Smartphones and tablets have become the dominant gaming platform in 2016, and their market share on the global gaming scene will likely continue to grow. This might come as a surprise for some but consider this: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, one of the most popular online multiplayer shooters, has around 10 million active players worldwide, while Candy Crush, King.com’s popular casual game, had a user count exceeding 90 million (!) in 2014. Mobile games come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from surprisingly basic titles to elaborate fantasy worlds to explore. Their incredible variety and increased accessibility make mobile games so popular today, not to mention the fact that they are “free to play” most of the time, relying on ads or in-app purchases for revenue. Yet not all mobile games are created equal, especially when it comes to hardware requirements. Today, we’re going to take a look at both ends of the spectrum.
Mobile browser games
With Adobe Flash falling out of grace on many platforms, some have predicted the death of browser gaming. Yet browser-based games are not dead at all, they just moved off the PC and onto smartphones, especially in a specific area: real money gaming. Thousands of players go mobile with Vegas Palms online casino each month, seeing easy, convenient games to play on the go. The Vegas Palms offers them just that, and with a twist: each of its mobile games – over 130 titles in the Vegas Palms Mobile – only require an HTML5-capable browser to run. They are not even confined to smartphone browsers either – as long as they identify the right way, the web browsers running on smart TVs and gaming consoles can also run all games at the Vegas Palms’ smartphone version. The games there are among the most undemanding among mobile games, running on an incredible variety of devices, without regards to the operating system on them.
“Console-grade graphics”
When the iPhone 6 came out, complete with its larger screen, Apple promised its users “console-grade graphics” on the go. While the inherent limitations of mobile technology did have a (negative) impact on the handset’s gaming performance, its graphics capabilities were simply amazing. Besides, while it couldn’t outdo consoles like the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, Apple’s iPhone 6 did manage to provide its users with visuals that made them forget not only about desktop gaming but handheld consoles as well.
The improved gaming capabilities of the iPhone 6 were showcased through a game called Vainglory, which was a truly amazing experience. An iPhone exclusive at the time, the game used the last bit of processing power the iPhone 6’s SoC (System on a Chip) had in it to provide players with the most wonderful visuals ever seen on a smartphone. Since then, more games with demanding but amazing graphics have been released – titles like CSR Racing 2 use the smartphones’ GPUs to their maximum.
Smartphone gaming doesn’t get much better than that.