Would the M1 iPad Pro inspire more AA-AAA ports?

There absolutely should be big name exclusive games for the latest Apple tech! … even if that means I won’t be able to play them until I upgrade. If I buy a new M1 iPad I want there to be games and apps that push the device even if that means limited compatibility with lower end devices. Sure some games scale well but having a handful of games that are made exclusively for the higher end tech gives me more incentive to purchase the hardware.

I’m a big fan of game streaming and have spent way too much money on the Google Stadia store than I would like to admit but there’s also the fact that the game streaming option isn’t yet viable for many out there due to spotty internet, even if their connection is “high speed”, since download consistency is the most important factor and way too many people unfairly have subpar internet. Although I do believe within a few years cloud gaming is going to be a major factor in digital entertainment and become the next major way to digitally distribute games.

 

As a day 1 Valve Steam user I remember over a decade ago how “digitally downloading games is a bunch of BS. How could anyone waste their money on a non-physical product that could disappear once this stupid Steam experiment shuts down within a year and Valve comes to their senses and removes their launcher DRM from Half-Life 2 / Counterstrike.”

Ownership is subjective. Back then the majority of PC users didn’t believe that downloading the game off the internet was in any shape or form ownership and heck still to this day you’ll meet a couple of holdouts on the PC that need the actual physical media despite having to download a day 1 patch for the game to be stable or, at times, even work …but they want that illusion of ownership. In my opinion if you truly want to own a game buy a retro game system on eBay with a few cartridges or an early cd based console.


As far as cloud gaming it’s just the next step in the evolutionary progress. It doesn’t matter if you like Stadia, GeForce Now, PSnow, xCloud or Apple (don’t be surprised if they enter the cloud arena for gaming/apps sometime in the near future.) There will be a time when these multiple storefronts fight for your attention and money. Personally I plan on trying all of the above in the coming years. If I want that Microsoft or PlayStation exclusive I’ll be able to one day play the full experience on my iPad through their respective service.

Besides you have the incredible convenience that comes along with cloud applications such as being able to use multiple devices to run your application or game, instantaneous updates with nothing to download, and not having to worry about storage space which is becoming more of a issue year after year with certain AAA games weighing in at well over one-hundred gigs of data.

Right now the biggest hurdle is the subpar internet infrastructure in many places and “just good enough” modem/router hardware these companies lease to users. Even for me there are times when my internet isn’t at its best and I play the games I have locally stored on my iPad. If it was up to me there would be no such thing as data caps or spotty internet and there would be reasonable prices but that’s the fault of the big cable corps and to a greater extent the local and national governments of these places. These hurdles are just temporary and will eventually become less of a factor as tech improves.

 

I wrote in my previous reply that PC users over a decade ago thought downloading a game from the internet was not the same as owning a game. The only way to truly own a game, according to them, was to have a physical copy. For them digital distribution was not considered ownership. Nowadays many more people view downloading a product as ownership. Which makes the term subjective based on the above.

Also, for many, ownership means very little, especially in the mobile realm, where updates break games on a yearly basis. There are many people here at TouchArcade that would welcome or have welcomed an alternative to ownership with services such as Microsoft xCloud in the future and presently Apple Arcade.

You’re also comparing cloud based services as pure subscription services like Netflix and Hulu. Which you make the case that your just subscribing to their library of content for a monthly fee and you don’t actually own anything and they can make library changes anytime they want.

I agree with you on that … but over and over again I hear that Microsoft gamepass is the best value in modern gaming which runs off of a subscription model that gives you, from what I hear, a bunch of high quality content for your monthly fee. For many gamepass is a much better value per month than outright purchasing games.

Also consider not every cloud based model is going to be subscription service based. Some like Stadia and GeForce Now work exactly like Steam (literally GeForce Now uses Steam) where you purchase the game upfront and you can play it anytime you want.

I’ll throw out a couple of examples why a gamer may want to use a cloud gaming service:

— Storage Space: Big AAA games are outpacing local storage. Now admittedly this is much more of an issue with the new 1tb console Gen where it’s almost a necessity to buy some kind of external storage but games in general have blown up in size in the last few years. Even some PC gamers that have terabytes worth of storage may be cautious with what they’re installing. With a cloud based service you don’t have to worry about downloads or downloading of any kind including game patches that are ridiculously large at times.

