The most interesting part of this to me isn't the titanium or the camera (impressive as it looks), it's the GPU.
They made a point of saying that the GPU had been completely ground-up re-designed, and I assume they're intending to keep scaling that up over the next few iterations.
They didn't talk about it for very long, but that the phone is able to convincingly run AAA games, even at playable if not great frame-rates, is really impressive. This puts the iPhone up against devices like the Switch and Steam Deck for a lot of users. Granted, they don't have Nintendo's games, and they don't have Steam's massive back catalogue, but looking forward it does make a dedicated handheld gaming system harder to justify, or at least makes the phone easier to justify if you're not buying both.
It also makes me really interested to see where Apple is going with Apple TV and the Mac. With the game porting toolkit already announced (and the results people are already getting just using it directly to run Windows games), it seems like Apple really could eat at least some portion of the gaming market by already having a handheld (phone), console (Apple TV), and gaming PC (Mac) ready to go in the next few years.
I'm expecting the new M3 Macs next month to lean really heavily into discussing the GPU advances and (hopefully) announce a lot more support from big studios to bring more games to the Mac.
Is it though? The promise of gaming on iPhone (and mobile gaming in general) has been taken over and destroyed by freemium games whose only goal is to push microtransactions. What is a marginally better GPU going to accomplish? Help games sell me their "bundle of gems" faster?
Developers simply do not have the incentive to build any other kinds of games when the current crop of addictive shovelware is so damn profitable. The sad part is that Apple encourages this practice because it is easy money for them (via their 30% cut). The problem needs to be fixed by better quality control and transaction/gambling rules, not a faster processor.
Early mobile games were such a delight. I have fond memories of Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, Cut the Rope, Flight Control, Threes, Monument Valley, Bad Piggies...
But then predatory freemium games like Clash of Clans and newer replacements for Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies burned me out. They eliminated any desire I had to invest time or money or attention into mobile games. Popular freemium games in the App Store now bury any new gems. It's quite disappointing.
IMO this has so much to do with how Apple advertises the App Store. They were able to get people to spend some money on apps, which was a HUGE improvement over no money at all. But then, instead of managing to get people to pay higher upfront prices, they heavily supported a race to the bottom and micro transactions, which inevitably resulted in freemium games that felt like casinos.
Unfortunately that isn't just true for games but also for apps. I wish Apple had focused more on building a healthier App Store ecosystem.
They've been actively fostering the enshitiffication of the App Store. Practises like preventing paid upgrades forces developers to use micro-transactions to survive. They also aggressively change and deprecate APIs without adequate notice or documentation. This means apps require constant maintenance. So one-time purchases are much less viable for developers.
Soon we'll be able to install whichever apps we like in the EU thanks to the DMA. I think there is a hunger for alternative app stores.
Not to mention the rise of the dreaded Subscription Model. That has to be the most miserable scam ever inflicted upon software users. I’m sure a lot of developers here will disagree and quote needing a constant stream of revenue, but the same is true of any business including a Mom&Pop corner shop—and yet they survive (or don’t) on the margin they make on the products they sell, not by selling a subscription card you need to possess in order to have the privilege of shopping at their store.
>Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, Cut the Rope, Flight Control, Threes
My list of games is basically the same. I think they are legitimately rare, and we believe at the time that they are not. It's like YouTube. You find one 3blue1brown or Adam Neely and you think there are a hundred more. There aren't.
My high-score is 247,641 which is basically a 3072 and a 1536 but at that point... I don't know. I feel like my technique is lacking, it's as though there's just something I don't know that will make me better and I can't access that knowledge. Probably planning ahead for potential killing cards?
These weren't hidden gems either, these were front and center promoted links in the App Store. I'm sure it's possible to find experiences like these in modern games, but I've given up hope long ago. I don't have time to sift through the trash.
Tiny Wings and Alto's Adventure were standouts for me. Also Device 6 gave me some hope that puzzle games could be special on mobile. But that dream never materialized unfortunately.
This is a really short sighted and defeatist view on the potential of mobile gaming. Mobile gaming started before iPhones, and it will be around probably for the rest of human civilization.
There is no way 1 generation of games can "take over and destroy" the "promise of gaming" because there are no restrictions on what future innovators can do with the tools and the platforms. The existence of some bad games doesn't preclude future good games.
As an example, my favorite mobile game is Slay the Spire
Nothing will change barring a change in economics (subsidies for quality games, Apple not taking a 30% cut on microtransactions, somehow prices for good indie games going up) or a change in human nature (people seem to just play shitty games from what I see in the NYC subway).
We already have beautiful mobile games, like Monument Valley. But that's not what the market is about. The very term "mobile game" reeks of low quality at this point. I don't see it changing.
> We already have beautiful mobile games, like Monument Valley. But that's not what the market is about. The very term "mobile game" reeks of low quality at this point.
What exactly is it that you are after? It seems like you are not content simply getting the games you want, such as Monument Valley. You also need everyone else to live their life a certain way?
Why not simply conclude that the market is big enough for everyone to coexist. And as long as there's games for you, you don't have to lament other people sitting around enjoying candy crush.
> You also need everyone else to live their life a certain way?
Well, yes, I need — or rather, would prefer — all the people who are addicted to portable slot machines, to stop throwing their lives away being addicted to portable slot machines.
But I don't blame those people for that, nor do I think that trying to get them to each personally attempt to overcome their addiction would be practical.
People with gambling addictions are people with a particular cognitive vulnerability to variable-scheduled rewards. Unlike people with other addictions, who "go overboard" on something that other people can "enjoy responsibly" (and so which society has a reason to otherwise permit), people with gambling addictions are the targets of products and services produced solely to target them, that people without gambling addictions just... don't see the point of. Slot machines of all sorts exist to commercially exploit gambling addicts. And they do so very well.
That very exploitation was why the US had outlawed casinos in almost every state; why casinos are 19+ to enter, even when not serving alcohol; why "casino game" video games must be rated M; why even depictions of gambling affect the age-ratings for TV shows and movies.
But now that exploitation has leaked. It's no longer limited to casinos; it's now everywhere in the palm of your hand — and not just bare-faced as "casino games", but also in the guise of everything from shooters to RPGs, all with their own variable-scheduled rewards that can suck up unbounded amounts of your very real money.
Obviously, I blame the exploiters — the "gaming" [i.e. casino] industry, and the ex-"gaming"-industry professionals infecting the games industry with their exploitation tactics. And also, I blame society, for not punishing the exploiters, not outlawing the exploitation.
