Apple’s WWDC 2024 event is coming up, following on the heels of Computex 2024. With it comes a potential smorgasbord of product reveals, software, and of course generative AI. AI will most likely be the biggest talking point of WWDC, just as it was for Computex. One major feature in particular, a rumored "Apple Intelligence," will be taking center stage at the event, according to Bloomberg.
Since the show is consumer-based, tons of updates for Apple’s machines are expected to debut, offering new generative AI tools. Some of these could include agenda scheduling, and iPhone notifications, AI fitness tracking, and playlists made by AI in Apple Music by giving it a prompt.
With all these predictions and reports flying around, there’s one major topic that is missing: Apple gaming. Will Apple make any surprise announcements this year? I sure hope so, as someone who’s been quite vocal on the potential for gaming on Apple's platform. I'm tentatively hopeful about the progress of Apple's gaming experience.
Studio partnerships
One of the biggest announcements during WWDC 2023 was a partnership between Apple and Hideo Kojima’s Kojima Productions. This reveal eventually led to the release of Death Stranding: Director’s Cut for Apple silicon, specifically Mac, iPad, and iPhone 15 Pro models. It's an excellent port that takes full advantage of the A17 Pro chip, as well as iPad tablets using the M1 or M2 chips. It also supports controllers like the Sony DualSense or Backbone One, as well as on-screen touch controls for mobile devices.
This partnership has already born fruit and it’s only the beginning. Kojima stated during last year’s event that future Kojima Productions titles will be coming to the platform, meaning more gaming content coming to Macs, iPhones, and iPads. Apple needs to capitalize on the attention of WWDC 2024 and focus on the potential of Apple gaming through Kojima’s fame. I'd love to see more partnerships with notable developers and studios.
We need more ports
Kojima’s partnership resulted in an excellent port of Death Stranding for iOS but even before that Apple has had some amazing ports for its devices, proving what Mac computers are capable of. One of the most notable is Resident Evil Village, which was brought over to macOS back in 2022. It’s a true technological marvel that runs at framerates in the 100s, and with absolutely stunning visual effects to boot.
There have been tons of other impressive ports on Mac devices over the years, including Crusader Kings 3, Stardew Valley, Hades, No Man’s Sky, Minecraft, EVE Online, and Disco Elysium. Each title, representing the best PC games, has shown that Apple ports games that widely range in genres, and the hardware is capable of bringing out the best in them. If Apple announced even more popular games for macOS and iOS, it could appeal to PC gamers who would otherwise be deterred by the still-lacking game library.
Developer toolkits are key
One of the keys to Resident Evil Village performing so incredibly on macOS is two toolkits: the application programming interface (API) toolkit Metal 3, and MetalFX Upscaling. The latter is the equivalent of Nvidia DLSS. The EVE Online developers also credit its macOS port’s success to the toolkits Apple has provided them over the years.
Historically, Apple has been rather conservative with its developer tools, which resulted in the slow growth of Mac gaming. It’s clear that when Apple invests in these toolkits, they can transform games into technological marvels, which in turn contributes to the ports’ success.
Since Apple will already be delving into generative AI tools for its devices, why not apply AI to gaming? Create AI tools that can automatically upscale resolution, automate certain tasks to make development easier, and more.
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