— Convenience: Why not play Resident Evil Village on your iPad when the kids want to watch the family room television. Then when the kids are in bed play the game on the big screen. Or maybe I want to play Village while I’m on my work break with my 5G phone that can flawlessly stream the game. There are a few people in the Stadia subreddit that I frequent that generally buy the Stadia version, if available on the platform, because convenience is a selling point for them even if they have a ps5 or Xbox series X.

— Fair Play: It’s much more difficult to cheat online when the game files are not stored locally.

 

A popular vlogger posted a video barely 2 days ago, which he did a gaming test using M1 Ipad Pro 2021 to see if it performs well. The games he used to test the ipad's performance and speed are: Asphalt 9, PUBG, Wonderbox, Divinity Original Sin 2, Oceanhorn 2, Warface, Shadowgun Legends, Minecraft, and Call of Duty Mobile.

Just in case you want to know his verdict, just click the link I posted below. If this violates the forum rules, please let me know or delete my post.

Here it is (just wait 5 seconds then skip the ad):
http://gestyy.com/eiIcaP

 

My reply was about the format of Stadia being a distribution service much like Steam not about whether you think it’s healthy or not. If Stadia fizzles out and shuts down it doesn’t change the fact cloud streaming has an exciting future.

As for the rest of the post…

Head Honchos departing is standard business. I don’t recall people too worried about PlayStation when they had a shakeup at the top. The SG&E closure means very little if they’ve never got a project off the ground. Their third party support has been the best it’s been to date which, let’s be honest, is what most users prefer. As far as gamers giving the service flack is nothing new…they did the same thing with Steam years ago before it became the generally accepted form of distribution and gamers are traditionally conservative and cynical when it comes to new media especially from brands they that are not established with gaming. It took Microsoft years and many millions to establish itself in the gaming space.

Well forty years ago physical media was the dominant media nowadays digital distribution is the dominant form of consumption and more kids are consuming games and media through their phones and tablets. Times change.

If the convenience isn’t convincing to you then that’s fine but for a lot of people they like not having their software tied to their PC or gaming console and not having to worry about hundreds of gigs worth of data. In the near future if I want to play the new PlayStation or Microsoft exclusive I’ll probably play it through their respective cloud service without having to worry about multiple pieces of hardware.

 

To further expand on my original reply.


Would the M1 iPad Pro inspire more AA-AAA ports?


The short answer is “no, not without compensation if we want AAA ports”. We do occasionally get AA ports here and there but very few AAA games on the AppStore.

If Apple wants the M1 IPad to have AAA ports then they will have to “inspire” certain game developers to create M1 ports for big name games since there’s still a stigma that AAA gaming on the AppStore is not what mobile gamers want and it’s a money losing venture since mobile gamers don’t want to spend AAA money up front. Yes I want Resident Evil Village on the AppStore even if it’s not the visual showcase that you would find on the PS5…on the other hand Capcom may not see that as the best use of their resources.

Now of Apple footed the bill and paid Capcom to bring Resident Evil over than, of course, they would do it if the price is right. I believe Stadia paid in excess of ten million to make a deal on Resident Evil VII / VIII and I think one more Capcom game. There’s absolutely no excuse for Apple not to be as aggressive, if not more, to cater to big name Studios such as Capcom, SqureEnix, Rockstar and Ubisoft to showcase their latest hardware.

Will some big name games eventually come to the AppStore “organically” without intervention? Sure, after many years of availability on other platforms we’ll get a few AAA games but they’re nearly “retro” games that have already been experienced by the vast majority of those that are interested in AAA gaming in the first place by the time they arrive on the storefront. Intervention from Apple is key.

Unfortunately Apple’s always had a “arms length” strategy when it comes to gaming on the AppStore making sure to keep their distance and letting the pieces fall where they may…and for the most part that’s been a highly successful strategy, as far as profits, just not for AAA gaming.

Which is kind of disappointing since the new M1 iPads can store up to three terabytes worth of data and, storage wise, much more robust than the current console generation. There should be a healthy lineup of uncompromising heavy hitters showcasing the M1 devices.