> sitting around enjoying candy crush
My dude, Candy Crush is a great, fun, classic, and ethical game compared to what they have these days. Have you looked at the mobile casual games market in the last five years? If the words "rare JPEG" don't mean anything to you, then you should really spend a few minutes looking into the people throwing away their life savings on some of these "games."
I share parent's sentiment, with a slightly different angle: we already see what good mobile games are. They're on the Switch, SteamDeck, portable emulators etc.
In comparison games that can't survive under the Nintendo rules but still need a wide platform flourish on smartphones. That's where we see the split between games that can stand without micro-transaction and dark patterns, and those that can't. Genshin has been announced to come to the Switch for years now, and I'm not holding my breath given their mechanics, while the new iPhone's GPU capabilities are straight aimed at letting Hoyo thrive.
Steam also takes 30% from the first $10 million in sales, so I'm not sure what it is about the app store that incentivizes this. The incentives are arguably identical on Steam. I think it has more to do with the nature of the device (Touch controls, people using it on their bathroom breaks, etc) than it does with any economic situations.
To be fair, steam offers a massive amount of goodies on top, including a built in mod store, tools for multiplayer, forums, and many more. I'd argue that the platform is worth at least 10% if used to it's fullest (and after a certain threshold the 30% goes down anyway — though imo it should start low for small studios)
The same cannot be said for the app store. Save from basic DRM (steam has this), leaderboards (steam has this) & achievements (steam has this), you get much less for that cut.
Plus, as a developer, you're not required to go through Steam, if you don't think it's worth it.
There are plenty of other options (Epic Games, Microsoft Store, etc.), each with a different revenue share arrangement. Or you can self-publish on your own website and infrastructure (Minecraft did this and it worked out pretty well for them).
Most developers (not all!) clearly have decided that the value Steam provides (features+audience) is worth it. But, crucially, with Steam, it's a choice. With iOS, it's not. You are forced to go through the App Store whether you like it or not (for now, at least). And if tomorrow Apple decides that 30% is not enough and they'd like a bit more, there's not much you can do about it.
(Apologies if this is not terribly relevant to the rest of the thread, but it bugs me when I see this kind of "apples to apples" comparisons between Steam and the App Store)
Even on my Steamdeck I have itch.io and other launchers installed. Granted as a consumer, cross platform cloud saves of Steam and my 19 year old catalog has a pretty strong network effect.
For me mods and multiplayer are worth more than 10%. That said, I also play multiplayer games on the AppStore, although the Game Center friends functionality isn’t as good as Steam’s.
Sure, nothing can stop shitty games from being published, but the market for shitty games existing does not mean a market for quality games does not. There’s many developers who make things like phone games as passion projects as well.
I'm sorry but console and PC games have been infinitely better since forever, giving much better products with much more limited resources for much of their existence.
Smartphones have existed for a long time now, and the games absolutely suck, except the extremely rare high quality indie game port like Papers Please or Slay the Spire.
Is Slay the Spire a mobile game or a game ported to mobile? It originally launched on PC, then consoles then mobile. It's a game that works well on mobile and on touchscreens yet that wasn't the priority...
I really wish micro transactions were made illegal in applications on the app stores…and video games in general. It encourages additive behaviour and lowers the quality of games as the purpose becomes to make the additive micro transaction aspect as addictive as possible.
If some new policy changed this, I think we’d see a whole new wave of higher quality games
Maybe we need a pornography-like definition ("I know it when I see it") but I think there is certainly a continuum from high-quality DLC / expansions to existing games (which can be basically a new game) down to crystals which allow you to instantly buy something which you'd have got anyway if you had waited.
So, consider a basic, Mario-kart like racing game - which of these are OK, and which are micro-transactions?
- buying additional courses,
- buying additional characters (drivers), vehicles, or components of vehicle (e.g. wheels, engines, bodies),
- buying permanent upgrades to your vehicle(s) (i.e. more speed, better acceleration, better handling)
- buying one-off power-ups that last for a single race, or are time-limited (+50% acceleration for 1 hour)
- buying 'cheats' - obvious play-to-win items (e.g. needing to complete 1 fewer lap than your opponent),
- buying regular game-progression; e.g. maybe 100 races/wins/hours of play are normally required to unlock all courses, but this can also be instantly purchased.
- any of the above options, but not bought directly, but rather via purchasing 'crystals' which can be exchanged for the above.
- any of the above options, but in a 'gatcha' style (i.e. loot boxes; you cannot choose which upgrade you want),
I think I'd be totally OK with the top three, maybe OK with buying permanent upgrades, and unlocking game progression (in this case), but the others are too far for me.
Some micro transactions are tolerable, some of the time, but every single one of these commercializes the product. IMO if they exist, the game should be free-to-play. Where I really get annoyed are games like Lego2K (racing game) where you pay $60 to play, and then it's also full of microtransactions (for cars, courses, cosmetics, you name it).
I think it's a different matter when it's a content-filled DLC add-on to the game. Yes, the line for that is a bit arbitrary, but the classic example would be Starcraft: Brood War (well, technically that was an expansion pack, but same idea). Adding a single additional course to a racing game blurs the line, I generally think content should be bundled so the gamer isn't constantly making financial decisions while playing.
I think all of those are micro-transactions. A nice blanket rule would be no additional payments past the initial purchase. Of course it doesn't stop a developer releasing v2/v3 etc., but it would ensure that the original application is maintained as per the promised features and service standards. Perhaps most importantly, it would reduce the incentive to build dark patterns into applications to encourage micro-transactions.
I don't see governments doing this, but I think we'll see something like this soon in the EU when we can install competing app stores.
Between terrible incentives created by Apple's cut structure, and Apple's disregard for backwards compatibility, mobile indie devs never stood a chance. Rami from Vlambeer said it well.
“You earn $3 and then you update it for the next 10 years. If you’re making free-to-play games, if you keep earning money with a game, yeah, that’s a great model because you can make more money by updating.”
Ismail pointed to Vlambeer’s “Ridiculous Fishing,” which won a number of awards from gaming publications and Apple.
“‘Ridiculous Fishing’ is never going to make more money,” he said. “Yeah, some new people might buy it, but we made our money with ‘Ridiculous Fishing’ in 2013 and that money is spent, It’s spent on ‘Luftrausers.’ It’s spent on ‘Nuclear Throne.’ If somebody upgrades their phones to the new iPhone. Yeah. You have ‘Ridiculous Fishing’ in your account, Yeah you paid $3 for it. Yeah, it’s broken.”
