Posts tagged with "games"

Apple Arcade Has Carved Out a Unique Niche in the Videogame Market, but Is It Sustainable?

With the introduction of the App Store, mobile gaming took off, quickly becoming the number one driver of revenue for the store. By the time Apple Arcade was released, more than a decade later, mobile games were dominated by free-to-play titles supported with ads or In-App-Purchases, virtual toll booths designed to interrupt the fun until the player paid with their time or money to continue.

This week, in an interview with CNET’s Shelby Brown, Matt Fischer, Apple’s vice president of the App Store, explained that Apple Arcade was created to eliminate those toll booths:

…many users are also looking for game experiences they can enjoy without interruptions, [and] without having to pay up-front for each title. So we saw an opportunity to bring an exceptional set of games together for players who want unlimited access to an evolving catalog of great games, all for a low monthly price, all without in-game ads or in-app purchases.

That perspective fits well with Eddy Cue’s comments to BuzzFeed in 2015 about gaming on the Apple TV, four years before Apple Arcade launched:

When we first announced the iPhone, we didn’t tout it as a gaming device. But games became a huge part of iPhone, because it turns out that a lot more people than just hardcore gamers love games. We expanded the market. I think the vast majority of people around the world probably aren’t looking to buy an Xbox or PlayStation. But that doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy playing games. I think Apple TV expands the gaming market to those people.

Those two quotes are about as good an explanation of Apple’s approach to Arcade as any I’ve seen. The $4.99 per month subscription is designed to appeal to people who like videogames but aren’t likely to play console or desktop games and who would rather pay a monthly fee than be interrupted by ads or In-App Purchases.

That’s not to say that Arcade isn’t testing new ideas, though. A good example is Dead Cells, a big hit before it debuted on the App Store in 2019. Dead Cells has always been a paid-up-front title, with paid DLC that was released periodically in the years that followed. Now, it, too, is available on Apple Arcade as Dead Cells+, a version that collects the original game and all DLC for subscribers.

Apple has also expanded its Arcade catalog with App Store Greats and Timeless Classics, which, unlike Arcade Originals, don’t always support the Mac or Apple TV. According to Fischer:

Over time, something we heard consistently from players was that they wanted more casual titles, along with many of the richer Arcade Originals in the catalog. So we saw another great opportunity to offer our subscribers a collection of classic games along with award-winning titles from the App Store, but with all the benefits that players love about the service. In April 2021, we introduced two new categories of games, App Store Greats and Timeless Classics, to expand the catalog.

Those titles, along with Originals and others, have grown Apple Arcade into a much more diverse and interesting service than it was when it debuted in 2019. However, games that were previously only available on consoles and desktop computers are increasingly coming to handheld devices like the Steam Deck. Arcade has some titles that rival console releases, but the selection is limited. With more competitors’ devices handling everything from casual games to console and desktop releases, both locally and via game streaming services, I won’t be surprised if competitors start chipping away at the position Apple has carved out for itself in the videogame industry. How Apple reacts will be one of the stories worth keeping an eye on in 2023.

What Wreckfest Tells Us About the Future of iPhone and iPad Gaming→

In November, HandyGames released Wreckfest for iPhones and iPads. The demolition racing game was originally released by Bugbear Entertainment on PC in 2018 and the following year on PS4 and Xbox One. Since then, the game has been brought to current-generation consoles, streaming, and now, mobile platforms.

Although Wreckfest is several years old, it’s one of the more demanding console games brought to mobile recently, which makes it a good test for Apple’s latest SoCs. That’s what MrMacRight did on his YouTube channel, testing the game on everything from an original iPhone SE with an A9 chip to a 12.9” iPad Pro with an M2 chip.

There’s a lot of the sort of technical detail in MrMacRight’s video that I love, along with settings recommendations if you want to get the most out of whatever device you’re using to play the game. To me, though, the most interesting part of the video is the point in the Apple silicon lineup where the game’s performance drops off and how the choices the publisher made to bring Wreckfest to mobile affect the game.

The M1 and M2 SoCs handle Wreckfest well, maintaining an almost steady 60fps throughout. The first dip comes when trying to run the game at 60fps on an iPhone 14 Plus with an A15 SoC that ran into thermal throttling issues. Still, with tweaks to the game’s settings, it remains playable on a wide variety of iPhones and iPads thanks to quality reductions of some graphics assets, which also serve to reduce the size of the game and its memory footprint. Those graphical compromises made by HandyGames are understandable but also a bit disappointing for anyone with an M1, M2, or A16 device, which could handle better graphics and textures.

