While Apple's ubiquitous iPod dominates the music download space, its presence in the realm of gaming is fairly minimal. With games like Ms. Pac-Man, Sudoku, Musika, The Sims Bowling and The Sims Pool, the portable music and video player is slowly starting to build up a library. And now that library has further expanded with one of the most recognizable video game icons of the last 15 years: Sonic the Hedgehog. The Sonic franchise has sold more than 45 million copies since it debuted in 1991.

Sega of America revealed today that the old Sega Genesis classic will be available for download from the iTunes store, effective immediately. For $4.99, iPod owners can either purchase it for themselves or as a gift (click "gift this game") for a fellow iPod user. Sonic the Hedgehog has apparently been redesigned specifically for the iPod and will see international release, available on the 22 iTunes stores around the world.

GameDaily BIZ was curious about Sega's sudden interest in iPod, so we got on the phone with Simon Jeffery, President and COO at Sega of America.

BIZ: Do you have any evidence that shows people are actively playing games on the iPod?

Simon Jeffery: We don't have hard scientific numbers, but we know from our discussions with Apple that it's one of the fastest growing parts of the iTunes opportunity. They're incredibly excited and optimistic about the future of gaming on iTunes and it is an area they want to develop even though they're still adamant about keeping down the number of games that are available at any one time. It's kind of an exclusive club and we're pretty happy to be in it with Sonic the Hedgehog. As for what the sales performance or sales performance might be, at this point we have no idea. It's going to be interesting to watch.

I don't think we've actually ever been in a situation like this. Normally with another hardware platform... there's at least history to go back and look at. With the iPod, we have no idea at all.

BIZ: Do you get the sense that Apple really does want to pursue gaming on the iPod or iPhone a lot more in the future?

SJ: It's really hard to say. Apple's an incredibly secretive organization; they've been compared to NASA in a lot of ways. But we know certainly from the people we've been working with that they're very excited about the potential of gaming on the iPod. And I guess you could say that this is more than just an experiment because they have had enough success with the games so far to keep moving it forward and keep new ideas coming, and bring games like Sonic to the iPod audience globally. So you got to believe there's some desire there to be part of the gaming movement right now.

BIZ: Interesting. That's not the sense I had when I spoke with id's John Carmack recently. He said that the iPod made for a horrible development environment and that Apple didn't seem very interested in games.

Hedgehogs love Apples

SJ: Yeah, I read your interview with John. That was interesting. Certainly from our perspective, we've found that Apple's been a great partner. It's a closed environment architecturally, so a development kit is needed in order to build the content. But Apple's engineers are gaming specific engineers that we've been working with, and they're there for a reason. We're actually pretty happy the way things have gone and the way discussions have gone with Apple on the gaming front. We don't feel that this is just a toe in the water... to just cover themselves because there's so much media attention about gaming. It's way more than that.

BIZ: In terms of redesigning Sonic so it plays smoothly on iPod, what was that process like?

SJ: It actually took quite a lot longer than we were anticipating. I think the chief reason for that is we wanted to make sure the interface was really right. We looked at the existing games on iPod, and because of the game that Sonic is – it's very different from anything else on iPod – user interface is absolutely key. We looked at a whole bunch of different mechanisms and rejected a bunch, and actually in the [final product] you've got a choice. There are two different controls mechanisms. The default is two hands, two thumbs, playing it in the way that you play it with a traditional Genesis controller. And then for gaming on the go, there's a mode where you can just play with a single thumb, using the scroll wheels to scroll up and down to control Sonic.

That took quite a while to get right, and we felt it was very important to get it right. While a lot of people are going to buy Sonic on iTunes because they love the game, they love the character and they love the nostalgia of it, there's also going to be a huge potential audience who aren't really familiar with Sonic the Hedgehog - they've almost certainly heard of Sonic but probably haven't played the game.

BIZ: Do you see this release as a sort of gateway to bring more classics to the iPod? Have you talked about that with Apple, or does it depend on how well Sonic sells?

SJ: We've got a great ongoing relationship with them, and we do want to see how this goes, but we'd love to keep working with them. It is a closed platform, and as we talked about there's only a small, select number of publishers and games that have been invited into the exclusive iTunes club. We'd like it to continue if everything goes well.

BIZ: And if you can continue, would it be simply for more Sega classics or some original IP created for iPod?

SJ: It's not easy to answer that because there isn't actually an answer at the moment. It's kind of conjecture. It's no secret that at Sega we're very proud of our heritage and our classic IPs, but we're also really interested in exploring new platforms, new ideas and original, creative approaches to building games on them. So that's very appealing as well.

BIZ: Lastly, is it your hope that Sonic on iTunes will spark some iPod players to play Sega's games on consoles, or are those two very different crowds?

SJ: We really hope people will buy it because it's an iconic character that they know and they're familiar with, and $4.99 is definitely an impulse price purchase on iTunes. And so we really hope the people will get some introduction into the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise... and then check it out for other systems.

BIZ: Thanks, Simon.