Apple Takes a Seat at the Table for The Game Awards
The Game Awards 2025
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Apple has been appointed to the Advisory Board for The Game Awards in a move that acknowledges Apple’s growing influence in the world of mobile gaming. In that capacity, Apple will join several other well-known names in gaming to help “guide and advance the mission of The Game Awards.”
As the name suggests, the Advisory Board isn’t directly involved in handing out awards. Nominees and winners are chosen by a voting jury of media publications, independently from the Advisory Board, which only learns the results when they’re publicly announced.
The news was first reported by VGC, which noticed Apple’s addition to The Game Awards About page. Apple is now the 14th member of the panel, alongside luminaries such as Activision, AMD, EA, Microsoft, Nintendo, Rockstar, Ubisoft, and Valve. Apple will sit at the Advisory Board table with Epic Games, with which it’s been engaged in a series of legal battles since 2020.
While some organizations are represented by named individuals — such as Microsoft’s Phil Spencer and Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot — others, including Apple, appear on the list simply as companies. It’s unclear who will actually represent Apple on the board, but the company typically delegates such roles to senior App Store or Apple Arcade executives rather than public-facing figures.
The Game Awards are effectively the Oscars of interactive entertainment, so it’s not surprising to see the Advisory Board made up of some of the heaviest hitters in gaming. Apple’s presence may seem a bit unusual on a list mostly made up of game studios. Still, Apple actually checks a couple of boxes in the gaming industry. Like AMD, which also sits on the Board, Apple designs cutting-edge mobile gaming chips that let AAA console games run on the iPhone, while also being a game publisher through Apple Arcade.
Apple’s Growing Investment in Gaming
Apple’s acquisition of RAC7 Games earlier this year has also laid the groundwork for a potential internal game studio. The two-person development firm behind Sneaky Sasquatch has come under Apple’s umbrella. The company has made it clear this isn’t a major directional shift — a unique case rather than evidence of a full-blown first-party gaming push — but it still might not be too long before we see a real first-party title appear on Apple Arcade.
Apple has now supported AAA console games on the iPhone for two years, with titles such as Resident Evil Village and Assassin’s Creed Mirage delivering PS5-level performance in the palm of your hand. This year’s iPhone 17 Pro lineup takes that up to a whole new level with vapor-chamber cooling that can deliver better sustained performance, letting the A19 Pro run at full speed for longer without turning your iPhone into a handheld block heater.
This year’s iOS 26 release also renews Apple’s mobile gaming push with a dedicated Apple Games app that acts as a hub for game discovery on both the App Store and Apple Arcade, a unified place to keep track of the games you’re playing and a social platform to engage with and challenge friends.
This year’s Game Awards will be held on Thursday, December 11, 2025, at the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles, California. As usual, it will also be live-streamed across all major platforms. Last year’s show set a record for online attendance, with 154 million livestreams, an increase of 31 percent over the previous year.
Apple’s new role on The Game Awards Advisory Board signals that the company’s hardware and software efforts are finally being recognized as shaping the mobile gaming landscape, turning the iPhone into a mobile gaming powerhouse that’s more than just a platform for other people’s games.