Wreckfest on mobile compromises on some assets to reduce the size and memory footprint of the game.

Wreckfest on mobile compromises on some assets to reduce the size and memory footprint of the game.

Big picture, MrMacRight’s analysis of Wreckfest suggests that we’re still in the early days when it comes to games that approach console quality coming to the iPhone and iPad. Plus, the sheer size of the gaming market that is still on older A-series SoCs means the sweet spot for game development will likely take a few more years before the performance that is possible on M-series and A16-based devices becomes the norm for most mobile gamers. Whether Apple silicon gets to that point before another solution, like game streaming, takes widespread hold, it will likely be one of the most interesting stories to follow in mobile gaming.

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Apple Announces the 2022 App Store Awards

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple has revealed its annual App Store Awards winners, recognizing the standout apps and games of 2022. This year, the company picked a collection of 16 apps and games from among the millions available on the App Store, naming them the Apps of the Year. The company’s App Store editorial team also recognized five apps and games that have had a cultural impact.

This year, the 16 winners from a wide range of categories:

“This year’s App Store Award winners reimagined our experiences with apps that delivered fresh, thoughtful, and genuine perspectives,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “From self-taught solo creators to international teams spanning the globe, these entrepreneurs are making a meaningful impact, and represent the ways in which apps and games influence our communities and lives.”

In a first, Apple has included App Store links to the winning apps and games, which I was glad to see. Another difference from last year’s awards is a new category: China Game of the Year, which was added without any explanation from Apple, although based on Apple’s developer site it appears that many of the other winners aren’t available in China, which may explain the new award.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

This year’s app winners are:

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple also recognized games on each of its platforms, plus a new China Game of the Year:

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The apps and games that the App Store editorial team recognized as having a cultural impact are:

Details about the winners are also available on Apple’s Developer site and through a dedicated App Store Today page story covering all of the winners and separate stories for each winning app and game.

To commemorate this year’s App of the Year winners, Apple’s designers created physical awards. The blue awards resemble the App Store’s icon and are made from 100% recycled aluminum with the winner’s name engraved on the back.

Congratulations to this year’s Apple Store Award winners. It’s always great to see developers’ hard work and contributions to Apple’s platforms recognized.

Resident Evil Village, Featuring Metal 3, Debuts on the Mac App Store

Apple spent a considerable amount of time during June’s WWDC talking about Metal 3, the latest iteration of the company’s graphics frameworks for videogames. The suite of technologies offers numerous technologies and tools for developers, including hardware-accelerated graphics, MetalFX Upscaling, which render scenes faster by taking advantage of upscaling and anti-aliasing, fast resource loading that uses asynchronous I/O techniques to speed up the delivery of data to Metal textures, and more. With the release of macOS Ventura, Metal 3 gaming is now available to all Mac users.

Resident Evil Village at WWDC.

Resident Evil Village at WWDC.

At WWDC, Apple announced three games that would be coming to the Mac later in the year that will take advantage of Metal 3:

The first of the games to be released publicly is Resident Evil Village, which is available in the Mac App Store now. I’ve had a chance to test the game in advance of its release for a few days, and from what I’ve seen in my limited time with the game, what Metal 3 enables is impressive.

For those unfamiliar, Resident Evil Village from Capcom was first released in mid-2021 and is available on every major platform. The eighth game in the Resident Evil horror series, Village follows the story of Ethan, whose wife has been assassinated and child abducted. Ethan is abducted, too, but escapes from his captors after their vehicle crashes. In short order, Ethan finds himself in a European village terrorized by zombie-like creatures.

I don’t have a lot to say about the game itself because I’ve only been playing it for a few days and horror games generally aren’t one of my favorite genres. Instead, I spent my time testing the game at various settings to get a sense of what Metal 3 can do, repeating the same section of the game multiple times at different resolutions and with other settings enabled.