That’s what caused the last major update Vlambeer did for the game. A major change by Apple in 2017 that switched from 32-bit to 64-bit apps, breaking a slew of content on their phones … including “Ridiculous Fishing.”
“All games broke,” he said, “Every game that wasn’t programmed for it broke. We updated ‘Ridiculous Fishing’ then but it feels like a mistake almost. It feels like, OK it’s 2018 and this game that we made money with that somebody bought in 2013 is now broken outside of our fault. We didn’t change anything. We didn’t break the game. We didn’t introduce a bug, but this continuous ecosystem that Apple has created, that comes with you with every new phone, broke it. “
Ismail said that either Apple has to start designing for backward compatibility support on their end or that people are going to have to get used to the idea of games dying and disappearing.
“Some of the best ios games from 2010 are gone,” he said. “Those developers, they don’t exist anymore. They went out of business. They split up. They started a new thing and they just don’t have the money or time to do it.”
Well said. Apple has no incentive to improve backwards compatibility because they make more money keeping the transactions flowing. People being apple to use their applications for a long time is bad for business. Unfortunately the market hasn't punished them for this behaviour, so they keep doing it.
Apple's new gaming strategy (as of today) is ports of console games. It's not worth developing good games specifically for mobile but that's not necessary if iDevices can run console ports.
> The promise of gaming on iPhone (and mobile gaming in general) has been taken over and destroyed by freemium games whose only goal is to push microtransactions.
Wasn't that a reaction to users who refused to pay for games and just sideloaded them instead?
I can remember there being five dollar games in the early days of iOS that sold well. I can also remember developers trying games that had ads until you paid to remove them.
If piracy was really that big a problem then the entire PC gaming industry wouldn't exist. The issue really was that microtransactions were too easy on mobile, and freemium/casino-like games were simply making too much money, so no developer had the incentive to make anything else.
For me, Steam Workshop is the killer feature for a bunch of games. It's hard to beat zero-effort auto-synced modding and zero-effort mod accessibility for tech-illiterate friends.
While Steam itself certainly has DRM infrastructure, it's not required and easily bypassed. Valve allows other 3rd-party DRM solutions, but I'd argue that the built-in DRM is one of the less important aspects of steam.
Isn’t iOS already one big DRM? Probably much more effective versus piracy than something like Denuvo as well. And anyways we’ve already come to expect DRM to for any reasonably popular game to be cracked in short order.
In which case, we’d still expect PCs to be in an equivalent, if not worse state.
I can certainly remember developers of early popular games that you paid for up front saying that they tracked how many copies of their game were out there, and only a minuscule percentage of those games had been paid for,
It's far easier to pirate on PC yet we have plenty of non freemium games.
And hardest to pirate games on iOS yet theres a glut of freemium games.
On Android you'd still have to explicitly enable side loading
I don't think piracy is the issue here, the issue is on mobile devices you already have quick payments setup for very fast transactions through the app stores. It's easier to assume to assume the person using the phone authorized to make the transaction and enable lots of small transactions.
On PC it's much easier to enter my card details for each new transaction, so i never save the card in Steam etc. Doing the same on the phone is tiring, so i have my card saved.
Apple and Google also make a little money on these transactions and have less incentive to promote non freemium games.
> Wasn't that a reaction to users who refused to pay for games and just sideloaded them instead?
My impression at the time was that the supply of games in the app store was just too great, with hundreds of casual games being released every day. Thus driving down prices.
And Apple was more than happy to commoditise their complement; if 20 developers decided to clone Flappy Bird that was fine with Apple.
I'm talking about early standouts, not also rans. I think 2010's Infinity Blade pulled in two million dollars the first week, back when the user base of the devices were comparatively tiny.
People were willing to pay up front on iOS, but Android users just sideloaded, leading to Skinner box free-to-play games being the most reliable way to monetize.
Seems like an odd scapegoat. Apple themselves was promoting the iPhone with gachapon games earlier today, it's not like lootbox titles magically disappeared with good DRM. If anything, overly-strong DRM enforcement reinforces the power that lootbox-style games have over the user. It gives the developer more control over the runtime than the end-user, encouraging developers to extort the user however they can.
Sideloading makes piracy a service problem instead of a freedom one, and Apple knows their service can't compete on an unstacked deck.
Only if you expect developers and/or studios to work for no pay.
Why do you think we live in a world where you need an internet connection to play a single player game? Developers need a way to be sure you've paid up.
Valve had no problem porting thousands of games to Steam Deck without paying developers a dime. It is a proven fact that a functional DXVK/Wine runtime can support more AAA video games than whatever Apple is paying for.
You keep bringing this around to revenue, but Apple could solve this problem if they didn't benefit from the status quo. A company 10x smaller than them did it, a company with full control over their hardware stack has no excuse to drag their feet and copy Open Source's homework.
Steam is a DRM platform. Other than that I agree with everything you said.
What you’re missing is that Apple has their own proton that they’re using to help developers port their games like what Valve is doing with proton. Imo most of Apple still hates games if it didn’t bring in so much revenue. Now we have a small team trying to change that at Apple similar to how WSL for Windows came to being. I just hope that the higher ups continue to support and promote Apple’s “proton”
>they’re using to help developers port their games like what Valve is doing with proton.
Well Apple and Valve are doing exact opposite things with their tools. Let me explain.
Valve runs your windows game unmodified. There is no 'porting process' and there is no 'port'. As person working with large publisher I am still in shock and disbelief that it is legal and works well in practice but here we are. The funny part is when developer of windows version of a game is asked 'how well do you support Steam Deck?'. And developer has to do windows version changes and produce new windows version that has tweaks for Steam Deck.
Apple's Proton is just a fork of DXVK with less upstream support and a more restrictive redistribution license. The best "support" money can buy is killing Game Porting Toolkit and supporting Vulkan in-OS. They're already an underdog in the graphics API world, playing hardball with people who don't care will just end up in a lot of unported games.
Because data collection and upselling, and because advertising. Blaming the tiny minority of people who pirate for the enshittification plaguing basically all software right now is a poor excuse. Show me the numbers.
