Over the years, Apple has entered various markets with relative success beyond pure personal computing. Health, home automation, films and series, we have two days of rumors about a car … but there is a market that continues to resist the bitten apple: the one with non-casual video games.
It resists him in a way, naturally. There is no doubt that Apple makes a lot of revenue from games on the App Store, so much so that companies like Epic Games have taken legal action to try to get a discount. But mobile gaming is one thing, and the gaming market that draws tweens to teens is another. millennia. AND there are several signals that have accumulated, indicating that in Cupertino they have the opportunity to achieve something interesting.
Too many clues for there to be no plans
Because let’s face it: the gaming world despises Apple (and Google). In the headline market, triple A
Is it bad? Not at all. This is one of the many markets that Apple is not in. I’m not criticizing the company at all, but there’s no question that they want to get in one way or another. You just have to see the insistence on the mention of League of Legends: Wild Rift in the iPhone 12 event.
And with this situation we come to 2021, a year in which several opportunities and signals come together for Cupertino to take a big step in attracting the attention of the players.
- Is in the rumor a new sixth-generation Apple TV, which would release a new chip and a control that could turn the player into something of a console. On that topic, it’s worth reading Mark Gurman’s new Bloomberg article, which comments on how much Apple TV needs an urgent refocus now that it has lost its exclusive perks (even on a Chromecast, we can see Apple TV +).
- Apple’s M1 chips have proven to be very efficient and top-quality racing games even with the Rosetta emulation layer, as we saw in Pedro Aznar’s review of the new MacBooks. It remains to be seen how the native games would play out.
- Last summer, we saw how Apple plans to refocus the Arcade service with more interesting games for the mainstream.
- Although distant, there are rumors that Apple is thinking of creating a gaming oriented Mac.
Short or long term strategies
What can Apple do about all of this? The key can go through the show a game that runs natively on Apple chips
Also, let’s think that over the next year we will see chips beyond M1, outperforming complex operations such as running graphics-intensive games. An “M1X” chip with better performing cores and a good game prepared for it could cause the gaming market as a whole to start seeing Apple as an alternative.
Either there is no game and Apple wants to go slower, introducing chips which are gradually catching up or even exceeding the capabilities of the latest generation consoles. It would also be a good way to convince, in the long term, all the developers to develop their triple A also for Apple devices. What can happen if an Apple Silicon chip far exceeds the potential of the PlayStation 5 and is demonstrated with benchmarks?
A key game, powerful chips, maybe an attempt to conquer virtual reality … we’ll see what path Apple can take in this regard. If from Cupertino they want to give a kick, the approach used so far will not work.