With that being said if I was Apple I would be in the process of getting some deals done at this very moment. I believe having a handful of AAA games that cater to the latest devices is healthy for the AppStore and eventually may change opinions on mobile gaming and, of course, reward those who buy the latest and greatest. All it takes is a couple of big premium successes to get the momentum turning preferably getting a few big name third party titles on the same date they release on other platforms.

 

I have just sat and read most of this, it really makes for an interesting read.

I personally love the concept of streaming, but as mentioned, its just not there for me yet. My internet is not up to standard, but it runs reasonably ok on my 5G data plan.

X-Com 2 on my iPhone, yeah is dumbed down a bit, but, running on an M1 iPad I have no doubt would be absolutely class.

For me its got to be local, at this moment in time... iPads are quick, efficient, pick up and play machines... There is no reason why World of Warcraft, Grand Theft Auto 5, as well as other titles which are hugely popular couldn't be ported across.

I remember when 2k ported Bioshock, I was amazed at what I was playing on an iPhone 5... The chips in these new machines are phenomenal, did you see the M1 mac running Tomb Raider? Why can that not be put onto the M1 iPad?

These chips are catching up with consoles too, it won't be long before they surpass them. Apple have deep pockets.

 

If you haven’t given Stadia a shot I would recommend trying that to see if you actually can play cloud gaming reasonably well since Stadia seems to perform the best with “serviceable” connections.

I have 100mbps down (although realistically near 30 - 50mbps when other family members are watching tv or on their own iPads) and with few exceptions it streams the gaming content great on my iPad at 1080p with no noticeable input lag using the Stadia controller. The only caveat is that users will need to setup their router for best performance by making sure their cloud gaming device is on the 5G network and other devices like televisions and non-primary devices are using the 2.4G network. Of course experiences will vary but it’s worth giving it a shot.

The reason I’m waving the Stadia flag and to a larger extent the cloud gaming flag is because it’s the most realistic answer to the question. For AAA gaming to thrive on your Apple device you need to use a service independent of Apple.

If for certain you know that your internet can’t stream games then someday sooner rather than later you’ll probably be able to. It is a game changer once you’re able to effectively use cloud gaming on any compatible display.

Absolutely agree and I would go as far and say , especially with the M1, that it’s too ahead of its time compared to what the AppStore offers.

Maybe one day we’ll see a local version of Tomb Raider on the M1 iPad Pro. I think for many developers they want to reach as many users as possible with their port and a game like Tomb Raider probably can only be played on the latest and greatest iPad. As technology improves and the M1 iPad is replaced by the M2 and M3 you’ll possibly begin to see much larger games as “the basement” becomes a device that has terrabytes worth of storage with comparable processing to a Mac.

 

Maybe one day we’ll see a local version of Tomb Raider on the M1 iPad Pro. I think for many developers they want to reach as many users as possible with their port and a game like Tomb Raider probably can only be played on the latest and greatest iPad. As technology improves and the M1 iPad is replaced by the M2 and M3 you’ll possibly begin to see much larger games as “the basement” becomes a device that has terrabytes worth of storage with comparable processing to a Mac.

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Completely agree, once the £329/$329 iPad starts to receive 'M' chips, I think that's when we will start to see the AAA titles. I appreciate this is a few years away though. I can imagine, the standard iPad getting the M1 once the M3 is in the pro level models... Or maybe they will stick with the 'A' chips, who knows, I just feel for iPads to evolve further, they need that extra horsepower, as people are staring to replace computers with these devices. (Although I say this typing on a mac, )

I am so impressed with the users in this thread, such a vast amount of knowledge... Hopefully some developers are reading and understanding our thirst for these big games on our portable devices. I can't get the TV in my busy household, so I depend upon my devices to get my fix. X-Com 2 and Dead by Daylight are my go to games at the moment, but there is nothing more satisfying that popping in my AirPods, having a games with great levels of depth to get stuck into, rather than the pick up and play titles like Clash Royale etc...