I started the game on my M1 Max Mac Studio and Studio Display at 2560 x 1440 with the game’s Prioritize Graphics preset enabled. At those settings, Village generally maintained 60-70 fps with a rare dip into the 50s during one particularly intense scene. Next, I enabled MetalFX Upscaling, which helped hold the frames above 60 and allowed me to increase other settings, like mesh quality, while maintaining 60fps.

At higher resolutions, the frame rates took a hit. For example, 2880 x 1620 dropped the frame rate to around 50 fps. However, once I enabled MetalFX Upscaling, I was right back up to 60 fps. I was even able to maintain a steady 60 fps when I bumped the resolution to 3840 x 2160 and switched the MetalFX Upscaling from the Quality to Performance setting. Bumping up other settings like the shadow and mesh quality didn’t significantly degrade performance either.

I also ran some tests with the game running on my M1 MacBook Air, where I was able to use the same sort of settings tweaks to maintain around 30 fps. The experience wasn’t bad, but Village definitely looked nicer, running on more powerful hardware paired with a Studio Display.

Overall, my first impressions of Metal 3’s enhancements to gaming on the Mac are positive. The results aren’t in the same league as a gaming PC with a dedicated graphics card. For example, I’ve seen benchmarks for Resident Evil Village running with an NVIDIA 3080 card that can run the game at over 120 fps. That’s double what I saw with my Mac Studio, but it’s still better than I’ve experienced in the past with games as recent as Village.

Metal 3 is promising. With just one big-name game taking advantage of it at the moment, it’s too early to judge its impact on Mac gaming, but it’s a step in the right direction. Hopefully, more game publishers will adopt the technology and bring their games to the Mac soon.

Resident Evil Village is available on the Mac App Store for $39.99.

Apple Adds Nintendo Online Classic Controller Support to the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV

It seems that Apple slipped a little extra controller support into yesterday’s updates to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS: Nintendo Online classic controller support.

Nintendo sells wireless versions of its classic NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64 controllers, plus the Sega Genesis controller for use with its Nintendo Online Service for Switch. The controllers are a fun way to play the games from those old systems that are offered as part of Nintendo Online and its Expansion Pack add-on service. Yesterday, Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted that the classic SNES controller works with iOS and tvOS 16.1:

Sure enough, it does, along with iPadOS 16.1 and macOS Ventura. With each OS, the controller shows up as ‘SNES Controller’ in Bluetooth settings when in pairing mode. Federico has confirmed that the Nintendo 64 controller works, too, but neither of us has an NES or Sega Genesis controller to test.

The Nintendo 64 controller paired with the new iPad.

The Nintendo 64 controller paired with the new iPad.

This isn’t the first time Nintendo’s wireless versions of classic controllers have been adapted for use beyond the Switch. Steam added support for the controllers in July.

Pairing my SNES wireless controller to my iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Pairing my SNES wireless controller to my iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Apple has gradually added deeper and deeper support for third-party controllers over the past few years. The latest official additions, which were first announced at WWDC, are the Nintendo Joy-Con and Pro Controller. Some third-party controllers like the 8BitDO SN30 Pro+ that emulates other controllers can be paired with Apple devices, too, but they show up as generic controllers.

I love many of the retro games available on Apple’s platforms that are inspired by Nintendo’s early systems. What’s great about the support for the wireless controllers is that now they can be played with the controllers of the systems that inspired them. The Nintendo 64 controller is perpetually out of stock, but if you’re interested in picking up any of the others, they are available on Nintendo’s online store.

Gamevice Begins Taking Pre-Orders for the Flex, Its New iPhone Game Controller

Source: Gamevice.

Source: Gamevice.

Today, Gamevice announced pre-orders for the Flex, a new MFi-certified, case-compatible game controller for the iPhone. Like the Backbone One and Razer Kishi V2, the Flex separates an Xbox-style controller into two halves that connect to the ends of your iPhone for playing controller-compatible iOS games. I haven’t had a chance to try the Gamevice Flex, but based on the company’s announcement video, there are a handful of features that set it apart from the Backbone One and Razer Kishi V2 that are worth considering if you’re shopping for an iPhone game controller.

Like the Razer Kishi V2, the Gamevice Flex uses spacers to accommodate a long list of Apple and third-party cases, an advantage over the Backbone One, which requires you to remove your case before using it. The downside, of course, is keeping track of the collection of spacers to allow for moving to a different case in the future.

