Apple’s AAA gaming push for iPhone appears to have flopped

Apple’s iPhone gaming push appears to have failed, with Assassin’s Creed Mirage selling about 3,000 copies on the platform

Apple has been pushing gaming hard in recent years, both on their Apple Silicon based Macbooks and on their iPhone and iPad devices. Now, it looks like Apple’s mobile gaming push has not yielded strong results. AAA titles like Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Death Stranding, and Resident Evil 4 has sold poorly, at least according to reported sales data.

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage has reportedly sold around 3,000 full copies on iPhone. Resident Evil 4 Remake has reportedly sold 7,000 copies on iOS. Those are some poor sales figures, and a clear sign that Apple’s iOS gaming ambitions aren’t bearing much fruit.

Currently, Apple’s AAA iPhone game releases are only available for its high-end iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max devices. This limits the potential player bases of these games. Even so, Apple’s reported game sales are low, and it is hard to not see Apple as being disappointed in these early efforts. Regardless, this is only the start of Apple’s gaming efforts, and things may improve in time.

As Apple releases newer and more powerful iPhones and iPhone 15 series devices become more mainstream, it is likely that Apple’s gaming efforts will bear more fruit. Even so, AAA games demand a high asking price. Those prices are not well suited to the mobile games market. There’s a reason why most mobile games are free to play or have prices below $10.

We expect Apple to continue pushing AAA gaming with new iPhone launches. AAA game support does a great job marketing the power of Apple’s latest devices. Additionally, this push can also help Apple’s chip designing efforts, as better gaming performance on iOS will also extend to better gaming performance on MacOS. After all, both use Apple Silicon.

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