I also think that Apple Arcade is very much in its infancy and we have special moments to come in the future... There are some really good titles on there at the moment and I think as things progress and developers start to see a return on their titles, we will start to see the big developers jump on board. We have 2K now, so hopefully more will start to follow.[/QUOTE]

 

This is an interesting read yes I want more bigger titles on the App Store and Apple Arcade rise of the tomb raider would be awesome even bioshock remastered would be great I agree with all the comments

 

Remember that gta article it looks like it’s happening the gta remastered

 

Few years is perhaps wishful thinking. The infrastructure is not there yet, both in theory and in the minds of corporations that will certainly find more interest in artificial caps than immediately opening the dam for the service to run at full speed. It gives them something to bargain for and prevents users from experiencing a powerful but perhaps more instable service. On top of that, there's the responsibility of the streaming service's reliability tied to the quality of a game's centralized netcode that also create another barrier.

The culture is changing, there's much less attachment to a product, there's no "my" game. These ever changing products, always mutating, are making it hard to be attached to them when you don't even control the identity of the game since it's always in movement.
You're just reduced to being a user. Not that the freemium is necessarily entirely at fault here, or even that it's a bad or good model, it certainly has advantages. Also PC games were highly modifiable many years ago and still are to some extent but the players hardly stick to the vanilla version and usually always accept the latest update. Perhaps the craziest aspect is in people paying immense fortunes into assets they simply do not own.
I would not be surprised if we started hearing about archaic gaming.

Yes, it adds up really quickly, yet you own nothing. All this content is managed like a bucket of nuggets would be.
Besides, the subscription model requires a very long dedication by the player and a focus on few products in fact. It's a virtual walled garden inside the walled garden. So many walls in walls and we'll call that a prison.

People are not given much of a choice. They had no issue with ownership in 2010. People simply got sucked into free to play games for which they wouldn't even begin to want to own them, notwithstanding that some of these games, if they had done without the IAP features and sometimes the blatant cash grabs and casino looting systems that actually spoil them, might have been very good as simple standalone products.
All of this ties into the question of what a finished game is supposed to be. For those who played on consoles ages ago, we know. Same for arcades, and even old PC games which could receive upgrades were meant to be perfect products on the release date without any schemes such as beta testing and early access.
The culture of "when it's done" and closed Q&A died a long time ago. If there is a fragmentation to be speak of then it's perhaps also on the identity of games themselves that seem vaguely started and never truly finished until players grow simply bored of them. Then the game's development, the eternal beta, is officially closed by the publisher.

Price wise most certainly, if the devices and connection meet the requirements. There's perhaps a bit of laziness there, and the more one gets lazy, the less he has control and freedom. There's also the continuous updates that are grotesque in size unless you have the super broadband to deal with them, all of which massively restricts the potential market.
Games as a Service (GaaS) seems a valid system but it's not there yet, it won't eclipse standalone products without cable and 5G being democratized. That may take ten or fifteen years. At which point, energy and data storage will become so trivial and games capping at what they need in terms of resources, that it will become very easy to pay, own and install a game in a flash, and even be allowed to make copies of it locally. By then we will have petabytes towers whereas the size of maps and textures won't exactly need to increase so much, whereas most of the lacking details will be achieved with shaders. It will all be about those who can purchase the devices that can do those calculations locally, and those who simply want to have a glorified tactile screen with joypad support. But in 2030, we will have nearly fifty decades of game archives which alone would provide more than enough gaming experiences without craving ultra realism, perhaps there will be a renewal for vintage gaming and demakes, all of which will run while exploiting a fraction of the power of these future devices, even the cheap ones.

That's an oddball because it's essentially asking to pay the price of ownership, but for a cloud system where only the player data is streamed, so you're not owning the product, just a ticket of right of use.
Overall the notion of property is important (and this ties into political and cultural principles) so it's not guaranteed to remain true.

All true points. The storage bottleneck might be temporary though and open world orgies might go out of fashion. Current AAA games might altogether wither on the vine, they are prohibitively expensive to create and compensate the initial investment and continuing injection of cash for maintenance with a flood of content, from wider maps to cosmetics and crap.

The real question is how much of a market do these people represent. There is, on the other hand, the classical and likely larger group of those who are happy with a few games in a given physical place, perhaps because they like to associate a type of game with a certain type of device.
Besides, there's a competition for customers' time. With a flood of movies, spinoffs and shows on streaming, it leaves much less time for people to play and we may see players move towards shorter but denser games, perhaps AA ones mainly, or accept to stick to one or two AAAs for long periods of time.

