In all of Apple's WWDC talk about gaming on the Mac and the iPad, apparently, this one piece of news wasn't a big enough deal to get presentation time. But it's actually a huge deal and something of a statement of intent for iPad gaming going forward.
No Man's Sky was proudly shown off as coming to the Mac as proof that AAA titles are coming to Apple Silicon. But what Apple forgot to mention is that No Man's Sky is also coming to the iPad. That part was relegated to one of the company's press releases — hat tip to TouchArcade for spotting it.
The power of Apple silicon enables every new Mac to run AAA games with ease, including upcoming titles such as EA’s GRID Legends and Capcom’s Resident Evil Village. And since Apple silicon also powers iPad, game developers can bring their AAA games to even more users, like No Man’s Sky from Hello Games, which is coming to both Mac and iPad later this year.
That's also the bad news, in that only M1-powered iPads and future upgrades to these will be able to play it. The reference to Apple Silicon is in the context of Metal 3, Apple's latest graphics platform designed for the M-series chips. The flip side is that it seems to be 'easy' for game developers to target both the Mac and the iPad with these titles. Other games namedropped include GRID Legends and Resident Evil Village, and while these aren't mentioned as coming to the iPad, there's apparently no reason why they couldn't.
This is transformative for gaming on a tablet. The iPad is already far and away the best tablet money can buy, and finally, Apple seems to be taking gaming seriously. The popularity of the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch is living proof that portable gaming is still a thing. It'll be really interesting to see which other titles Apple can woo over in the months ahead.