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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,

by danhor 3y ago

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.

ghaff 3y ago
>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.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I love Apple Arcade because I can trust whatever I get from it for my kids is not a gambling app in disguise.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    There is that--especially for kids. It may not be very good but at least it's not evil.
    - appplication 3y ago
      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.
radlad 3y ago
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.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  Yep, same here. I already have enough issues keeping my phone charged enough, playing games on it just makes it worse. Every once in a while I do, but it's usually a really basic game that uses hardly any resources to run, like a simple board game app.
- truncate 3y ago
  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?
- bombcar 3y ago
  This, more than anything, killed Minecraft Earth if I recall correctly. Even people who wanted to play during Covid couldn't because it would just eat the battery to death.
wincy 3y ago
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”.
mortenjorck 3y ago
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.
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > 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.
  - gambiting 3y ago
    >>if it required
- gambiting 3y ago
  >>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.
ThatPlayer 3y ago
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.

by danhor 3y ago

ghaff 3y ago

>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.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
I love Apple Arcade because I can trust whatever I get from it for my kids is not a gambling app in disguise.
- ghaff 3y ago
  There is that--especially for kids. It may not be very good but at least it's not evil.
  - appplication 3y ago
    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.

radlad 3y ago

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.

cableshaft 3y ago
Yep, same here. I already have enough issues keeping my phone charged enough, playing games on it just makes it worse. Every once in a while I do, but it's usually a really basic game that uses hardly any resources to run, like a simple board game app.
truncate 3y ago
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?
bombcar 3y ago
This, more than anything, killed Minecraft Earth if I recall correctly. Even people who wanted to play during Covid couldn't because it would just eat the battery to death.

wincy 3y ago

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”.

mortenjorck 3y ago

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.

GeekyBear 3y ago
> 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.
- gambiting 3y ago
  >>if it required
gambiting 3y ago
>>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.

ThatPlayer 3y ago

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.