There’s no doubt about it. 2016 was when mobile gaming really came of age with many predicting that 2017 will be the year when more people will be playing on hand-held devices than would be with consoles and PCs.
With near universal wi-fi access as well as the developing technology of smartphones it was obvious that this most convenient form of gaming would suddenly really be coming into its own. After all, even when the oldest Nokia phones came with the Snake game included it proved addictive enough for many. Now, when so much more is possible, little wonder that millions are transfixed by the games they can play on their phones. From the universally popular Candy Crush Saga to the global phenomenon of Pokémon Go and the classic World of Warcraft there are games specifically aimed at certain target audiences – who seem all too eager to play.
But alongside this race to create ever-more involving games the technological side of things is also under great pressure to keep pace in order to provide a player experience to match, and no matter what the industry of gaming developers and operators have to stay on top of user experience from bingo and slots sites such as winkbingo to puzzle masters such as Candy Crush it is the player experience that will keep drawing the users back for more.
This also has to be put in the context that every other form of media can provide stunning visual displays – from high definition being available on almost all TVs to the huge advances that have been made in 3D films in recent years. So stunning mobile graphics have to compete hard with these simply to meet players’ expectations.
This has posed quite a challenge for the tech firms that design and produce the graphics chips for mobile devices with their holy grail being able to produce hardware that can match, and hopefully even exceed, the quality of console games’ graphics.
Naturally, there are many restrictions and limitations that they face. For example phones and mobile devices have been growing slimmer and lighter so space is severely limited. Batteries also have many demands placed on them so a graphic chip which draws too much power will also have a detrimental effect on several other functions of the device.
However the designers are undeterred, and even optimistic. At a conference earlier this year a spokesman for ARM, who produce most of the CPU core designs for Android phones, announced that by 2018 the mobile graphics chips they produce will be generating visual effects that are just as good as ones from the latest generation of PlayStation and Xbox consoles.
Games developers are also working hand in hand with phone makers to reach new heights as Epic Games showed when they showcased a video demonstrating the future of graphics at the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S7.
The latter shows just what stunning effects can be achieved on even the relatively small screen of a phone even at a “prototype” stage of development. And if that’s just the beta phase of the process we can look forward to an even more stunning finished result.