And there are a lot of games out there featuring microtransactions, but which also have Apple Arcade versions which don't have microtransactions. It's pretty great to be able to grab a game that looks fun and know that you can just sit down and play it, rather than having to tap through seven different pop-up windows trying to sell you on the battle pass, buying boosts, buying more coins, spending the coins you already have so that you'll have to buy more coins next time you need coins, three different currencies, are you sure you want to restart the level you can just keep playing for only a buck!, and so on.
Not all the conversions are good enough: there are Apple arcade games where you can feel the grind of the free-to-play mechanisms, only now there's no money involved.
One of the reasons I got Apple One, the kids can install an endless amount of decent to excellent games from there and I don't need to worry about them wasting money on them or getting predatory ads.
Sneaky Sasquatch is the hidden gem in there. It starts off simple, but it's a really cool and complex world you can explore
They are. Apple Arcade is about at the point where it has enough great games that it might be worth it. Certainly it’s well worth paying for a few months to try them all out.
Before smart phones became something for everybody, 99% of "gamers" would game on lottery tickets, casinos, slot machines and such. They are still the majority and they want their slot machines, where they don't have to think or learn to progress. Computer / video game tropes are just an aesthetic to skin a slot machine on your phone.
Some truth to this, many people playing mobile games would never have owned a laptop/PC/console. They play these games on the commute or while watching TV. A "full fledged" game and it's large upfront costs wouldn't interest them.
Yeah, exactly. They’ve been playing up how the latest iPad/iPhone/etc. is just as powerful as <some previous generation console> for years now. And I don’t doubt that. But it doesn’t do much good when barely anything approaching AAA gaming shows up on the platform. The potential is wasted on lots of garbage freemium games.
Yeah, I'm so sick of lugging a Switch and a ridiculously huge Steam Deck around when my iPhone 14 is way more powerful than either one, but all that power is wasted since there just aren't enough decent games to play
I guess the emphasis is on enough but I was pleasantly surprised to find some really good games on Apple Arcade: Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, Exit the Gungeon, Limbo, Stardew Valley, The Oregon Trail, Cityscapes. A lot more outside Apple Arcade but I prefer buying them on Steam so not much first hand experience with them.
One of the main benefits of Apple Arcade was to recognize this problem and carve out a space for games that do not suffer from these issues (while making services revenue at the same time). I think it worked pretty well. It doesn't have the AAA though.
I think there will always be a market for freemium games, because it's nice to try things without having to put money down. But I think the freemium market can co-exist with a premium game market. Like, the premium game market still exists and still is going strong, no reason it couldn't live on mobile devices also.
> But I think the freemium market can co-exist with a premium game market
Not so when all the big gaming mobile companies are assigning their top talent to building stuff like Clash of Kings. And why wouldn't they, when they can make so much more money doing so than working on a quality prestige game that no one will pay for.
> the premium game market still exists and still is going strong, no reason it couldn't live on mobile devices also.
It's actually the opposite. Mobile-style microtransactions are slowly taking over the premium PC/console gaming market.
If you look at the numbers on mobile, it makes no sense from a business perspective to create non-F2P games on this platform.
You can still make money with so-called "premium" games, that were simply normal games before Apple poisoned the well, but the potential is considerably lower.
I really, really hate the mindset that it "makes no sense" to do something that's not absolutely the most profitable course possible.
If a game developer can make a living making "premium" games, then it makes sense to do so, especially with the very real ethical problems with making free-to-play games laden with microtransactions.
Just because you would only ever choose to do what makes you the most money possible, and damn the rest of the world, that doesn't mean everyone would or should make that choice.
> If a game developer can make a living making "premium" games, then it makes sense to do so, especially with the very real ethical problems with making free-to-play games laden with microtransactions.
Most developers cannot make a living selling premium games on mobile. There have been plenty of cost breakdowns posted to HN by game developers.
Occasionally a big mega-hit can make a profit, but for the majority of developers, free is now the only viable way.
The cold hard fact is that F2P games bring in RIDICULOUS amounts of money.
I moved from doing code for industrial use and public admin as a consultant to mobile gaming.
We have one hit game and the _daily_ marketing (a.k.a. user acquisition) budget for us is an order of magnitude bigger than the biggest projects I did at my old job.
All the "ethical problems" usually are just older (usually) men in IT not understanding that people want to pay money to have fun.
Some people go to bars to relax after a work week and drop $100 gladly. Others use that for going to the movies, some go to have a nice dinner. And some people really like relaxing while playing games and they want to pay for that, because they think it's worth the price.
> All the "ethical problems" usually are just older (usually) men in IT not understanding that people want to pay money to have fun.
Fucking absurd, to be frank. Watch a GDC talk on growing mobile F2P revenue and you will be exposed to a slew of deceptive methods for psychologically manipulating players (who are often kids) into addictive spending habits, often literally through gambling mechanisms.
There definitely are predatory F2P games as there are shitty cash grabs masquerading as premium games (pay once).
But games like Diablo Immortal, Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail wouldn't keep their player base if they were just a 100% psychologically manipulative cash grabs.
AAA gacha games & Diablo Immortal clearly have quality production values, but they are also by far the most adept & deceitful at using predatory tactics pulled from behavioral psych to wring addicts out of their money.
I can't think of (offhand) even one premium game that is native to iOS, everything is or got a port.
Part of it may be the "don't want to pay upfront" but shareware knows how that goes (free first part of the game, then pay $30 for the rest or whatever).
> Developers simply do not have the incentive to build any other kinds of games when the current crop of addictive shovelware is so damn profitable.
Personally, I don’t have the incentive because 1) paid mobile gaming isn’t a big market (see: top paid apps being the exact same years-old, curated Apple apps not having many reviews/downloads), 2) there aren’t many options to develop games targeting iOS which also target Android and Windows/Linux (at least if you want to use Swift), and 3) Apple could remove my game at any notice and I don’t get 30% of the revenue.
If Apple introduces a way to easily port desktop games to iOS, or even develop entirely new games which can run on Linux and mac and iPhone, I think we’d see a lot more iOS games. Maybe the new GPU isn’t only faster but also supports Vulkan/wgpu better?
At least on a positive note: an iPhone + Dev account + some tiny controller addon can equal a great pocket emulation machine on the go. If someone can design a nice controller add on, we can ditch the Chinese pocket gameboy/switch/other extra devices you dont need.
It so absurd: We need to carry the device anyway since its a phone, it has a great GPU and there are thousands of existing great games that have been created that the device can easily run. The only problem has always been the stupidity of the code not being available to run on this device. :/
You might want to have a look at the razer kishi. Alternatively if you want a standalone controller, you might want to look at the following 8bitdo products:
- sn30 pro
- lite 2
- zero
- micro
The latter two are comically miniscule. In my opinion the sn30 pro is the sweet spot between portability and actually being able to play comfortably.
