Apple seems to be firing into the gaming industry in the mobile segment, far beyond what was started by the SpriteKit in the last year.

During the WWDC 2014, Apple has introduced another feature that targets better gaming development--and in effect, better games coming for the iOS devices.

Apple at WWDC 2014 footage (via YouTube/Apple)

Apple introduced "Metal," which is supposedly one arm of its gaming strategy, as it tackles 3D graphics. According to TIME, Metal is supposed to do away with all the layers that plague OpenGL so that developers can pretty much go deeper into the power of A7 without too many hindrances.

A Development Towards Console-like Games?

This development in gaming is more than just making it a bit easier for developers to create games on the iOS--Metal is about pushing the A7 processor to work even harder so that it can reach the level of graphics and quality that is currently only seen in console gaming.

"Apple's Metal technology is iOS 8 introduces a whole new level of performance that is unmatched in mobile today," said the statement from EA during the WWDC 2014, as quoted by CNet. "With the ability to maximize game performance on the A7, we can deliver a console-level experience on an iPhone or iPad."

This means that even the more casual gamers can be treated to the quality that console gamers enjoy, which can ultimately be the turnaround that Apple is looking for in terms of its gaming segment.

Seeing Metal Compared to Other Platforms

To give a better overview of what Metal is when compared to existing near counterparts, TechCrunch reports that Apple's Metal framework is similar to how Mantle is on the AMD graphics chips and DirectX 12 for Windows and Xbox.

The latter has been touted as one way to boost the power of the Xbox One when DirectX 12 debuts on the platform--which shows what Metal will do for Apple games once it's in the hands of game developers.

In the Apple Developer web site, it states that, "The Metal framework supports GPU-accelerated advanced 3D graphics rendering and data-parallel computation workloads. Metal provides a modern and streamlined API for fine-grain, low-level control of the organization, processing, and submission of graphics and computation commands and the management of the associated data and resources for these commands. A primary goal of Metal is to minimize the CPU overhead necessary for executing these GPU workloads."

But the advantage of Metal is that it provides what can be called a "fully vertical ecosystem" since Apple has designed its own hardware and software as well as the OS. Optimisation for just one set of hardware and on the A7 chip will give an even bigger advantage of being able to develop games across all of the devices under the iOS scope.

This is far from what Google has in terms of devices, as it has a number of brands under its wing and the Android Google Play Store is shared by a number of phone manufacturers who use the Android as their OS. Ideally, Metal can be Apple's answer towards better gaming in mobile, and a good follow-up to the introduced SpriteKit earlier on.

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