Following Apple’s online WWDC 2021 keynote, the company has started uploading various developer videos and labs for everyone to watch and considering we had Divinity Original Sin 2 for iPad revealed in one of these at WWDC before, I was curious to see what this year’s gaming-related videos would have. Apple’s ‘Tap into virtual and physical game controllers’ video from Nat Brown (Game Technologies Engineering at Apple) has been excellent to watch. Nat goes over details on how developers can adapt their interfaces to each controller’s icons and how adding controller support helps in general. The highlights for me in this video are towards the end where he mentions one new capture feature coming in iOS 15 and then with how developers can use Sony’s DualSense controller adaptive triggers. Beyond that, I’m hoping more developers look into supporting both Xbox and PlayStation button prompts since I own controllers from both platforms. This is also addressed in the video which is worth watching if you play on iOS and iPadOS with a controller.
The new capture feature is that iOS 15 will let players customize how the share or create button works on newer controllers (and I assume the DualShock 4 controller) to capture the last 15 seconds of gameplay as opposed to only using it to begin screen recording. This is a great change because it lets you capture gameplay moments that just happened on the fly. Right now on iOS 14.5, you can only capture a screenshot or begin screen recording and end it. Having something like this in iOS 15 is great for capturing hilarious moments instead of initiating a recording and then trying to do something. Barring that, the ending of the WWDC video linked above also includes how developers can use the DualSense adaptive triggers in games. Barring those two things, Nat also spoke about how controller support is something Apple looks for with highlight games and how customers love seeing controller support.
