After years of being a casual-only gaming platform, the iPhone is now starting to become a serious video game system. And it’s about to get even more serious, thanks to a new behind-the-scenes acquisition.
As reported by Reuters, Imagination Technologies has just acquired graphics master Caustic Graphics. Imagination Technologies is the company that makes the iPhone’s graphics processing unit.
With the acquisition, you have to believe that IT will be able to pack a much more powerful punch with the next version of the iPhone.
“This acquisition opens up the potential for highly photorealistic imagery to reach new real-time applications and markets, including consumer, not possible previously, via its integration with POWERVR, which is the de facto standard for mobile and embedded graphics,” said the company’s PR director David Harold in a TechRadar interview.
So the company is looking into incorporating this newly acquired tech into the consumer market, but what about the iPhone specifically? Well, Information Technologies is very committed to the mobile sector, and all but confirmed what we’re saying in Harold’s interview, with this quotation: “We would not have acquired this [Caustic] technology if we did not believe we could get it into handsets.”
This was the year for the iPhone to prove it could be a viable gaming platform. It did that, but only with games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope – very casual games. 2011, it seems, will be the year in which the iPhone proves it can actually do hardcore games as well.
And when the iPhone 5 comes out, we might even see the PS3 and Xbox 360 getting a run for its money.
