The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One might still be relatively new, but they are quickly on their way to becoming old news. While smartphones appear to be the home of gaming 'casuals,' a technology company is estimating that the devices will soon become as powerful as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, if not more powerful — at least when it comes to graphics.
ARM, a technology design company that specializes in chip architecture for mobile devices has predicted that smartphones will be visually on par with consoles by the end of 2017.
This prediction came from ARM ecosystem Nizar Romdan at the Casual Connect conference in Amsterdam this week. According to Romdan, ARM is working with partners like Nvidia, Samsung, and Texas Instruments to create an extremely powerful chip for mobile devices.
“Mobile hardware is already powerful,” said Romdan during the event. “If you take today’s high-end smartphone or tablet, the performance is already better than Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It’s catching up quickly with Xbox One and PlayStation 4.”
Of course, the inundation of VR headset is one of the reasons behind the sudden push to create a powerful chip that will offer the same graphics of the PS4 and Xbox One (the other reason is probably that the mobile gaming industry is worth around $30 billion).
“Our view is that mobile VR is the use case that could unlock the potential of mobile for hardcore gamers,” explained Romdan. “For once, mobile devices are on par with PC and consoles in terms of experience. We won’t have the same processing. And battery life is a problem. But it is the same user experience. That could be a game changer for mobile gaming.”
