Game developer: iPhone 3G S graphics will be 'better than PSP'

By Eric Franklin on 12 June 2009, 4:01pm

Since the iPhone launched in 2007, we've yet to see a 3D game come close to matching the graphics of the best the Sony PSP has to offer, but according to at least one developer, this may be about to change with the new, more powerful iPhone 3G S.

In an interview with Pocket Gamer, Michael Schade, CEO of Fishlabs, an iPhone and mobile games developer, said the iPhone 3G S's support for the OpenGL ES 2.0 API will push the machine's 3D graphics capabilities beyond that of the PSP.

While current iPhones only support Open GL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0 has several capabilities not included in the older version. Most notably shader support, which allows developers to use more customised and usually prettier graphics effects.

Schade says the biggest hurdle will be getting iPhone developers to actually implement these custom effects.

"As graphic assets need to be designed from scratch to benefit from 2.0 shaders, it will be very hard to monetise the extra effort in the early days," he says. "It's definitely not worth it for 99-cent apps."

id Software's John Carmack, creator of Doom and Quake, agrees with Schade in that the potential for the iPhone to be a more powerful gaming platform is there, but he also points out, because of "software inefficiencies", we may not see that potential realised just yet.

While Carmack sees Open GL ES 2.0 support on the iPhone as a good thing, he made the point that he would not be taking advantage of it and instead will stick with 1.1 for Doom Resurrection (left), launching next week. The reasoning? He wants Doom to reach the widest audience possible, which for now, is the current-generation iPhone.

Schade may have a solution, though. He says that although it will cost more development and testing time, it may be a good idea to implement a feature that allows games to detect which version of the iPhone you have and then upgrade the graphics accordingly. This would be similar to the way games work with different levels of video cards on the PC.

The 3G S is claimed by Apple to have a CPU that's "up to 2x faster" than the current 412MHz ARM 11 in the iPhone 3G. If developers are willing to create a brand-new, from-the-ground-up graphics engine using the new processor, then we eventually may see something truly impressive.

Fishlabs's own Galaxy on Fire (top) is probably the most impressive 3D iPhone game we've seen, and yet it has a long way to go to match the graphical complexity seen in PSP games such as Crisis Core: FF7 and God of War: Chains of Olympus.

Some PSP developers are obviously willing to put in the time and care to make their games look outstanding, but we've seen little evidence that iPhone game developers are willing to do the same.

Simply put, making games look outstanding takes time and money and new PSP games cost £25 and each game sold goes a long way toward recouping development costs. Longer, at least, than a £3 game on the App Store would.

Many people (including some developers) view iPhone games as nothing more than mere 15-minute distractions while you're waiting to do something else.

How far we see the iPhone 3G S's graphics pushed may depend on how developers think most iPhone users play their games. With the "graphical tour de force" Doom Resurrection launching next week, we may start to get some insight of what's to come.