With Apple’s announcement of Game Center, gaming on the iPhone has finally arrived. Game developer Aurora Feint, maker of the OpenFeint X platform, spoke to Game Rant about this exciting news.

Game Center is Apple’s official online gaming network for the iPhone. The platform will be bundled with the iPhone OS 4.0 release, coming this summer.

To gamers, Game Center doesn’t come as a surprise – some refer to it as Xbox Live for the iPhone. But for the industry, Game Center is big news for two reasons. One, Apple is finally acknowledging the market for gamers on the iPhone (and iPad and iPod touch), which grabbed 5% of all game sales in 2009. Two, Apple is establishing itself as a social media entity – remember, they changed from “Apple Computer, Inc.” to “Apple Inc” – which includes music, books, a collection of apps, and now games.

The old Apple built hardware and provided a slick OS. When Mac users wanted something – a productivity application, a game, a big monitor, a webcam, a slick keyboard – Apple let third-party developers pick up the slack. Now, Apple controls the hardware (no enhancements to the iPhone, and heck, not even a USB port with the iPad) and the software (with the app store).

Currently the iPhone OS offers no centralized platform for iPhone games. Third-party developers filled that void. Two of the larger offerings are Ngmoco’s Plus+ system, and Aurora Feint’s OpenFeint platform. When iPhone OS 4.0 is released this summer, Game Center will become that centralized platform. Will the OpenFeint and Plus+ platforms become irrelevant?

Eros Resmini, VP of Marketing for Aurora Feint, thinks Game Center is actually a boon for the company. In an interview with Game Rant he said, “Game Center is absolutely a step in the right direction. We are glad Apple stepped into the industry.” The fact of Game Center’s existence means there will be a unified base layer of players.

Resmini explained that games fall into two buckets, online games and social games. Online games share data between users – leaderboards and achievements, for example. The next generation, however, is social games, which allow interactivity between users – chat, multiplayer, and integration with other social platforms. This is one area where the OpenFeint X tools will shine; virtual goods integration is another area.

When Game Center is released, all the games on it will become online games. And those online games will be ripe for enhancement. OpenFeint X will allow developers to evolve their titles into social games. Resmini continued, “The way that social games succeed is by tuning those games live on the air. You put a game out there and you tune its economy so it monetizes better.” In a sense, Apple’s Game Center will create a huge audience for OpenFeint’s services.

The MMOG features of social games seem especially compelling. Using OpenFeint X technology, developers will be able to add multiplayer functionality that’s essentially a pre-built module. Resmini said multiplayer functionality is currently in beta, but will be released as part of the OpenFeint X SDK in mid-2010. Imagine being a developer who could bundle in multiplayer with hardly any effort!

One remaining question is how deeply Apple wants to become involved in the social games space. Admittedly, Game Center is a late addition to Apple’s app store. Does Apple intend to create its own offering like OpenFeint X? At least in Aurora Feint’s case, they’re not putting all their eggs in one basket: a plan to go cross-platform on the Android OS was announced earlier this year. But if companies like like Aurora Feint have created what might be called the next-generation Game Center, it might make more sense for Apple to simply acquire one of these companies.

Who can know the whims of Apple? “Trying to read Apple’s mind is an interesting exercise in futility,” Resmini said. No matter the outcome though, it’s clear that games have arrived on the iPhone. For gamers, the world is only going to get better.

Are you psyched about Game Center?