Feral Interactive Reveals Strategy for Porting AAA Games to Smartphones, Citing 75% Player Preference for Touch Controls

To coincide with the release of the mobile version of Tomb Raider (2013), developers at Feral Interactive shared insights into their process of selecting and adapting large-scale gaming projects for mobile devices.

Feral Interactive, a studio well-known for successfully porting major PC titles to mobile platforms, elaborated on its philosophy for bringing AAA games to smartphones. During an hour-long interview with the YouTube channel MrMacRight, the developers discussed their work on the mobile version of Tomb Raider (2013) and presented compelling statistics along with their observations.

According to the studio's data, a significant majority of players, approximately 70-75%, prefer to control games via the touchscreen. About 20% utilize a gamepad, while only a small minority (4%) connect a keyboard and mouse to their smartphone.

The development of Tomb Raider's mobile version represents a logical progression of the studio's accumulated expertise. Feral Interactive previously released mobile ports of more measured projects, such as Alien: Isolation, which primarily focused on stealth gameplay. The team then transitioned to more dynamic titles like Hitman, before finally tackling a full-fledged action game. This incremental approach allowed them to progressively refine touchscreen controls for camera movement, shooting, evasions, and Quick Time Events (QTEs).

When choosing projects for porting, the studio gravitates towards what they term "stone classics" — AAA games from the PlayStation 3 or early PlayStation 4 era. These titles still maintain a modern aesthetic while being sufficiently optimized ("lightweight") to run effectively on mobile devices released within the last four to five years. Furthermore, on top-tier smartphones, the performance and graphical fidelity of these ports can closely rival their console counterparts.

For instance, the port of Tomb Raider on an iPad Pro equipped with an M4 chip boasts superior graphics compared to the Nintendo Switch 2 version, and also supports a 120 FPS mode.

The team places particular emphasis on what they refer to as the "thermal budget" of devices. This is a critical limitation in mobile game development: a smartphone must be able to sustain a gaming session of at least 40 minutes, even in warm conditions, without overheating or experiencing performance degradation.

Feral Interactive stresses that mobile versions should not become compromised or stripped-down adaptations. For a portion of the audience, a smartphone or tablet serves as their primary gaming platform, making the developers' core mission to preserve the entirety of the original game.

"When we port such projects, our goal is for it to be the entire Tomb Raider, not a 'mobile version of Tomb Raider.' No cut levels or modes — it's the same game, just on a different device."

— Feral Interactive