October was chock full of big game releases, from Alan Wake II to Spider-Man 2 to Super Mario Wonder, but there was one launch that, if you’re an Android user, likely slipped through the cracks.Resident Evil Village isn’t a new game— it’s two and a half years old, if you can believe it — but itisnew to iOS, where it arrived timed perfectly with Halloween. It’s far from the only modern console game iPhone 15 Pro owners are getting over the next few months. Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Death Stranding, and Resident Evil 4 are all set to launch soon, with two of those games having launched on consoles this year.
To be clear, there’snothing necessarily keeping these console gamestied to specific iOS devices.Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipsethas a pretty beefy GPU in it — I’d be surprised if both it and its predecessor couldn’t handle Resident Evil Village. Really, it comes down to development teams being willing to port these titles over to Android, and — perhaps even more crucially — an audience being willing to buy them.
Themobile app market has always been in a tough spot, especially when it comes to paid services. The vast majority of users would rather sit through endless ads and be faced with endless in-app purchases than shell out even a few bucks for a paid one-time download. Unfortunately, that’s led to the current mobile game market, wherefinding high-quality gamesyou actually want to play can feel impossible. Console games on mobile could fix that, but only if Android users are willing to pay up to $60 for these titles.
Making things more difficult, of course, is therise of dedicated handheld PCslike the Steam Deck or Asus ROG Ally. These platforms deliver larger screens, dedicated controls, and access to your entire Steam library. To get a good experience with Resident Evil Village on mobile, you really need to pair it with agreat mobile controllerlike theBackbone One. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention cloud gaming, which — despite Stadia’s death — is still kicking thanks to platforms like Nvidia’s GeForce Now. Still, I can’t help but look over the fence with jealousy.
So, would you pay for full-price console games on mobile, or would you rather stick to playing these titles where they belong? Maybe you’re happy with thecurrent state of mobile gaming, or you don’t play many games at all. Either way, the poll’s below. This one was almost about whether we should end daylight saving time or not, so, you know, if gaming sounds boring to you, feel free to complain about our newfound lack of sunlight in the comments. I know I’ll be complaining until March.