Never had much trouble finding quality phone games which don’t use this model. Some of the most popular mobile games in the world like PUBG are not like this.
Most smartphones are already faster than the Switch. The quality of games on a platform is not directly related to its technical capabilities or SDK, but to the business model and platform incentives.
Apple has fueled a race-to-the-bottom followed by an almost forced transition to f2p, and they benefited immensely in the process (30%), but I think that most gamers and indie devs are not satisfied.
It seems so immensely cynical. The latest-and-best Apple Event PR is in a car crash with the reality - from a gaming POV, the iPhone is a platform for user addiction.
I've been watching people around me and the amount of time everyone seems to spend tapping away at a phone, head down, is like something out of a dystopian movie.
The game addiction market must be worth billions to Apple. For all the environmental and other ad copy, there doesn't seem to be any concern about the mental and psychological effects of creating an ecosystem that knowingly relies on exploitative behaviour modification.
I also think the colour scheme is quite cynical. Pastel shades on the base model for the - let's say - less technically-oriented users. Strong blacks, whites, and metallics for the hard-core performance nerds who want that Pro tag.
People talk about Gen-Z having the most depressed/suicide driven people of any generation and they largely came of age after the smartphone took over.
At the same time, the advent of a professional easy to access camera in everyones pocket transformed the world: Arab spring, George Floyd, everything we are witnessing in Ukraine. Made possible thanks to the ubiquity of the same device that causes a lot of harm.
>I also think the colour scheme is quite cynical. Pastel shades on the base model for the - let's say - less technically-oriented users. Strong blacks, whites, and metallics for the hard-core performance nerds who want that Pro tag.
I think they do pastels every other year no? And a lot of people buy Pros: all the "influencers" treat it as a tool to earn income so of course they prefer the best device of them all, I dont think they are actually looking at the specs though.
I though the hard core nerds buy things like the Pixel phones or the ASUS ROG type phones?
I mean, there is a point where user agency should definitely be taken into account. For what it’s worth, apple does have good tools in this area, like measuring screen time, limiting it, parental controls. But you can’t stop people from drinking bleach either..
I remember being completely impressed by my Note 3 (10 years ago almost exactly) playing games like Dead Trigger 2 and NFS: Underground. From then on, GPU performance / graphics on these tiny displays seemed good enough for me with only minor subjective improvements.
I'll second another comment, that another big challenge is the simple lack of ergonomics on any phone.
> The quality of games on a platform is not directly related to its technical capabilities or SDK, but to the business model and platform incentives.
And also (mostly) the ergonomics.
Comparing a phone whose main purpose is definitely not gaming (at least the iPhone, I know there are some gaming-first phones) to a handheld console will always make the former look pathetic for this use-case.
The problem with touchscreen-only is that it doesn’t feel very good, and also any sort of control scheme will mean at least temporarily reducing usable area for UX since you can’t see through your hands.
I question if Apple really cares about or is serious about gaming. My impression is they use it as an excuse to showcase hardware improvements since games are happy to soak up pretty much any hardware that's thrown at it.
That seems to be where their concern for gaming stops. There is Apple Arcade, but it feels like the least amount they could do for the size of their company.
I do think they care about it over the longer-term, particularly in light Vision Pro and their overall AR strategy.
Apple is making 30%, just like all the console makers and Steam, on every single game transaction on iPhone.
What you're forgetting, and pushing aside, is that the mobile gaming market is as big as the traditional gaming market. All the phone games make as much money as all the consoles and PC gaming together. Apple, with its command of all the valuable phone customers, is pulling an estimated 14 billion dollars in 2021 in mobile gaming. So Apple is very dumb if they don't care about 14 billion in annual services revenue.
What you're thinking is that traditional gaming is big-boy gaming and where the big bucks are. The growth market is mobile gaming, with the other segments being stagnant outside of big hits. The reality is that Apple is a bigger gaming company, by revenue, than Microsoft or Sony, is controlling the growth sector, and is thinking accordingly. They have financed all on their own a new GPU generation for their phone and justified it as a need for gaming and gaming alone. Those other companies need partners, like AMD or Nvidia, to make them GPUs.
> The reality is that Apple is a bigger gaming company, by revenue, than Microsoft or Sony
The "reality" is that Apple still has to pay other studios to port games to their systems. We spent 8 tragic years watching them wheel out Tomb Raider demos each keynote as if it was a shiny new release. Larian Studios came, Blizzard Studios went, but nobody changed the tide of gaming on iPhone or Mac. The fact that Boom Beach is more profitable than dear esther is not exactly an allegorical victory for Apple.
So... here we are. A world where a $300, 20nm Nintendo Switch is a better gaming console than a shiny new $800 3nm iPhone. Apple's service revenue isn't driven by good games, so they have no incentive to build a better system. The entire iOS runtime is an antitrust meltdown waiting to happen.
So Apple's making more profit than Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony in gaming and somehow they're doing it wrong? You're right that the Mac is a horrible gaming platform. But we're talking profits here. Apple's bread is buttered on the iPhone side, and that's where Apple is looking. They're trying to get the Mac to gain steam, but it's clearly very difficult and their heart's not in it.
In the end it's a business, whoever makes the most money is the market leader. Until the government steps in. You are right that antitrust action is the most credible threat to Apple's positon in gaming. The fact the leadership at Apple has not moved an inch to satisfy governments will be Tim Cook's black mark on his tenure.
As much as I want this cesspool to die, unfortunately, parent is talking about revenue. And there I can imagine mobile market being even bigger than traditional gaming. All those shitty casinos and gacha games should rot in hell.
Based on the last two events, they increasingly invest more and more money into games. And to be honest, it absolutely makes sense — apple’s biggest competitor in many areas is themselves: people use their iphones for many many years. So it does makes sense to invest into services as well.
Gaming has a high cost of entry. Xbox posted its first profit in 2007, six years after the Xbox launch.
I would imagine that they don’t think they have much to bring to the table that would leaps and bounds get them over the current competition; their entry point would probably look like a premium Steam Deck or maybe the Vision Pro for AR gaming, but is that an Apple-sized market to sink their teeth into? Particularly when none of their other devices are traditional-gaming oriented.
