Discover game development on Apple platforms

Hi, I'm Greg. It's great to see so many of you here and online. And I'm Adrienne. Greg and I are part of Apple's Worldwide Developer Relations team. We're so excited to welcome you to a full day focused on game development across Apple platforms.

Every day we collaborate with developers just like you, from indie dreamers to Triple-A powerhouses, pushing what's possible on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision Pro.

Today, you'll hear from the Apple teams who build the tools and technologies that make that possible. From graphics and hardware to frameworks and distribution. Let's start with what matters most the games.

It's an unprecedented time for games across Apple's ecosystem. In just the past year, cyberpunk 2077, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and Civ 7 have delivered stunning Mac experiences powered by Apple Silicon and Metal. We're seeing studios launch on Mac right alongside other major releases including day in date debuts.

The real strength of Apple's gaming platform is the ecosystem one architecture that connects iPhone, iPad and Mac. We're already seeing it in action with games like Death Stranding and Wuthering Waves stunning high end titles shipping seamlessly across all three devices.

This unified foundation lets developers reach a massive audience more easily than ever before. And now that same momentum is extending into spatial computing.

On Apple Vision Pro, we're seeing entirely new genres of spatial games emerge, blending the digital and physical worlds in ways we've never seen before. Titles like Glassbreakers from PolyArc and Pickle Pro from Resolution Games are creating fast paced, tactical experiences that could only exist in a shared spatial environment where your living room becomes the arena or the court.

This is redefining how developers and players think about Apple as a home for gaming.

Before we talk about what's next, let's talk about the scale.

Your games have the potential to reach players across more than 2.35 billion active devices, and that it's an incredible number. More than 2 billion Apple devices are active today, forming a unified foundation of hardware, software and technology.

So when you build for one, you're really building for all. Connecting with players across every screen in the Apple ecosystem. This means your total addressable market isn't just one generation of hardware. It's a global install base that keeps growing year after year.

To put that in perspective, more than 500 million people play games on their iPhones. It's one of the largest, most engaged player communities in the world. But reach is only half the story. The other half is discovery. And now Greg will tell you more about that.

The App Store continues to be where players find great games. It drives more than 800 million impressions every single week.

It's home to millions of games and hundreds of millions of active players worldwide. For developers, it's more than a storefront. It's a trusted place where quality and creativity stand out.

The App Store continues to evolve in new ways to help players find and enjoy your games. Features like preorders try before you buy, and Universal Purchase make discovery simple and seamless across Apple devices. It's a global stage designed to showcase your work and help you reach players everywhere.

All this progress makes it easier than ever for your games to find their audience. This fall, we introduced the Apple Games app, a new all in one destination where players can discover, download and connect through the games they love. It brings everything together, making discovery easier and engagement deeper than ever.

If your games on the App Store, it's already part of this new experience. The games app launcher puts it right in front of millions of players. And when you add features like Game Center, you deepen connection, turning discovery into community.

And whether you publish through the App Store, arcade, Steam or your own channel, you still reach Apple's global gaming audience.

Inside the games app, players also find Apple Arcade, our curated collection of premium titles from developers around the world. Every game is hand-picked, polished, and designed to shine across all our devices.

Together with the Apple Games app and Apple Arcade, they show just how vibrant gaming has become across our platforms. They represent the full spectrum of opportunity, from discovery to delivery to play.

And now that we've looked at how players find your games, Adrian's going to take us into the technology that makes it all possible.

We've talked about how players find your games. Now let's look at the hardware that brings it all together.

Studios everywhere are embracing Apple silicon with its incredible CPU performance, unified memory, and advanced GPU pushing what's possible in games with visual effects like advanced physics, massive open worlds, and even real time global illumination.

When you design directly for this architecture, you see real performance gains with less overhead. And when you build for Apple platforms from the start, you can create experiences that scale beautifully across every device.

This year, we introduced the M5 chip, the next leap in Apple silicon, now powering the all new iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and the latest Apple Vision Pro, along with the A19 chip family powering the new generation of iPhone. Each device is built on the same design philosophy Performance, efficiency, and a unified architecture that skills beautifully from your pocket to your desktop to spatial computing. Apple Silicon has been powering our devices from iPhone to Mac, and it continues to drive innovations like Game Mode and Apple Intelligence with exceptional gaming performance across every platform.

Apple Silicon was built for you and for your games. Unified memory lets the CPU and GPU share data instantly for fast, efficient performance.

Advanced GPU architecture from hardware accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading enable real time lighting and geometry for next generation realism.

Our thermal and power systems are engineered for sustained performance and smooth, stable frame rates during longer play sessions. That same architecture scales to iPhone, bringing advanced assets and effects to mobile with remarkable performance and efficiency.

