store experience with 'top grossing' lists, PC-based App arranging

The new version 9 iTunes and iPhone OS 3.1, now available -- alongside the updated iTunes store experience -- bring with them a number of new ways to sort and catalog your iPhone Apps, chief amongst them (for me, anyway, finally a way to organize your iPhone without arranging them via fiddly on-device drag and drop (the bane of my multi-multi-full-page existence).

But while the current version of iTunes 9 seems to be missing sub-categories for apps (there's no way to access the action/puzzle/etc. sections on your PC -- presumably this will be fixed soon), you can see a new top 25+ assortment of the top paid apps by gross, rather than by unit sales.

That sounds like a fine distinction, but what it means is better visibility for games and apps that don't succumb to the 99-cent siren song, which traditionally have been drowned out by higher unit sales for low-priced apps -- the hope being that as time goes on this will allow better, premium apps to fight against the tide (especially when Apple allows us to view this list in some form other than App Store-wide).

2.) Apple has begun to use Genius recommendations for apps

Apple's turned on 'Genius' recommendations for apps, as they've experimented with for a year-ish now on the music side of iTunes, available as a new list in the on-device App Store. Quick tests show that its algorithms will need some finessing over the coming months -- app preferences not being quite as tightly linked to genre/artist similarity as naturally as music preferences.

While recommendations based on Lucky Frame's beautifully illustrated sequencer Mujik turned up a decent amount of similar music apps, apps like Booyah Society or Skyvoyager -- free apps, or apps that saw hundreds of thousands of downloads over free weekends -- lead to essentially non-sequiter applications simply because they, too, have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times for free. Game recommendations don't so much lead to similar games, as much as games that might float in similar impulse-buy price ranges.

3.) Apple's not joking around about its approach to the iPhone/iPod Touch as a true handheld games contender

See, for instance, this honestly entirely mis-leading bar chart comparing available games on all platforms, which, over the next year, may not seem quite as misleading as the PSP Minis and similar indie DSiWare initiatives start to blossom for Sony and Nintendo. Comparisons that neither the DS nor the PSP had an "App Store" or an "iPod" were obviously similarly off the mark, trademark names withstanding.

But Apple's ensuring that all models across the range are up to the competitive task, adding OpenGL ES 2.0 compatibility to speed up 3D games for its iPod Touch line (bringing it up to par with the iPhone 3GS), and dropping the entry-level price for its 8-gig Touch by $50 to $199, where it hopes to sit better alongside the $169 DSi and the $249 PSP Go.

And all this leads to:

4.) Major publishers continue to see the App Store as a viable platform

The games represented at today's keynote by and large weren't the scrappy-indies-that-could: apart from Tap Tap Revolution devs Tapulous, who showed off their latest music game Riddim Ribbon (above, which sees you racing/balancing along that titular ribbon in order to keep your music playing), the invited stage guests were all big-business.

Mobile giant Gameloft showed off their new single/multiplayer first person shooter N.O.V.A., above, while Ubisoft and EA were on hand to show off Assassin's Creed and Madden '10 (the latter of which is currently live).

See Lisa's summary over at Boing Boing Gadgets for more less-games-related tech-talk on what Apple had in store.