There's a lot going on here. I think other devs, Apple, and Google are all going to look at this and say it's not the type of game people want on their phones, but I'd say that's the wrong conclusion. If I got an APK included in the purchase of my PC games, I'd play a bunch more games on mobile, but even some of those that have mobile ports are no longer compatible with modern Android. Even some of those that still are compatible do not work with controllers, and many of those have bad touch controls. And if you narrow down that library of great games to the ones that still work and have good controls, it's always an inferior version of the game by way of being the mobile version of it. There's no easy standard to dock it like the Switch or to transfer saves like Steam cloud saves.

If you want this type of game to do well on mobile, Apple and Google need to make a standard, quality, easily portable mobile controller. Games need to support that controller more often than not. There needs to be a standard for docking the device and outputting to a larger screen. The device needs to retain compatibility with older software, reliably. This is at a minimum. But there isn't really an incentive to make premium mobile gaming better, so they'll stick with manipulative, low barrier to entry games that control well with touches, taps, and swipes.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

So the market and ecosystem would have to substantially change before these kinds of ports could ever become viable. I doubt any of that is likely to happen.

[–] paultimate14 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So I'll admit that it has been a couple decades since I played RE2, but I think there is some room to evaluate what kind of experience players are looking to get from that game and question how much overlap there is with mobile device usage.

When I think "mobile", I think about games that I can play in a waiting room, on public transportation, in a break room at work, in a cafe between classes, etc. And I think about the games that work well in those situations. Turn-based puzzle games like Candy Crush or Sudoku. Idle games like Armory and Machine, Adventure Capitalist, Fallout Shelter, and Merchant. Even simple runner games.

These games cannot consume all of your attention- you need to still have some awareness of when your break is over, your name is called, or you have reached your stop. You don't have a ton of time to catch up on what you did previously. You don't have 15 minutes to spend getting used to controls. You probably don't have a controller with you. You can't afford to get into a long cutscenes. You need to be ready to put the game down at any moment.

So something like Resident Evil needs to be significantly re-designed to work. Horror in general is difficult because the player is probably in a well-lit room, possible with music playing, surrounded by other people having casual conversations. Resident Evil itself is particularly bad for this because it famously limits when and how much you can save. That whole system would need to be scrapped. We would need checkpoints at least every 15 minutes, probably more like 5. Any cutscenes need to be skippable and re-viewable from a menu.

There are certainly other situations where I could see it working. A camping trip, a long plane ride or airport layover, killing a few hours at a hotel, etc. I could install an android version onto my NVIDIA Shield, and it might be possible to do similar with a GoogleTV, Fire stick, or Apple TV hardware, although I would speculate most smart TV hardware would probably be too weak to run (cloud could be an option, but that's already failed pretty hard). It would be cool to be able to play it in any room or out on my porch instead of being tethered to a living room TV.

The problem is those are incredibly niche use cases in comparison. I don't think there is enough demand to justify Android and IOS ports. Other games sure- Pokemon would be perfect for mobile but Nintendo needs to keep it exclusive to their hardware to, well, sell their hardware. The Genesis classics are already on Android and a lot of them are great. But cinematic games designed around long play sessions just don't translate well.

[–] ampersandrew 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

On my Steam Deck, or if you prefer a Switch, any game is a mobile game. You can suspend and resume quite easily, and as long as you can do the same on a phone, it'll fit that use case just as well. My mobile use case might be killing 15 minutes at the DMV, or it might be an hour long train ride. I'll pick the right game for the job.

[–] paultimate14 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My experience on the Deck and Switch is the opposite: different games lend themselves to different form factors. And both of those (along with other handhelds like the Logitech G Cloud, PlayStation Portal, AYN Odin series, etc) are not really in the mobile space. I can't imagine a middle schooler taking their Deck or Switch to school. I can't imagine breaking one of those out on a 15 minute break while working retail or food service. I would not have lugged those devices around campus to play between college classes. The Switch is an exception because it's a home console too, but the rest of those devices are incredibly niche products that sell orders of magnitude less than either consoles, gaming PC's, or phones.