Gamevice says that the Flex uses Hall effect triggers, a technology that uses magnetic field sensors instead of mechanical parts to cut down on the wear and tear on components. The company hasn’t said if the Flex’s thumbsticks use the same technology or not.

Like the Backbone One, the Flex includes passthrough charging via a Lightning port on the end of one of the controller’s grips and a headphone jack on the other grip. The Razer Kishi V2 includes a Lightning port for charging but not a headphone jack. Although you can never be sure about how a controller will feel to use until you have it in your hands, I like the look of Flex’s grips too.

Originally announced in August with the video above, 9to5Mac has a hands-on with a prototype of the Flex with more details on what the device is like to use.

Set to start shipping later this month, the Gamevice Flex costs $109.95 for the iPhone model, which is about $10 more than the Backbone One or Razer Kishi V2, and $99.95 for the Android version. Customers who order before October 14th can get one month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate free with their purchase.

iPhone Gaming with the Razer Kishi V2 and Backbone One

Razer Kishi V2.

Razer Kishi V2.

When I look at the innovation happening in handheld gaming at all levels with devices like the Analogue Pocket and Steam Deck, I can’t help but wonder, “What if Apple really jumped into the videogame market and put the power of its hardware and software design teams behind devices that could play everything from Candy Crush Saga to Elden Ring?” Apple hasn’t, and I don’t expect it will, but every time I use my iPhone, I look at its gorgeous ProMotion OLED display and want to use it for more than the gaming experiences that the App Store offers.

That said, there is still gaming fun to be had on the iPhone. For me, that occasionally takes the form of an Apple Arcade game like the excellent Shovel Knight Dig that was released on the service last week, and I’ll cover this week on MacStories Unwind. Other times, it’s an indie platformer like the Dadish series or a classic Nintendo handheld game via Delta. With a fast enough WiFi connection, I’ve even found myself streaming games from my Xbox Series X, Microsoft Game Pass, and PlayStation 5. It’s not everything I think gaming could be on the iPhone, but it’s not bad either.

Despite Apple’s perplexing relationship with videogames, the last few years have seen the company expand controller support, which has gradually led to an increase in support among developers. That, in turn, has prompted me to try a lot of different controllers and conclude that with the iPhone, nothing beats an integrated Nintendo Switch-style controller solution.

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Digital Foundry Tests How a Fully-Loaded Mac Studio Stacks Up to High-End Gaming PCs→

It’s not unusual for Apple keynotes to feature gaming. Sometimes it’s about Apple Arcade, and other times it’s a demo of a third-party title coming to one of the company’s platforms. However, this year’s WWDC keynote was a little different, sprinkling developer-focused gaming announcements throughout the presentation and focusing on the upcoming release of No Man’s Sky and Resident Evil Village on the Mac. With Metal 3, controller functionality that continues to be extended, and an emphasis on titles with name recognition, many came away wondering if Apple is trying to position its latest Macs as legitimate challengers to high-end gaming PCs.

That’s the question Digital Foundry set out to answer in its latest YouTube video and companion story on Eurogamer by Oliver Mackenzie. When it comes to evaluating gaming hardware, few do it as well as Digital Foundry, which is why I was immediately curious to see what they thought of a fully loaded Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra SoC.

At just slightly larger than an Xbox Series S by volume and with ultra-low power consumption, the Mac Studio is unlike any high-performance PC. Digital Foundry came away impressed with the technical details of the M1 Ultra SoC, which held its own against high-end Intel CPUs and was in the ballpark in comparison to top GPUs:

The M1 Ultra is an extremely impressive processor. It delivers CPU and GPU performance in line with high-end PCs, packs a first-of-its-kind silicon interposer, consumes very little power, and fits into a truly tiny chassis. There’s simply nothing else like it. For users already in the Mac ecosystem, this is a great buy if you have demanding workflows.

However, the system’s performance doesn’t tell the whole story and can’t make up for the lack of videogames available for the Mac:

These results are really just for evaluating raw performance though, as the Mac is not a good gaming platform. Very few games actually end up on Mac and the ports are often low quality. If there is a future for Mac gaming it will probably be defined by “borrowing” games from other platforms, either through wrappers like Wine or through running iOS titles natively, which M1-based Macs are capable of. In the past, Macs could run games by installing Windows through Apple’s Bootcamp solution, but M1-based chips can’t boot natively into any flavour of Windows, not even Windows for ARM.