AAA-like titles were previously tried at the beginning of the App Store, mostly ports of older titles. Most Indie Games would also run fine on most Smartphones, but never succeeded. Stuff that sold great on the Switch. I think the lack of "official" nice, high-quality, hasslefree Gamepad, continuing cooling-issues and especially the expectation of consumers for low prices on Apps results in the Market for "real" games on Phones remaining very small.
Apple tried to counteract it with Apple Arcade, but that hasn't worked out.
There are a few major missteps Apple made over the years that make me hesitant to buy any games on iPhone or iPad.
With my Steam catalog I can download something I bought in 2004 and still be confident I can play it. I spent $20 on Monster Hunter for iPhone and one day iOS updated and it just didn’t work anymore.
My Switch games will assumably work until the console dies.
Another reason I completely stopped buying games on iOS was when The Binding of Isaac was suddenly delisted from the App Store. I never got a refund or anything, and because of this new versions of Binding of Isaac aren’t compatible with Macs either. I have hundreds of hours played in that game and it’s ridiculous that Apple censored it as “depicting child abuse”.
I don’t know if this is still the case, but for a long time, your game would get rejected from the App Store if it required an external controller to play. And yet being able to design games around that baseline is critical for triple-A.
I’m super curious to see what they’ve done with this current–gen, mainline Assassin‘s Creed game coming to iPhone: there is no way the core gameplay of that franchise could translate to touch controls, so either Apple dropped the requirement, some poor team had the doomed project of building an abysmal fallback touch control scheme, or they implemented some kind of semi-automated scheme for touch that makes traversal and combat less interactive.
>>there is no way the core gameplay of that franchise could translate to touch controls
I mean.....millions of people play proper console games on their phones now using various streaming services and touch controls.....turns out playing games using shitty touch controls is preferable to not playing them at all I guess. So yeah, I imagine it's just a simple touch overlay, like the one used for XCloud.
> I don’t know if this is still the case, but for a long time, your game would get rejected from the App Store if it required an external controller to play.
To my knowledge you've always been allowed to provide optional game controller support, as long as you supported a touch interface too.
Just gonna throw this out there... for me, one of the main reasons I don't play games on my phone, is because it will absolutely tank the battery life.
A dedicated device has the benefit of having a sole purpose: gaming. If I kill the battery, I just can't play anymore games. I can still take calls, browse the web, and text my partner.
A power bank is easy cheap and fairly light alternative. Instead of carrying additional gaming device, I can carry a power bank instead...which is kinda useful even if I drain battery for whatever reason. If it completely dies, you'd be offline for like what 5 minutes until phone gets enough charge to boot again?
>Apple tried to counteract it with Apple Arcade, but that hasn't worked out.
I'm not really a gamer but I get Arcade as part of a bundle and it doesn't really wow me. I sometimes look at "Best of..." lists and try a few out on a plane flight and I'm mostly meh.
The bar is far more than high enough for kids. I recall being more than willing to happily spend hours playing that handheld water ring toss game that’s somehow in every dentist office.
It's hard to charge for full priced AAA-games too. There's still plenty of good ports on mobile. Games like Civ VI and Minecraft, but my friends who have a console or PC would rather buy it on mobile. Even if it was a reduced price, which Civ VI is.
Maybe even making deals to compete with emulators + pirated ROMs.
Just fantasizing a bit here... thinking of Apple-approved N64, GameCube, GBA, PSP, even PS4 emulators with licensed games for a somewhat medium to high price tag - why not?
And, speaking from experience, Nintendo definitely wouldn't be on board. As far as I'm aware, they have never authorized any kind of third-party emulation of their games; even their first-party emulators like the NES Mini or Virtual Console have always been limited-time offerings with relatively small selections of games.
Getting ROMs is legal in a lot of circumstances, either by backuping the game yourself or if you own the game but download a ROM (like https://law.stackexchange.com/a/41876)
Good luck having apple to approve a game where to do anything you have to google things, the game cannot tell you how to google and any public popular resources telling how to do it getting struck with DMCA.
It doesn't but IIRC most jailbreak methods on current devices (iPhone, PlayStation, Switch etc) were due to JIT. On PlayStation, it required escaping freebsd jail as well?
To me this is a signal of reusing the GPU innovations that were required for the Vision Pro in currently available products and then finding a martket for it (gaming)
Eh, the GPU changes with ray tracing were supposed to land last year as part of A16 but heat issues required them to pull it.
The bright side is that if you are on a yearly release cadence then you don’t let one thing slip the whole SOC (assuming, as Apple does, that you have a risk on and risk off design going simultaneously).
Your are right on that the Vision Pro will have a M3 not M2.
I already have a couple 3D videos that I’ve recorded. It’s one of the most powerful aspects of VR computing. I’m hopeful that they continue to iterate on 3d photos and video.
It’s a space that needs standardization and more big players need to be there.
If, and only if the developers include controller support. Which they largely don't, even when controllers are supported on every other platform.
Two egregious examples: The Final Fantasy Pixel Remastered series, and Monster Hunter Stories. The first has controller support on both the PC and consoles, but not on phones (which came out first). The second launched on a console (the 3DS), and has no controller support on the phone.
That caveat alone makes it so frustrating to play games on the phone IME.
It’s a shame because the UX of controller configuration on iOS/macOS/tvOS is the best I’ve seen outside of consoles. Even Windows, the king of gaming, doesn’t do as well with configuration of Microsoft’s own Xbox controllers (let alone those of competing companies). Instead on Windows Steam is required for any level of sanity with controllers.
Even if they do include, it's often weird. I wanted to try play genshin with controller - you have to complete certain parts of the game to unlock settings button. Why?
It seems like it would be trivial to build a "controller case" that goes around the phone. It could plug into the USB-C port, of course, and have joysticks on both sides, or whatever was required.
This applies to the Switch too. It’s touch screen but has external controls (they detach and you can use the kickstand). iOS supports gaming controllers so you could use it in the same way as the Switch (albeit it doesn’t have a built in kickstand).
But if you're bringing your switch you're not just bringing the screen. If you are bringing your phone somewhere you are bringing just the phone. It's harder to sell and justify.
The touch screen is one of the least-used parts of the Switch. Which is a little disappointing, since it was so heavily and well used on the DS/3DS lines. But so many of the ways Nintendo intends you to use the system, the touchscreen isn't accessible. So games aren't built around it in the same way that it was for their previous handhelds.
People have been saying that Mac gaming is around the corner for years now. GPU upgrades are the least exiting part of new iPhones. I have zero faith that they move the gaming needle, especially on iPhones.
