Dan Masters:

Apple has always had a rocky relationship with gaming. They have historically paid little attention to gaming — most notably on the Mac. However, post-iPhone they demonstrated an apparent newfound commitment to games by seemingly devoting significant resources and attention to it each year.

However, this would turn out to be a mirage, as they iterated very little and hardly encouraged developer adoption — instead taking the “Build it and they’ll come because we’re Apple” approach.

Gaming is an area that Apple have gone backwards in on iOS. In the early days of the App Store, games were more ambitious and increasingly got more in line with console games. Compare that to today, where casual fremium games dominate the top grossing charts, and it’s clear to see that the App Store hasn’t become the thriving gaming platform to rival consoles that would be suggested all those years back.

Game Center is something that I was excited about when it was first released. The idea of having a rival to PSN and Xbox Live was on iOS showed that Apple were serious about iOS as a gaming platform. Save for one update, Game Center never got any real attention from Apple and it has slowly but surely slid into obscurity.

iPhones and iPads have become real computing powerhouses. Imagine what a gaming company could produce if they could justify spending big money on a project for mobile platforms. I hope that the addition of ARKit which was announced at WWDC, points towards a revival of gaming on iOS.