Mirroring the acclaim received from developers at the recent Casual Games Forum, Apple has stated that its iPod Touch represents the future of portable gaming, whilst competitors such as the DS and PSP represent the past.

Speaking to T3, Apple’s VP of iPod and iPhone product marketing Greg Joswiak stated: “If you squint your eyes you can see a future where you say it’s amazing the things you’ll see as far as gameplay, and we know from working with these developers and the things they tell us they’re working on, especially original content ideas, I think they’re going to blow everyone away.

“The computer power and the 3D graphic power of the iPod Touch is significantly greater than what you have here [picks up Nintendo DS]. So this allows people to do significantly higher quality games. And the Touch is always in your pocket, whereas you can’t always carry some other games consoles.

“To us, the Touch really seems this is the future of gameplay. Whereas a lot of these devices [Nintendo DS and Sony PSP] are more in the past.”

Keep a look out for ME sister magazine MCV on Friday, which will carry an extensive interview with Greg Joswiak.