Apple has been pushing gaming on its platforms in earnest for a few years now. And with incredible, seamless integration between hardware, software, and services, many users have been waiting on the edge of their seats for AAA game studio content.
Thankfully, with the Apple Silicon era on the Mac and several software updates, the company has been luring studios, developers, and gamers to its platforms en masse. Among the new gaming pushes, Apple has added hardware-accelerated ray-tracing with the M3 Macs and iPhone 15 Pro models, in an exclusive Game Mode released with macOS Sonoma, and that’s now making its way to iOS 18 and iPadOS 18.
Game Mode minimizes background activity to sustain consistently high frame rates for hours of continuous gameplay, allowing gamers to take advantage of Apple’s most powerful chips.
In addition, with an update coming later this fall, Apple will bring personalized Spatial Audio for gaming. AirPods Pro 2 will offer 16-bit, 48kHz audio and support for dynamic head tracking and lowering latency, making the gaming experience more realistic. Titles like Need for Speed: Mobile by Tencent Games and EA will support this feature.
Apple has also added a Game Porting Toolkit 2 for macOS Sequoia, making it even easier for developers to bring advanced games from Windows to Mac and then port them to iPhone and iPad. In a WWDC 2024 session, Apple highlighted precisely that. macOS’ SDK shares several features with iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 counterparts, such as gaming controllers, audio, and graphics, which can make porting titles easier.
The company also ensures users can play any Windows game on Mac, although users might be required to download a third-party emulation app to run these on the Mac.
Here’s how serious Apple is about gaming
Alongside some AAA titles available on Apple’s own gaming service, Apple Arcade, such as FANTASIAN, Outlanders 2, and NBA 2K24 Arcade Edition, the company has several titles coming to macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Recently, BGR tried some of Resident Evil titles on iPhone 15 Pro.
The commitment of some of its partners tells us Apple is serious about gaming this time. Just before WWDC, Ubisoft announced that Assassin’s Creed Shadows would be coming to Mac and PCs on November 15. During Apple’s keynote, Ubisoft revealed that the title is a next-gen game that skipped previous-gen consoles and would also come to the iPad.
Besides that, several other AAA titles are already available on Apple’s platform, making good use of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sonoma Game Mode. BGR got to check out some of these titles at a showcase and Apple showed us some very impressive demos.
- Assassin’s Creed Mirage by Ubisoft
- Zenless Zone Hero by HoYoverse
- Diablo Immortal by Blizzard
- Valheim by Iron Game and Coffee Stain
- RESIDENT EVIL 7 biohazard by Capcom
There are even more titles coming later this year:
- Frostpunk 2 by 11 Bit Studio, expected to be released September 20, 2024
- Palworld by PocketPair, expected to be released in 2024
- Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown by Ubisoft, expected to be released in 2024
- World of Warcraft: the War Within, expected to be released in 2024
Wrap up
The iPhone’s switching to a USB-C port helped Apple open its most popular device to gamers since it now supports gaming controllers. And, Mac and iPad’s latest M3 and M4 chips unlock console-level power with incredible CPU and GPU upgrades while maintaining a great power consumption balance.
In addition, Apple has been making it easier for developers to bring their games to its ecosystem, which we can see is finally paying off. With the iPhone 16 just around the corner and the next batch of M4 Macs launching later this year, we’ll surely see even more titles arriving.