Our unified platform extends into a new dimension with Apple Vision Pro. The same Apple Silicon architecture that powers Mac and iPhone drives Vision Pro as well. So your assets, shaders and optimizations optimizations carry over seamlessly.

This lets you bring your existing games into a new space, or build entirely new experiences from the ground up.

Vision Pro now delivers greater performance for games, enabling richer spatial experiences. We've expanded memory to make it easier to bring high end iPad titles over in compatibility mode, and apps built with Metal can now use hover effects so players see responsive feedback the moment they reach for an element.

We're also delivering more options for precise input. visionOS now supports PlayStation VR2 Sense controllers, giving developers a familiar two handed control scheme for complex games. A native hand tracking now runs at 90Hz, providing highly responsive interactions with no extra code required from you.

Now let's turn our attention to software and the API, starting with Metal. Greg.

Metal is our low overhead API that gives direct access to the graphics and compute power of Apple Silicon. And it's how you maximize efficiency and create incredible visual experiences.

This year with Metal 4, we're enabling the next generation of games.

You can use the full MetalFX suite, including upscaling, Frame Interpolation, and Raytracing denoising to render at higher resolutions and reach even higher frame rates, all while maintaining incredible visual quality.

It's everything you need for performance and polish, and we're integrating machine learning directly into the graphics pipeline. With Metal 4, you can run inference networks right inside your shaders to compute complex lighting materials and geometry that enables photorealistic effects that were once only possible in offline rendering, now happening in real time beyond the renderer. We provide a rich set of frameworks to perfect the complete game experience. These are the tools that elevate good games into great ones.

System features like Game Mode automatically optimize system resources for your games so you get smoother performance, lower latency, and more consistent frame rates for every player.

The new GameSave framework makes seamless cross-device cloud saves trivial to implement. Players can switch from iPhone to Mac to Vision Pro and pick up exactly where they left off with Game Center. You can bring players together through Achievements, Challenges, and other scalable re-engagement features that keep them connected and coming back for more.

The Touch Controller framework lets you easily add high performance, customizable on screen controls and background assets. Solves the first launch download problem. Your games can start instantly while additional assets continue downloading in the background.

These are integrated building blocks designed to save you time and help you create experiences that feel truly native to Apple platforms. Everything works together so you can stay focused on gameplay and creativity. This all comes together in Xcode, our integrated development environment. Xcode is the best place to build, test and debug your games.

It features a powerful source editor and deep integrations with our performance and analysis tools. With Instruments, you can profile your games performance, spot bottlenecks, and get detailed insights into CPU and GPU usage, and the Metal Debugger lets you capture and inspect the frame and even debug your shaders line by line.

For those of you with existing PC games, we've built a comprehensive toolchain to accelerate your path to Mac. Your journey starts with the Game Porting Toolkit. It's a suite of technologies working together to simplify the process. Everything is designed to help you evaluate performance and bring your game over faster.

The evaluation environment translates everything from direct X12 calls to input and audio, giving you a real time performance profile of your unmodified games. And with tools for remote debugging from a windows environment, you can continue using your existing PC workflows.

And the Metal Shader Converter is a robust compiler that turns your existing HLSL shaders into fully optimized Metal libraries. We're removing friction from the porting process systematically step by step.

Let's take a look at Wuthering Waves. This open world action RPG from Kuro Games runs natively on Apple Silicon, delivering smooth, high fidelity performance thanks to MetalFX Upscaling denoising and optimization, every surface shadow and character comes alive with sharp detail and fluid motion.

It runs at a consistent 60 frames per second, maintaining incredible stability and responsiveness even in the most demanding scenes. Players explore vast, beautifully rendered environments and move with complete freedom across sweeping landscapes and vertical cities. It's a stunning experience on Mac, and it scales seamlessly across iPad, iPhone and Apple Vision Pro, reaching more players than ever from mobile to desktop to spatial computing. The same MetalFX powered pipeline and unified architecture deliver quality and performance across every device.

To sum it up, your great games plus great hardware and great software all come together to create this opportunity. Your work can reach players on every Apple device without compromise. That consistency means you can focus on gameplay, storytelling, and creativity.

We're at the start of a new chapter for games on Apple platforms, and it's you who is shaping what comes next creating new genres, exploring new technologies, and defining the future of play. Everything you'll hear today is designed to help you build on that momentum and bring your best ideas to life.

Today is all about what you'll build next. Our teams will guide you through the full game creation journey, bringing your game to Apple devices, tuning it for peak performance, and helping you reach success after launch.

It's a full day of practical insight and live demos from the teams behind the tools. We can't wait to see what you'll create. And with that, let's get started with a look at how to bring your games to Apple devices and the core technologies that make it all possible. Please welcome Allan to the stage.