Technology is one thing, but perception of the device's value as a gaming platform in a peer-recognize gaming environment is another. Are people today thinking I'll buy a M1-iSomething because I love games? Not really, games are a second thought despite being extremely profitable, even if it's a ridiculously small fraction of them. Apple's devices aren't designed to look and feel like gaming devices either, and are extremely expensive. Players looking for a good, say better gaming experience and ready to spend that much money on hardware will want a system chiefly designed for games first, whether they play in the sofa, in a power gamer chair, at the bus station or on the toilet seat.
So even if the service were independent of Apple and very good, you would first need to make players want to shift to Apple products after precisely selling them as respectable gaming systems, which they are not despite being entirely capable of being so technically.
The brand and perception matter more here. It's almost if Apple hated having to satisfy gamers by having games on their lofty expensive devices, as if games were disgusting yet very profitable. There's an iPad mini designed as a gaming platform from the very beginning, it's called the Switch.

 

When I wrote “a few” I meant more like ten to fifteen years although possibly as early as five although I will readily admit five is getting into the wishful thinking category. You’re right though if anything is going to hold back game streaming for large segments of people it will be data caps and all around poor service from large cable corps that hold monopolies in many areas.

The remarkable thing though is that certain cloud based services have adapted to low download speeds offered and the best performing one today is Stadia which arguably has the best streaming tech available which should come to no surprise since it’s Google. It might surprise you though how slow your download speed can be and still stream 1080p. Many users today could probably use Stadia flawlessly and they don’t even know it. They’re probably of the mindset, like I was, that you need download speeds into the hundreds of megabytes per second which isn’t true at all.

The big problem with Stadia is that it’s Google Stadia. Judging from your replies I think we can both agree that perception is important and Stadia undoubtedly has a perception problem. Gamers are very tribal (like most enthusiasts) and, as of now, Stadia has been exiled from the group. The positive outlook would be that there have been services and apps that have started out with a cold reception and later became industry leaders or highly competitive. The two that come to mind is Valve’s Steam which almost single-handily changed the gaming industry and Google’s Chrome browser which has the most users despite a very slow start.

It’s been almost twenty years since we had games that us, as gamers, had any illusion of ownership. The last main console Gen where you bought a game from the store and played it without any “day 1” patch or any crucial updates was the PlayStation 2/GameCube/Xbox Gen.

Right now we are replying to each other on a forum dedicated to mobile games that have to be downloaded in order to use and for many, on this website, they prefer to pay upfront.

Once they purchase their premium game from the Apple AppStore or the Google Play store they feel a sense of ownership despite the fact they own nothing. Every user reading this knows all too well about the harsh reality of actually owning nothing when a developer abandons almost their entire catalog of high cost premium games (Slitherine games) or having a love/hate relationship with a company like SquareEnix that have a few premium games that have currently been abandoned and have been sold until recently (Final Fantasy IX) with users hoping for a update.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that ownership is more of a state of mind than anything tangible. Back when Steam debuted in 2003 it was harshly received by many PC users that didn’t understand “why someone would pay money for a game that they downloaded from the internet.” Although downloading of games existed long before Steam it was Valve’s service that made the idea much more mainstream.

Much like in 2003 this current generation of users may feel perplexed by the notion of purchasing an app through a cloud based service but history has shown that people generally become more accepting of a technology or way of doing things.

I’ve listened to a few hardcore gamers who are not too fond of the notion of cloud gaming holding out hope for petabyte drives that will one day become affordable. Personally I think that’s more unlikely to happen before the rise of cloud based gaming but we shall see.

I do believe AAA games will always be around but I believe that over time that mainstream gaming will begin to mirror mobile gaming (which is already happening). In that the big AAA games will be more service-based games that are free to download with even heavier monetization in game. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit in five years if a future Call Of Duty for the PC and console is completely free to play with the single player (and multiplayer non battle royal) portion being as aggressively monetized as Warzone is currently although the entire package will be initially offered free of charge.

I agree with you. That has been Apples MO since day one. They make a boat load of profit from the gaming portion of the AppStore yet never fully embrace the gaming culture. Bottom line for Apple is that it’s a “bad look” and beneath them and they may be right. Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world doing things their way. If pushing fashion and style has been working for them they probably feel they’re on the correct path.