The upshot is that gaming on the Mac remains a mixed bag. Apple’s most capable M1s make the Mac more competitive with gaming PCs, but it’s not clear that the catalog of games available on the Mac will change anytime soon:

Gaming on Mac has historically been quite problematic and that remains the case right now - native ports are thin on the ground and when older titles such as No Man’s Sky and Resident Evil Village are mooted for conversion, it’s much more of a big deal than it really should be. Perhaps it’s the expense of Apple hardware, perhaps it’s the size of the addressable audience or maybe gaming isn’t a primary use-case for these machines, but there’s still the sense that outside of the mobile space (where it is dominant), gaming isn’t where it should be - Steam Deck has shown that compatibility layers can work and ultimately, perhaps that’s the route forward. Still, M1 Max and especially M1 Ultra are certainly very capable hardware and it’ll be fascinating to see how gaming evolves on the Apple platform going forward.

Digital Foundry’s results highlight that tech specs are necessary but not sufficient for videogame industry success. The Mac hasn’t been in the same league as high-end gaming PCs for a long time, and tech specs historically were just one of the issues. Given Apple’s lackluster history in desktop gaming, it’s fair to be skeptical about whether the company can attract the developers of current-generation, top-tier games to the Mac. Still, for the optimists in the crowd, the power of the M1 Ultra has brought the Mac a long way from where it stood during the Intel-baed days as a gaming platform. Personally, I’m a skeptical optimist with one foot in each camp. The hardware is heading in the right direction, but the jury’s still out on the software and Apple’s business plan to attract game developers.

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The M2’s Unique Combination of Unified Memory and GPU Performance May Reveal Apple’s Videogame Ambitions

As I mentioned on AppStories, I’m intrigued by what Apple is doing with the Apple silicon GPU and memory and what it could mean for gaming. Although no one has had a chance to put the M2 through its paces yet, AnandTech does an excellent job of putting the facts and figures from Monday’s keynote into perspective, explaining what it means for what will undoubtedly be a multi-tiered M2 chip family like the M1 family.

With the M2’s memory, Apple’s SoC picks up where the M1 Pro, Max, and Ultra left off. Like those higher-tier M1s, the M2 uses LPDDR5-6400 memory that supports 100GB/second of memory bandwidth, which is a 50% increase in bandwidth over the M1. The M2 also supports up to 24GB of unified memory, a 50% increase over the M1 Air.

That memory is paired with a GPU that can be configured with up to 10 cores, two more than the top-tier M1 Air. According to Apple, that 10-core GPU delivers a 35% increase in performance.

However, it’s the combination of more, higher-bandwidth memory and a more powerful GPU that should make a significant difference in the M2 Air’s performance of graphics-intensive tasks like rendering game assets. As AnandTech explains:

Apple’s unconventional use of memory technologies remains one of their key advantages versus their competitors in the laptop space, so a significant increase in memory bandwidth helps Apple to keep that position. Improvements in memory bandwidth further improve every aspect of the SoC, and that especially goes for GPU performance, where memory bandwidth is often a bottlenecking factor, making the addition of LPDDR5 a key enabler for the larger, 10-core GPU. Though in this case, it’s the M2 playing catch-up in a sense: the M1 Pro/Max/Ultra all shipped with LPDDR5 support first, the M2 is actually the final M-series chip/tier to get the newer memory.

We won’t know more until reviewers put the new M2 MacBook Air through their paces, but the M2 Air appears to be a significant step forward compared to the M1 model. As one of Apple’s most popular Macs, that’s important because it sets a performance benchmark that game developers need to target if they want to make a game for the majority of Mac owners.

During the keynote, Apple showed off two games running on the M2: No Man’s Sky, an older but frequently updated game, and Resident Evil Village, a game that arrived on the PC and consoles just last fall. Resident Evil Village especially caught my eye because it’s such a recent release. It’s just one game, but it stands in contrast to others that have been used to demo gaming on the Mac in the past.

It would be a mistake for anyone to pin their Mac gaming hopes on the scant details we have so far. However, the keynote made it clear to me that Apple has gaming ambitions beyond Arcade, and its unique SoC architecture has moved Macs one step closer to that becoming a reality.

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