Apple: New 'Metal' Platform to Improve iOS Gaming

What's This?

A demo built in Unreal Engine 4, a game engine, called 'Zen Garden.'

Image: Epic Games

By Chelsea Stark2014-06-03 03:55:54 UTC

Apple unveiled on Monday a new technology that will help mobile games run more smoothly on the company's phones and tablets by lowering the graphical processing power they require.

The Metal API allows games to perform better than they do with OpenGL, according to Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice-president of software engineering, who spoke on stage at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

Metal will launch along with iOS 8 later this year, and is designed to work with the A7 chips found in the latests iPhones and iPads.

Apple worked with video-game companies Crytek, Unity, Electronic Arts and Epic Games on the Metal project.

Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney appeared on the WWDC stage to show off a demo built in Unreal Engine 4, a game engine, called Zen Garden. The app will be available for free in the App Store when iOS 8 launches.

Epic also said it would make the Metal code in Unreal Engine 4 available to developers some time after the launch of the iOS 8 beta.

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