With third parties like Namco, Square Enix, EA, Sega, and Hudson Soft all making games for the iPod, Apple's dedicated MP3 player took great steps towards entering the video game handheld console market.

In December 2007, Apple released a classic Sega game, Sonic the Hedgehog, which was originally packaged with the Sega Genesis system in the early 1990s. In June 2007, ' SAT Prep 2008' by Kaplan was introduced as 3 separate educational games based on the subjects of writing, reading, and mathematics. In May 2007, Apple released Lost: The Video Game by Gameloft, based on the television show. Until this time, all the available games could be purchased in a package, with no discount.

Pac-Man was released, followed in April 2007 by iQuiz. In December 2006, two more games were released by EA Mobile at the same price: Royal Solitaire and Sudoku. These games were made available for purchase from the iTunes Store for US$4.99 each. Those games were Bejeweled, Cubis 2, Mahjong, Mini Golf, Pac-Man, Tetris, Texas Hold 'Em, Vortex, and Zuma. In September 2006, the iTunes Store began to offer nine additional games for purchase with the launch of iTunes 7, compatible with the fifth-generation iPod with iPod software 1.2 or later. On 23rd December 2005, CoolGorilla, a new start-up, launched a trivia game for the iPod. These games should not be confused with games for the iPod Touch, which require iOS and are only available on Apple's App Store on iTunes.

Later revisions of the iPod added three more games in addition to Brick: Parachute, Solitaire, and Music Quiz. The original iPod had the game Brick (originally invented by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak) included as an easter egg hidden feature later firmware versions added it as a menu option. An iPod click wheel game or iPod game is a video game playable on the various versions of the Apple portable media player, the iPod.

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