When you had requested anybody six months in the past what Apple’s largest 2025 play can be, the apparent reply would’ve been “AI.” Possibly “residence.” However gaming? You’d have been exhausting pressed to search out anybody prepared to guess on that. And but, that’s precisely what it’s beginning to seem like.
Surprising spotlight
After an underwhelming, phased rollout of its preliminary Apple Intelligence choices, the apparent transfer for Apple would have been to go balls-to-the-wall, all-hands-on-deck, real-artists-ship exhausting on fixing the delays, the constraints, and the rising sense that it merely can’t construct frontier AI merchandise and options as quick as its rivals. Or in any respect, for that matter.
However reasonably than touting the outcomes of an enormous, year-long, fully centered effort to show it has the chops to remain within the sport, it appears like Apple is about to simply lean exhausting into gaming itself.
That’s to not say Apple is doing nothing AI-related this 12 months. As Bloomberg reported, Apple Intelligence is on monitor to get some stage subsequent Monday, regardless of large setbacks and that internal drama. Nonetheless, Apple is poised to search out itself additional behind the competitors than it was final June.
After all, this isn’t a zero-sum scenario. Had Apple not centered on gaming, its AI woes wouldn’t magically be solved. Completely different groups. Completely different sources. Completely different talent units. Besides, the shift is surprising.
WWDC 2025 is shaping as much as be very completely different from what most customers would have guessed up till just some months in the past. A part of that shock is how a lot time Apple appears poised to dedicate to video games, presumably greater than ever earlier than in a single occasion.
Between a brand new preinstalled Video games app, Spatial Controller help for Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional, and the shock acquisition of the studio behind Sneaky Sasquatch, gaming is rising as Cupertino’s wildcard for the 12 months.
Making fetch occur
For years, Apple has flirted with gaming. Halo and (paradoxically) Fortnite have been first introduced at Apple occasions, and the corporate spent the final decade and a half selling merchandise just like the iPad mini and iPod contact as “the right cellular gaming gadget”.
Extra not too long ago, it has been closely pitching MacBook Professionals as gaming machines as effectively, proudly showcasing dragons flying by means of ray-traced landscapes and AI-generated mud clouds in each occasion. Technically spectacular, sure. However these demos typically felt extra like wishful pondering than actual gaming momentum.
This time, although, it feels completely different. With WWDC simply days away, Apple’s gaming efforts are being mentioned extra brazenly and extra continuously than ever. And with a extra cohesive, platform-spanning story to inform, it looks like Apple could lastly be able to deal with gaming not as a promoting level, however as a everlasting technique.
And naturally, there’s the apparent cash angle: the worldwide gaming business pulls in additional income than the remainder of the leisure world mixed. Doing extra to safe a 15–30% reduce of that pie is simply widespread sense.
Whether or not Apple’s WWDC gaming showcase is a part of an actual long-term technique or only a solution to dazzle and distract from the truth that it nonetheless has little to indicate on the AI entrance, Monday’s play looks like a raffle.
Whether or not it’s going to repay, that’s one other story.
FTC: We use earnings incomes auto affiliate hyperlinks. Extra.
