Think about it, your iPhone is also your phone. Your hub for the internet, communication and connection with other people. It’s a camera, a computer, a bunch of tools like a calculator and compass and the thing you probably spend most of your day glued into especially on your free time. It’s screen, it’s space, it’s resources are likely sacred and you don’t even realize it. To make that device home to a 60GB-100GB download of a game that makes it run warmer ,requires a controller to play well and tanks your battery is not great, and most of us, if we have an alternative, will likely go with the alternative. And while the Steam Deck may not be for everybody and the Switch is a little underpowered, there might still be an alternative even for the people who want to play their console games on the mobile device they already have : Game streaming.

Game streaming is probably the thing most of us want.

Apple showed off the iPhone 15 and it’s Resident Evil demo to reviewers as if it’s this simple, seamless integration and an app you could open and play everyday just like you do Candy Crush. But any gamer will tell you, that’s never the case. The full game is about 13GB to start, will require a meaty download, is sold separately from any pre-existing versions so if you have it on PC or console you have to buy it again for USD $60 , and as we’ve already mentioned, it has thermal, graphical and battery limitations. But what if you could pay about 8 bucks for it and over 200 more games, connect to a really good Wi-Fi connection and just play the game through game streaming, without a need to sacrifice your precious device space  or battery. A stream is basically handled like video so the way you play video for over 8 hours on your phone is the same way you can game for 8 hours. it’s essentially the actual seamless promise Apple made for the iPhone 15, but available in a subscription that has a bunch of games like Xbox Gamepass Ultimate. It’s not for everyone either, after all here in Zim you would need a lot of money for the stellar internet connection. But for context, anyone who can buy a $1000-$1300 phone and a $70 – $100 controller to play   a $60 game must have the money for the internet too, so streaming would actually be the cheaper option. And with it being pushed by both Sony and Microsoft, along with other gamer centric companies like NVIDIA, it will likely make a bigger splash very soon as well.

So why is Apple doing this? Is it dumb? No. If anything, using the iPhone 15 as a gaming machine proves that either :

1. A) Apple just decided to haphazardly throw an entry of sorts into the gaming space, but didn’t outright have all the finer details of what’s needed to make a mobile gaming machine

2. B) Apple instead wants to show the power and capability it’s devices have in order to lure more game developers and gamers to the Mac, and is using the universal popularity of the iPhone to do that.

The latter option seems the most likely to me, as it would essentially be a Trojan horse to get developers making games for Apple. Right now it’s the iPhone 15 Pro sure, but in 2 years or so, 50% or so of the iPhone’s user base will have a phone with this a processor as powerful as the A17, and the A17 is literally a scaled down version of the same architecture in the M3 processor. Which means Apple will use the hundreds of millions of iPhone users as a way to lure developers with a large user base, then tell that same developer that with a few lines of code, that game will also run perfectly on a Mac. And honestly if you’re a developer trying to make money, it would be a no-Brainer to you to expand where your game is available. And just like that, Apple would start infiltrating the gaming space bit by bit.

It’s not a full proof plan of course. But it would be a much better attempt than the what they’ve tried in the past, and would likely cement the last consumer area for Apple to get a foothold in which is gaming. That’s always been a Windows area of dominance, and a reason why some people will still not buy a MacBook despite knowing it might be a superior buying choice for everything else they want. If Apple can get that 1 buyer’s games of choice in the Mac, then that would be it for that one buyer, and likely many like them. It would be a whole new day for Apple gaming, and arguably the death of Windows. But all of it is still hinging on one thing: iPhone gaming is a marketing ploy, a publicity stunt. And many of you still may not want to hear that, and we’ll for you, I still have one more example.

This has all happened before

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a console game on the iPhone. And no we don’t mean Fortnite or the impressive Bright: Memory, instead we’re talking about a very similar case to today : Bioshock for the iPhone in 2014. Now if you were a big PS3/ Xbox 360 gamer, you knew exactly what Bioshock was. The franchise was one of the biggest action ones at the beginning of that console generation in 2007 and in 2014, 2K games basically ported the whole original game to be played on the likes of the iPhone 5s and 6. It was 7 years later yes, but it was a moment for the iPhone to some extent. The PS3 generation was just beginning to end (just like the PS4 generation is ending now) and having a fairly recent game run on a phone was a technical marvel. But even then Apple welcomed it just as a way to basically show the superiority of the iPhone and maybe encourage a few more devs to port a game to it too. And yes , what they’re doing now is far more focused and has a lot more effort put into it, but the result is still not the iPhone being the new PSP ( even Sony can’t seem to make one of those nowadays), it’s the iPhone always being a marketing means to an end. Whether to boost it’s own sales, or to revive the Mac as a gaming avenue along with the rest of the Apple portfolio like the iPad. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I just think more of us need to be aware of what Apple is actually doing. Especially when the likely result will be Android manufacturers bending over backwards next year to get their own console game deals onto their devices. Will it be dumb? Probably. But least you’ll be wiser and won’t fall for it. Right?

Right?

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