Choosing an iOS game engine

Hi,

I'm planning on making an iPad game, so I was looking around for an engine to use. I looked through a whole lot of engines, tried a bunch and selected three. If you are looking to do some development yourself, read this and you'll know what engine is perfect for you.
All engines in this post have the ability to compile for iOS, though they all can also publish to other platforms. I'm here to select one for an iPad game, but you might find the perfect one for an other platform too.

Cocos2D for iPhone

As the name suggest this one is for 2D games. It's really powerful and uses Objective-C as a programming language so it's the only truly native engine. Objective-C isn't easy though, so this engine is probably for people who already know some programming. It can make apps for both iPhone and iPad (and Mac too if you're interested in that.)

Cocos2D is for (experienced) programmers who want to make iPhone or iPad apps.

PhoneGap

This is another 2D engine. The big difference though, is that it doesn't make native apps. It uses HTML5 and Javascript to make the app. Thanks to this you'll be able to make iPhone and iPad apps, but also play your game in the browser, on android and pretty much anything else. Javascript is really easy so if you just want to make awesome games without having to learn a complex programming language, this is for you.

PhoneGap is for anyone who wants to make games, with or without programming knowledge. It's absolutely perfect for people with web development knowledge, since you'll be able to use the language you already know.

Unity 3D

Unity is awesome, it's definitely the best free 3D engine out there. You can program in c#, java and boo, all are easy so you can select the one you already know or just select the one that looks coolest. Unity is free to use for desktop and browser apps, though will cost you a bit when you want to publish to iOS. You can always make and try out your game on your pc and then later buy the iOS license. I have worked a lot in Unity and it's just really fun to make game in it.

Unity is for anyone who wants to make 3D games for any platform.

I hope this post saved you the time looking for an engine and that you now know which one you'll be using.

Update: Another great option might be Haxe. I wrote a new post about this and Dart, might also be a good option if you're making iOS games: http://anoddcupoftea.blogspot.be/2012/09/web-apps-without-javascript.html

Update: I added one to the list, Sparrow. http://anoddcupoftea.blogspot.be/2012/11/choosing-ios-engine-update-sparrow.html

Have fun making games!