And you said yourself: you pick the right game for the job. I could totally emulate Metal Gear Solid 2 or 3 on the Deck, maybe even 4. But I would inevitably get stuck in a 30 minute long cutscene from Kojima. It may be possible to either use a save states or just hit the power button to suspend, but that's still a bad experience. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's good. I do keep a selection of games on the Deck for different situations.

My wife and I love Skyrim and have almost every version of it. I probably have 1,000 hours in, she is probably close to 10,000 at this point. We always joke about how one of the worst things you can do for yourself is save and stop playing mid-dungeon. You get in a groove and reserve some of the RAM in your brain for keeping track of the in-game space, and if you stop and come back to it a day, week, month, or year later it takes some work to mentally recover. We always try to go back to a house, or at least a town, to save.

For something like Candy Crush or Sudoku? No problem, I can get right in. For a big AAA action game? I need to remember the controls, the map layout, what's going on with the plot, what my items or build or whatever is, what the enemies are like and how to deal with them, etc. If I'm sitting down for a 2 hour gaming session it's no problem if I take 3 minutes to get up to speed again, but for a 15 minute break that's 20% of my time.

Another factor is how long it takes to get in game. I recently played through Subnautica (streaming with Steam Link to either my Deck or Shield), and while it was a great time I was annoyed at just how long it takes to get into the game. Even on an SSD it simply takes forever to load, sometimes close to 2 whole minutes. And I know of plenty of other games that are even worse with all the splash screens and BS before the start menu- the Crash N Sane Trilogy is a big offender for example. If I'm on a 15 minute break I don't want to spend 20% of that time waiting for the game to start.

It's exit points and entry points. Most console or PC games are designed with play sessions of at least 30 minutes, usually more like an hour. If you don't take the exit points, you're starting a new dungeon or new quest line or whatever and are locking in for the next 30-60 minutes. (You could argue games like Civ might have intended play sessions more like 8-16 hours). Successful mobile games have much more frequent entry and exit points.

RE2 would certainly work fine on the Deck and Switch, but not in those "mobile" contexts. And I don't think there is enough demand to add Android and IOS support on top of that.

[–] ampersandrew 1 points 1 week ago

But I get to choose what I think is the right game for the job. The Switch is successful because it serves both masters. Not making the game available just makes me less likely to bother with mobile games at all.

[–] Regrettable_incident 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah I've had this problem recently. I bought limbo on steam to play on my steam deck. Recently realised there's an android version but it seems like to use it on my phone I would have to buy the game again on Google play. Maybe I'm wrong about this, it seems to me that once you've bought a game in one format you should be able to download it in any format.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

In an ideal world, every game should be fully cross-buy IMO, but that tends to never be the case.
PlayStation used to have PS3/PS4/PSVita cross-buy games for a while, but they didn't keep it going for their recent PC porting efforts (that clearly wouldn't help their bottom line).
Xbox has Play Anywhere, and that's likely the closest to a functional cross-buy (and cross-play) we have today - that's the main draw for me if (when) I ever buy games digitally on Xbox.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I fully agree and just wand to add my suspicion that people in the Apple ecosystem are a pretty tough crowd to sell a Resident Evil title to begin with. Most gamers I know would never buy an Apple PC if they have a choice, and the overlap between "serious" gaming and Android is probably a lot stronger.

(I hear a faint echo of "Don't you guys have phones?" in this.)

[–] ampersandrew 2 points 1 week ago

Apple has been making decisions hostile to a thriving gaming scene for decades at this point, so they engineered that lack of overlap. Just because they paid big money for ports of Resident Evil and Death Stranding, it doesn't mean that any other big games have a reason to follow them.

[–] TigerClawTV 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Who in the great merciful shit wants to play RE2 on ios?

[–] MyNameIsAtticus 1 points 6 days ago

I’d want to play it for sure. Not in a legitimate capacity, but I love seeing janky ports of things on places they don’t belong. They’re so much fun to experience for me.

[–] Kelly 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Tablet as a display and a controller sounds like a workable solution.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Maybe focus on a gaming oriented apple TV revision and sell it there at a competitive price