Onyx Online, in development for the iPhone, is intended to be XBox Live’s little brother.

The ambitious service is the brainchild of Trism developer Steve Demeter, who hopes to add a slew of social features to iPhone games, like leaderboards, achievements, forums, and the like, that would be accessed through a similar codebase.

There’s even a contest feature, wherein Onyx-enabled games will allow players to view each other’s profiles, scores, challenge friends directly, and see what games people are playing at that moment. It could add a whole new level to the social aspect of gaming on the iPhone.

The thing is, Onxy was created more out of a sense of self-preservation amongst developers than it was for enhancement of the social aspects for people who game on the iPhone. As the App Store becomes cluttered with hundreds upon hundreds of basic quickie (sometimes less than inspired) games, Demeter told Wired recently the indie developer is in danger of being muscled out by big boys like Sega, who have the marketing budget to get their titles to the top of the heap (similar to the PC gaming world, where the indie has a tough time gaining traction).

Demeter has claimed Onyx will “save the App Store”. That remains to be seen.