AAA Games on Smartphones
- Thread starter Cory
- Start date
Phones don't (yet) have the compute power that current insane-budget AAA games currently demand to give them their look and feel, and they already balk at having to make a slimmed down version for the Switch (which still has more graphics horsepower than many phones)
Certainly it's been tried before over the last 15 years, but between the aforementioned lack of horsepower and the lack of a controller, AAA has largely given up - consider also that the most successful games on mobile are those that favour and are designed for stop-start play, e.g. while you're waiting in line for something or in the bathroom...
Certainly it's been tried before over the last 15 years, but between the aforementioned lack of horsepower and the lack of a controller, AAA has largely given up - consider also that the most successful games on mobile are those that favour and are designed for stop-start play, e.g. while you're waiting in line for something or in the bathroom...
Cory
Engaged Member
You can use different types of controllers on smartphones though.
This is probably why I'm addicted to Pokemon GO.
You can but the folks who would don't. Because if you're going to be spending $70 upwards (standard AAA pricing) on a game, you're not about to play it on a tiny screen.
Folks that really want to play AAA games on the move are going to go with the Steam Deck or the Switch, where AAA gaming already exists and where people already have libraries.
It's the perfect stop-start game, combined with both gacha and collectible mechanics, so it hits all the dopamine receptors going.
Cory
Engaged Member
All good points and that's crazily expensive for a mobile game, AAA or not.
I would love to own a Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch over a smartphone that can play AAA games mainly due to the amount of games available on them. If AAA games were more abundant on smartphones, I wouldn't mind a tiny screen too much. But that has yet to be seen, as it's a newer technology.
It’s not really a newer technology - it’s a different one. Smartphones as we know them have been around for almost 2 decades at this point - the iPhone debuted a year after the Nintendo Wii for context, and the Wii wasn’t exactly the graphical powerhouse.
Actually that’s not a great comparison. The same year as the debut of the iPhone was the first Assassin’s Creed game. Complete with installer for Windows Vista, because at that time Steam didn’t just let anyone publish games (it was on,y in 2008 that people could integrate Steam without Valve being the publisher)
What’s actually interesting is how much faster mobile has gotten in the time. Considering that you have criteria for mobile that don’t exist in the same way for consoles (which, at this point, are basically PCs that run a custom OS) - consoles have a higher power intake, higher capacity for getting hot and capacity for storage by virtue of not moving around, while phones have all these criteria in a much more restricted capacity.
Given that, it’s incredible to think that a top of the line phone is comparable to a PC maybe 4-5 years old, as the current numbers put phones down at approximately 10x slower in raw compute in benchmarks than current gen laptops, and allowing for Moore’s law, that gives us 4-5 years as a timeframe.
Which for a device that fits in your hand and won’t get up to approaching 100°C is pretty neat, but in reality the throttling factor is battery life rather than compute.
People see the price tag and they want to play for a few hours. But a phone isn’t going to be able to go full throttle for hours, even if plugged in, because at full throttle they’ll actually still burn through more power than they’ll be able to charge.
Actually that’s not a great comparison. The same year as the debut of the iPhone was the first Assassin’s Creed game. Complete with installer for Windows Vista, because at that time Steam didn’t just let anyone publish games (it was on,y in 2008 that people could integrate Steam without Valve being the publisher)
What’s actually interesting is how much faster mobile has gotten in the time. Considering that you have criteria for mobile that don’t exist in the same way for consoles (which, at this point, are basically PCs that run a custom OS) - consoles have a higher power intake, higher capacity for getting hot and capacity for storage by virtue of not moving around, while phones have all these criteria in a much more restricted capacity.
Given that, it’s incredible to think that a top of the line phone is comparable to a PC maybe 4-5 years old, as the current numbers put phones down at approximately 10x slower in raw compute in benchmarks than current gen laptops, and allowing for Moore’s law, that gives us 4-5 years as a timeframe.
Which for a device that fits in your hand and won’t get up to approaching 100°C is pretty neat, but in reality the throttling factor is battery life rather than compute.
People see the price tag and they want to play for a few hours. But a phone isn’t going to be able to go full throttle for hours, even if plugged in, because at full throttle they’ll actually still burn through more power than they’ll be able to charge.
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