The most exciting thing for Mac gaming is probably the Game porting toolkit.
I'm not sure they have. When Macs came with Intel processors, everyone who wanted to play games on their Mac just booted into Windows for gaming, so there wasn't much pressure to make them work on the MacOS side. Because Bootcamp no longer works, Apple is under increased pressure to improve game performance.
Also interesting was the large number of Neutral engine cores.
These two together seem to be very much about enhancing AI and Siri to be mostly on-device (something which they already started on).
A frequent complaint I read on HN is "why aren't there LLM based assistants as yet from any vendor" - but the answer to this is straightforward, it's not realistic to deploy cloud-based LLM at Siri-size user bases. Most queries also don't need LLM-style responses. (Also the rapid development of the field means that processing requirements are rapidly decreasing.)
In a prior keynote Apple noted that Siri was the most used assistant in the world. I don't have 3rd party data to support that, but it's a big enough claim that we could take their word on it just for conjecture purposes about the processing power needed to deploy LLM-based Siri.
So if we're going to see LLM-based usability enhancements to Siri, both in the types of data it's allowed to work with and enabling natural, context-driven interactions. That will have to be fully on device, and ultimately that will be a better experience for users as internet connectivity is an unreasonable barrier for such interactions (especially as it can stutter natural-language conversations).
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On the gaming topic: Look at the newly released Hello Kitty Island Adventure on Apple Arcade. It is an exclusive and playable across iPad/iPhone/Mac/AppleTV. The quality of this game is unusual, it delivers an experience that equals/exceeds Nintendo's wildly popular Animal Crossing. This signals that Apple are refocusing on gaming in a new way: bringing popular game paradigms to Arcade in a compelling, exclusive way, and this perhaps forms an extension of Arcade bringing ad-free versions of the App Store's most popular titles.
So while I think we're far off Apple's hardware being a destination for gaming enthusiasts, we're now definitely past the point of Apple pushing people with an itch for gaming onto other platforms.
Unfortunately, PC games, and most "AAA" titles are so shit lately, i just don't bother anymore. I just play the same game even while beefing up my PC. They even destroy amazing games like the old CoD Warzone. All trash now.
You are saying this as we are having one of the best years in gaming in a long time, and it includes both indies and AAA.
Baldur's Gate 3, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, some amazing remakes (Metroid Prime: Remastered, Resident Evil 4, Dead Space), Street Fighter 6 (which was loved by the community upon release unlike SF5, which had to be iterated on for a bit of time before becoming decent), Hi-Fi Rush, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, Pikmin 4, Armored Core 6, Blasphemous 2, Star Wars: Jedi Survivor. I even ommitted quite a few that are a bit controversial or not "amazing", like Starfield or Hogwarts Legacy.
And that's only off the top of my head, with a good chunk of the year left to go with hitters like Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk rework+expansion, Spiderman 2, MGS Collection vol1, and Cities Skylines 2 on the horizon.
There is no shame in losing interest in gaming, but claiming that "most AAA titles are so shit lately", all while I don't even remember the last time we had a year so chock full of amazing games, is a bit questionable.
Not all, but tried out most of them, beat some of them, others are still in progress, and some were just not my cup of tea (even though it was obvious they were great games).
> Which ones would you recommend if I were to only buy 1 or 2?
It depends on what type of games you are into, so it is kind of difficult to just give a general rec without knowing what you are into. I will try to explain my points for some of them, hopefully it helps.
* Resident Evil 4 Remake[completed], Dead Space Remake[completed] - action-horror games. Great remakes, especially RE4 (modernized the game in all the best ways possible, while still preserving the charm of the original). If you enjoyed the originals or wanted to experience them (but never got to it back when they came out), I heavily recommend. Or if you are into atmospheric third person action games. I am not a fan of horror games at all, but enjoyed those two greatly (given that it was more action that horror).
* Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom [played for a while, not completed] - an evolution of and a step up from the previous entry, Breath of the Wild. Very creative and free-form gameplay, open-world, heavily encouraging the player to experiment with building functional contraptions and exploration. Warning: Switch is greatly limiting the experience here, as the scale and physics of the game are clearly pushing the console to its max. 30fps and some graphical jankiness, but the art style and direction are great.
* Street Fighter 6 [still play online matches on a regular basis]- if you are into fighting games, this is a must-have, nothing more to say. They made this entry extremely approachable to newcomers, with amazing training modes and tutorials, as well as the "modern control scheme" option that makes things a bit easier for totally new people. If you aren't into fighting games as a genre though, I don't recommend.
* Hi-Fi Rush [in progress, about 25% way through] - reminds me of jet set radio aesthetically, really fun action-rpg game with a funky soundtrack, universe, and a fun gameplay. Kind of cheesy at times, but that's intentional.
* Bomb Rush Cyberfunk [almost finished it, about 85% done] - one of my personal favorite hidden gems this year. A spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio, some of the tracks were composed by the original composer of JSR. Platforming/light action game. I recommend watching a couple of videos and seeing if the vibe appeals to you. I have not played the original Jet Set Radio (but was aware of it), and I loved this game. If you enjoyed JSR in any capacity or if you like the vibe of the game (based on trailers and such), I recommend. Very off-beat and fun. If you want something unlike anything else out there, this is pretty much it. The only game that is even similar to it is the original Jet Set Radio.
* Blasphemous 2 [on the last boss at the moment] - indie metroidvania with some great atmosphere and a tight gameplay loop. If you are into 2d metroidvanias at all or liked the first game, this is a no-brainer. It is somewhat difficult and punishing, but not anywhere close to Dark Souls levels, very doable.
* Star Wars: Jedi Survivor [about halfway finished] - typical big budget western AAA game in Star Wars universe. Feels like a souls-like lite, making it more accessible. If you like star wars, or enjoyed the first game, or looking for something like Dark Souls but way more approachable, you will like this.
* Armored Core 6 [finished the main story, on new game+ right now] - mecha action game, made by Dark Souls devs. Combat is decent, but the star of the show is the garage/assembly mechanic. If you like tinkering with builds and managing all of that, or if you just like giant robots, this one is for you. Builds are easy to swap, no grind mechanics like in tons of RPGs, and the game has so much room to experiment with the builds, it is insane.
