Apple holds press event showing off its ‘latest advances in gaming’

This week Apple invited members of the press and influencers to take a closer look at the games coming to iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac this year. Accordingly Tom’s guidethe event “featured everything from Apple Arcade’s extensive lineup on Apple TV, to The Medium running natively on Macs, to inventive fitness games from Apple Entrepreneur Camp.”

Apple’s… first event of the year?

Apple has held small events like this by invitation only in the past. They generally focus on giving the press and influencers a more intimate, hands-on experience with new products. Apple has its own location in New York City where it occasionally holds private briefings with members of the press to give presentations and hands-on demonstrations.

In this case, everything was focused on gaming. A handful of game developers attended the event to show what’s on their roadmap for Apple platforms this year.

YouTuber Jacklyn Dallas, “NothingButTech,” wrote of the experience in an Instagram post on Friday:

Yesterday I went to an Apple event that really got me SOOOO inspired and excited!!!!

It was a group of developers creating apps for Apple Arcade and Mac. Games are special to me because they can transcend cultural differences and are based on storytelling and fun

The developers were also infectiously passionate about their new releases – made my whole day 🙂

According to Jacklyn, the games Apple showcased at this week’s event are:

• Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile
• Honkai: Starway
• Shipwrecked from Lego Starwars
• Perform legends
• The medium

CNN’s Mike Andronico also attended the event and continued to write about the day CNN underlined. Andronico summed it up by saying, “2023 looks like a great time to be an Apple gamer.” Andronico left the event impressed with Call of Duty: Warzone, coming to iPhone later this year.

Activision’s latest bite-sized Call of Duty game looked great and ran at a smooth 120 frames per second on an iPhone 14 Pro Max – Apple’s current top-end phone – although it’s been optimized to run well on recent iPhone generations to run. I did notice the handset getting warm during my gaming time, and more worryingly, the game would completely crash towards the end of an intense game. Activision was quick to point out that we were playing pre-release software, so hopefully those bugs will be ironed out to avoid accidental trips to the Gulag.

The game that struck Andronico the most, however, was The medium. Apple presents The medium running on a new M2 Mac mini:

I demoed The Medium on a new Mac Mini M2, and it looked just as good on my fully loaded home PC as I remembered – mind you, one with a high-end Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics card. The game’s moody cinematic action ran at an immersive 4K resolution and what looked like at least 60 frames per second (meaning it was nice and smooth), and while I did notice the occasional stutter as we got into dual-reality gameplay, it held up it still performs impressively well in cutscenes and intense split-screen action sequences alike. While developer Bloober Team couldn’t give any specific performance numbers, the company did note that the game has been tested on both M1 and M2 Macs and should run well even on the basic 2020 MacBook Air. That’s partly due to Apple’s Metal technology, which uses software smarts to optimize games for Mac devices on the fly.

Marshall Honorof von Tom’s guide also attended the event and wrote extensively about the experience. Honorof described it as “a press event highlighting the iPhone maker’s latest advances in gaming.”

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile was one of the games featured at an Apple press event that highlighted the iPhone maker’s latest advances in gaming. The company showcased everything from Apple Arcade’s extensive lineup on Apple TV, to The Medium running natively on Macs, to inventive fitness games from Apple Entrepreneur Camp.

In fact, Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile has been an oddity in that regard. It wasn’t developed by Apple; it’s not exclusive to iOS; it is not part of Apple Arcade. But it offers a perfect example of how well iOS can run mobile games and how those games are starting to overcome the limitations of their platform.

As part of the transition to Apple silicon, Apple has increasingly started offering the Mac as a gaming platform alongside its continued focus on games for iPhone and iPad. An event like this is a great way to showcase some of the games coming to platforms this year.

We’re still waiting for more content from this week’s event to show up. If you spot something, let us know.

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