We're heading for a fragmented market. It's not like devs will be able to put down OpenGL just because Apple has Metal and AMD has Mantle. What will Android use? Nvidia on Steambox? PS4?

The devs think this will save them work; actually it will create it.

I don't get why people like playing games that use touchscreens but not buttons. It was so hard to kill enemies in Call of Duty: Zombies.

Gimmicky, as always with Apple. The restrictions applied to Metal dev and licencing, as always with Apple, will make most devs not care about it. Then is it that relevant on a mobile?

Not sure, look at the game already on iOS using the full power of the iPhone: Infinity Blade. That's about it, most other games are 2D, use casual devkits like Unity or their own like Gameloft in-house engine.

Scandinavians understand the mobile market, just watch the Top Lists!
Simple, clear graphics, with gameplay that can last 1 - 10 minutes.
And online with your friends.
It is very much what made Nintendo big once upon a time.

Graphics war on a 10 lnch screen (or less) is pointless!

Hi! Thanks for posting these details out here! I am personally really impatient to see what this will bring in terms of quality. However, being a diehard Apple fan, I am confident that this will only be good! Till now I found nothing to reproach really and I am sure that Metal will really boost the mobile game market.

This is about optimizing performance, not saving work. Saving work is Swift's job. 

You'll notice all the talk about the engine handling the use of Metal. If you're okay with your game only working on A7+ hardware and iOS 8, the engine builds with Metal. If you want compatibility with older iOS devices and Android devices, it builds with OpenGL and you take a performance hit.

PS4 already has this "close to the metal" functionality, so I'm not sure why you bring that up, but this is somewhere that I don't think Android can go. Too many hardware configurations to support. In hindsight, with Apple's console-like control of the whole stack in iOS, it's surprising this didn't come along sooner.

Performance isn't the major problem in the industry right now. Cost is.

There should be one uniformerd api not fragmented, ms is doing this with Dx12 one for all Ms platforms. But we will need to see some actual footage showing comparision difference

There is no cost increase here. Developers who shell out for an engine license will see easy performance gains, those who don't can still build to OpenGL ES or decide for themselves if it's worth the effort to learn Metal. The lowest common denominator isn't going anywhere.

And performance is always a problem in mobile, if only for the sake of battery life.