* Starfield [started, haven't played much], Hogwarts Legacy [90% done with the main story] - generally great games that would appeal to most people. Starfield is a typical massive open-world Bethesda RPG ala Skyrim. Hogwarts Legacy is a blockbuster open-world Harry Potter game. The aesthetics and vibes of Hogwarts Legacy are great, even for someone like me who hasn't finished all the books and isn't super into HP universe. Without knowing someone's general preferences for games, these two are the ones I would recommend to try out for most people (even though they aren't my two personal favorites out of this list).
* Baldur's Gate 3 [just started recently] - D&D system RPG game done incredibly well. A bit of a learning curve if you aren't familiar with D&D (I am not), and it might get a bit intense in terms of understanding the mechanics. However, this is a true love letter to D&D, and it is done incredibly well. If you have even some passing interest in D&D, or if you like complex RPG systems, this would be my #1 rec. I am personally a bit overwhelmed by it, but it is still an incredible game.
TLDR: General top recs without knowing anything about your preferences - RE4, Dead Space, Starfield, Hogwarts Legacy. For a more comprehensive explanation, see the details above. My personal biased favorites - RE4, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, Blasphemous 2, and Street Fighter 6 (I am more of a Tekken player, but SF6 is just so good, it should have no issues sustaining me until Tekken 8 is out early next year).
Phone gaming has been the biggest market in gaming for awhile, and Apple has long had some of the highest gaming revenues or any company. Phones are already more powerful than a switch although much less powerful than the steam deck.
It is a ceaseless source of bafflement for me how people continually treat Apple as though it’s not already one of the biggest players in the gaming world with an utterly massive library of games you can’t find on any console or on Steam.
Apple has recently made some real strides with making it easier to port games recently because of the need to port VR games to the Apple Vision Pro.
I could totally see Apple turning the iPhone into a Nintendo Switch type device. You can connect it to your Apple TV (maybe even wirelessly) and stream games + play with a controller. The HW is definitely impressive.
The problem is apple actively working against the game developers, or they just ignore the market completely. See the example of vulkan, and deprecation of 32bit games. It doesn't matter how good the hardware is. If the platform is not supporting the games and all they have are the occasional courting of the some of the games, the games won't come to the apple platform for free.
Also they are already making the mobile gaming money which is already lucrative. Are they also committing enough to the 'conventional' gaming?
The App Store is the real issue. Apple's antipathy towards developers is perplexing. The number of stories I've heard about companies having problems due to some interpretation of their policies is ridiculous. There are even horror stories about businesses going bankrupt simply because Apple decided they were in violation of something and banned them from the App Store entirely. I mean, no game company wants to spend millions on a game only to have all of their games pulled because one of them was too similar to someone else's game or something (according to some Apple reviewer with way too much power!).
Apple is justified doing whatever they want. I even agree with apple's stand that traditional gaming market doesn't matter to them. But from the traditional developers' perspective, Apple system is hostile and they have no reason to develop for Apple. Valve go out of their way to develop proton which is based on vulkan. Apple could utilize it if they have supported vulkan. Valve actively expand the linux support for old and current games. Apple has to work for it to court the traditional developers. Superior hardware doesn't mean much when the alternatives are good enough
And it's justified, because it's really not that important in money making in grand scheme of things.
They do have Nintendo games. They are just not very popular, because Nintendo chose to simplify them. You can use the Switch controller with your Apple devices, but they apps they made are just for simply touch control. Also AppleTV is not supported by the apps. But I guess that's more a decision from Nintendo, because they want their hardware to be used.
I don't think they care about Switch or other consoles, really. Switch sales are nothing compared to what they already sell for non-gaming systems.
You'll be able to play the same AAA games on your desktop Mac, your Macbook, your iPhone, your iPad, and your Apple Vision Pro (on a virtual gigantic screen), locally on the device with no WAN streaming required. That will be a relatively large market of people with money to spend, hard to ignore.
Didn't Nintendo appear on stage at the 2016 keynote event to announce Nintendo's foray into mobile gaming (on 3rd party hardware, anyway) with Super Mario Run? And didn't Apple add native support for the Switch Pro and Joycon controllers to iOS 16 last year? Nintendo has always hated being in the hardware business...
The M1 closely mirrored the A14 Bionic from the iPhone 12 (Pro), M2 the A15 Bionic from the iPhone 13 (Pro) and this the M3 “should” mirror the A16 Bionic from the iPhone 14 Pro / iPhone 15. If this continues we won’t have the new ray tracing GPU until M4.
Yes, but the A16 was a stopgap release, which only happened because Apple has to release a new iPhone CPU every year. The M-series does not update as frequently, and so it seems reasonable to imagine that the M3 is of the same "generation" as the A17.
I also expect Apple to become much more serious about gaming. They might even see gaming as an important item in their balance sheet in a few years time. They have the hardware, and the Vision Pro might need gaming to break even and turn a profit.
>I'm expecting the new M3 Macs next month to lean really heavily into discussing the GPU advances and (hopefully) announce a lot more support from big studios to bring more games to the Mac.
Assuming the trend of iPhone Ax chips showing up in Macs holds up, this would be late 2024 / early 2025 Macs and M4, not M3.
M2 is based based on A15, M3 is expected to be based on A16, M4 would be A17.
iPhones are useless for AAA games unless they open the platform up more.
One of the reasons stadia failed is that gamers that spend the most do not want to keep rebuying games. Apple seems to expect people to also keep rebuying games. Just. No.
hmmm... i want an app that uses geolocation to have my iPhone start to mine bitcoin whenever it's plugged in to a charger that's not in a location where I pay for the electricity
They made a point of saying that the GPU had been completely ground-up re-designed, and I assume they're intending to keep scaling that up over the next few iterations.
They didn't talk about it for very long, but that the phone is able to convincingly run AAA games, even at playable if not great frame-rates, is really impressive. This puts the iPhone up against devices like the Switch and Steam Deck for a lot of users. Granted, they don't have Nintendo's games, and they don't have Steam's massive back catalogue, but looking forward it does make a dedicated handheld gaming system harder to justify, or at least makes the phone easier to justify if you're not buying both.
It also makes me really interested to see where Apple is going with Apple TV and the Mac. With the game porting toolkit already announced (and the results people are already getting just using it directly to run Windows games), it seems like Apple really could eat at least some portion of the gaming market by already having a handheld (phone), console (Apple TV), and gaming PC (Mac) ready to go in the next few years.
I'm expecting the new M3 Macs next month to lean really heavily into discussing the GPU advances and (hopefully) announce a lot more support from big studios to bring more games to the Mac.