This Could Be The First Officially Licensed Video Game Controller For The iPhone 5

The iPhone is already one of the largest gaming platforms on the market — the App Store makes it easy for developers to get their titles to customers and iPhone owners spend a significant amount of time on the device gaming.

One thing has been holding back the platform from drawing in the big-name games that lead people to purchase dedicated handheld game consoles like the Nintendo 3DS and the Sony PlayStation Vita: the lack of dedicated controls.

While touchscreen controls work for many titles, they simply aren't accurate or versatile enough for the range of titles that can be found on other platforms. That's why Apple decided to build third-party controller support directly into the new version of iOS.

This means that companies like Logitech can build controllers based on Apple's specifications and game developers can expect their games to work with them without coding in controls for specific controllers.

Thanks to Kotaku, we now have an example of what one of these controllers will look like (pictured above).

Since the Apple TV also runs iOS and uses similar internal hardware as the iPhone and iPad, some have speculated that Apple building controller support into its software means that when they do open up the platform to app developers, it will support games using these same controllers.

Imagine playing a game on your iPhone and then continuing it when you get home on your Apple TV. Pretty neat.