Less than two weeks ago, Neil Young said he was leaving Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS), and this week, Newsweek and others are reporting that he’s popping up at San Francisco-based ngmoco, which is short for “Next-Generation Mobile Company” (we are partial to the name because it also has “moco” in it). The big concept is that it will create games specifically for the iPhone. On a more granular level, Young said that means: “I want customers to feel like there’s somebody out there that’s building games, that’s financing games, that’s helping games get made that take advantage of what the device does really well, and gets beyond porting a PSP game or a DS game...The iPhone is a unique device, right? It has a camera in it. It will be a 3G phone. It will have GPS. It has a touch screen. It has accelerometers. It’s got good graphics performance. It’s got all your media on there. My instinct is, the type of games that will make people want to buy more iPhones or more devices of that class are the types of things that really showcase the capabilities and bring what we know as game designers together with what Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has delivered as a platform to create compelling and exciting new experiences.”

VentureBeat reports that Young was one of the rock star game development executives who was responsible for top-selling games, such as The Lord of the Rings titles to “The Sims 2.” He was also an executive in charge of EA’s most important upcoming title, “Spore,” which also included an iPhone game. Young, who is 38-years-old, is not naming his backers or co-founders. Most recently, he was running the Blueprint Group at EA, which included EA’s Maxis division, the Spore franchise and the relationship with Steven Spielberg. The Maxis group will now be headed by Lucy Bradshaw, and Blueprint will be run by EA executive Louis Castle. Young, who will continue to be an EA advisor said: “It’s bittersweet...I’m so excited about what we are doing. On the other hand, I’m stepping away from 11 years of history and a whole bunch of friendships. Sometimes you have to step out.”