[dropcap size=small]F[/dropcap]or those of you paying close attention to the recent upgrades to Apple’s iOS hardware, this may not come as a surprise. It is impressive, nonetheless, that DICE was able to run portions of Battlefield 4 on an iOS device, thanks to the Frostbite Engine and to the graphic enhancements brought by Apple’s ‘Metal‘ which allows developers access to the raw processing power of the GPU without the overhead previously required.
There are groups of gamers claiming “...whatever is possible on consoles should be possible on mobile devices.” While this is a tall order, it may come sooner than we expected. DICE has yet to reveal exactly what ‘portions’ of the game were actually run and what plans are to get the rest of the game running on iOS, but some say “...previously there was a tradeoff needed between number of objects and visual fidelity. You either had to drop the number of objects on-screen to keep things sharp, or sacrifice visual fidelity to accommodate a higher number of objects. With Metal, this is no longer the case. We can run a high number of objects while retaining the graphical fidelity.“
“…whatever is possible on consoles should be possible on mobile devices.“-Kristoffer Benjaminsson, owner of the Frostbite Engine.
Of course, any game on iOS could have the potential to be great… if someone somewhere made a decent third party controller that wasn’t complete sh*t.
There is more to this conversation, though. If the mild success of Playstation Move and Xbox Kinect told the industry anything, it’s this: just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD. The fact DICE was able to get Battlefield 4 running on iOS is impressive, without doubt. But, how many gamers would be willing to play a twitch-reflex shooter like the Battlefield franchise on a touch screen?
Have a difference of opinion? Leave your thoughts in the comments and let us know what you think!
The controller. That is really all that holds it back.