Apple CEO Tim Cook is on a whirlwind tour of Southeast Asia. After visiting Vietnam and Indonesia, Tim Cook is now making his stop in Singapore.
As part of his stop here, he visited the recently opened Developer Centre in one-north to talk to game developers and to us about Apple’s plans in the gaming space.
The game developers he spoke to ran the gamut, from the budding and young to award-winning professional studios.
This included student developer Jiang Tongyu, who is a 2023 and 2024 WWDC Swift Student Challenger winner. A student at Raffles Institution, Tongyu showed off her winning rhythm game, Tambourine Story, to Cook, who seemed impressed that the game was created entirely by Tongyu, who not only did the coding, but also the graphics and even composed her own music (with GarageBand).
Other developers Cook spoke to were Chin Yong Kian, a part-time lecturer on game development, whose latest game, A Slight Chance of Sawblades, will be coming soon to Apple Arcade; P’ng Yiwei from Malaysian studio Kurechii, who are the people behind the game King’s League II; and finally Jakob Lykkegard from the Thailand-based Lykke Studio, whose game Stitch, was one of the first games to be available for the Vision Pro headset.
Cook also spent a few moments to talk about and answer some questions about Apple’s plans for gaming. Regarding Apple’s plans to bring Triple-A gaming titles to the Mac platform, he said:
We are working on it. As you know from following us, we’ve had some success in the last couple of years or so, particularly with the inflection point with Apple silicon. And so we’ve just been growing and [are] going to continue to grow and invest because we know it’s important for a segment of our user community and we want to please them in every way possible. It’s a key focus area.
Cook was also encouraged by what he’s seen at the new Developer Center and speaking with the game developers. When asked about his thoughts after speaking to the developers and what are the company’s plans to help developers in the region, he said:
We are always asking ourselves that question. And so out of asking ourselves and self-reflection there, we opened this centre. We wanted one in this region that was accessible for everyone from Southeast Asia. And I couldn’t be more pleased with what I’ve seen here today, and the level of passion from the developer community, and the focus on accessibility too. I think this [accessibility] is really important because we want our products to be designed for everyone.
Shortly after this meet and greet, he made an appearance at Apple Marina Bay Sands, the latest Apple Store to open on our island, to attend a special Today at Apple session that featured Singaporean artists and producers Benjamin Kheng and evanturetime.
@hwztech What a day for all those working at this Apple Store in Singapore! Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in person for a special event spotlighting local artists for a live show produced with Apple Logic Pro. #benjaminkheng #apple #timcook #fyp #tiktoksg #singapore #applestore #marinabaysands ♬ original sound – HardwareZone
Kenny Yeo / Deputy Editor
Kenny has been writing about technology for nearly two decades. He is the site’s Apple expert, audiophile, and petrolhead. He also has an interest in the latest laptops, cameras, keyboards, and networking technologies. The one device he cannot do without is his MacBook Pro.
