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During the 2018 Apple iPhone keynote, we were told how the new iPhone XS and XS Max are made for high-end gaming. The company revealed all that is possible thanks to the A12 processor that marketing chief Phil Schiller called “… the smartest and most powerful chip ever in a smartphone.”
Blades is an upcoming addition to the Elder Scrolls series created specifically for mobile, and in a demonstration shown by Bethesda’s Todd Howard at the 2018 iPhone keynote, we saw how beautiful it looks, sounds, and plays on the iPhone XS and XS Max.
As we watched the live gameplay, Howard explained that The Elder Scrolls: Blades is a first-person role-playing game where players engage in combat using either defense, melee, or magic. Players can also turn on a special feature called stereo winding that lets you hear the game audio as if it’s happening around you — all without headphones.
The visual and audio quality we see is comparable to that of current-gen gaming consoles and as the demonstration continues, the overall performance looks immaculate. We watched combat against a large spider while Howard remarked about improved feedback, describing how finger motion and in-game movements are completely in sync. Gameplay on the phone appears incredibly responsive, again thanks to the iPhone’s new processor.
The Elder Scrolls: Blades is available for pre-order now, and is expected to launch in fall 2018 for iOS and Android. Howard has also hinted at releases for PC, VR, and consoles.
Another gaming-related product announcement made at the 2018 iPhone keynote was Super Kaiji’s AR arcade cabinet. Three demonstrators with new iPhones battle it out using augmented reality — interactive technology that takes the world around you and uses digital and graphical overlays to transform it into a virtual playground. The group plays a game of Galaga AR, shooting at enemies as they fly around in virtual space. The AR, combined with quality audio, makes it look, sound, and feel like the action is right there.
AR Arcade is due to come out later this year.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.