At the Tokyo Game Show 2023, Apple announced an exclusive deal with Capcom to bring Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 4 to the iPhone Pro 15 and Pro 15 Max in October later that year. At the time, we lamented that Google seemed content to sit back and collect missed opportunities, but a recent report shows that this exclusive deal may not be as promising as we thought.
People simply aren’t buying AAA games on mobile
Why would you when consoles and gaming computers exist?
Source: Apple
Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 4 weren’t the only AAA games that made their way to iOS devices equipped with the A17 Pro chip. Death Stranding launched in January 2024, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage launched in June 2024. But this impressive lineup of games, which ran beautifully on compatible devices, ended up being a financial disappointment.
A report by Appmagic (via MobileGamer.biz) stated that, regarding these games on mobile, “AAA releases are underperforming” and “are far from a success.” At the time of the report, Assassin’s Creed Mirage sold about 5,750 copies, Resident Evil 4 around 15,000, and Resident Evil Village clocked the highest number of purchases at 34,000. Death Stranding had a middling 23,000 purchases.
These games offer a short demo before the player is forced to purchase the full game, so total downloads are much higher than the estimated purchases.
This comes to about $1.3m in revenue for the games’ parent companies before Apple’s 30% cut is factored in. When a game like Minecraft Pocket Edition clocked about $164m in revenue in 2022, it’s clear these AAA releases are failures. Or are they?
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All these games have hefty price tags; Resident Evil Village is the cheapest, at around $15.99, while Assassin’s Creed Mirage is $49.99. Add in the fact that these games were already available on console and PC, and it’s clear that the purpose behind them was not to make money alone but to generate sales for the iPhone 15 Pro.
You see, hardware-accelerated ray-tracing was one of the main things Apple showed off about the A17 Pro chip, which powers both iPhone 15 Pro models. While the sales for the games were poor, it was an excellent marketing trick that showed just how powerful the latest iPhones were.
Is there a future for AAA games on mobile beyond marketing gimmicks?
In November 2023, we ran a poll for our readers, asking if they would be willing to pay for modern console games on Android. Over half of the respondents said no, stating they already had a preferred place to play games, and it wasn’t their phones.
It’s completely understandable. If you’re paying full price for an AAA release, a PC or console offers a more versatile, immersive experience than the cramped screen on your Android phone and its touchscreen controls.
However, there’s certainly a place on phones for games that encourage long play sessions. The top 20 paid games on Android currently include Minecraft, Terraria, Stardew Valley, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, none of which fit the stereotypical classification of mobile games as simple and suited for short play sessions.
The biggest obstacle, therefore, seems to be platform availability and price. Apple’s AAA titles are only available on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max and cost a minimum of $15. While we’ll undoubtedly see these demanding games spread to more chipsets and devices (the Snapdragon Gen 3 chip is already capable of handling AAA games), the cost barrier must be overcome first.
Subscription services like Xbox Game Pass offer access to hundreds of AAA games for a fraction of the price of a standalone new game, so both Apple and Google must overcome our reluctance to pay more than a pittance for mobile games for AAA games to flourish on mobile.
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