Mobile devices will be more powerful than PlayStation 4, Xbox One in 2017, ARM forecasts (update)

AMSTERDAM — That supercomputer in your pocket will soon make Sony’s and Microsoft’s latest home gaming consoles look old and crusty.

ARM, the technology design company responsible for the chip architecture in mobile devices, is preparing for another big leap in computational power for smartphones and tablets. At the Casual Connect conference in Amsterdam this week, ARM ecosystem director Nizar Romdan explained that the chips that his company creates with partners like Nvidia, Samsung, and Texas Instruments will generate visuals on par with and then surpass what you get from the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles by the end of 2017. That means we are about a year away from having smartphone and tablets that are capable of running the same games (at least graphically) that we previously bought dedicated gaming hardware for. This could bring more hardcore players into the $30 billion mobile gaming market, but it could also power the software for mobile virtual reality. Tech adviser Digi-Capital predicts VR and AR gaming on all platforms could generate $10 billion in revenue by 2020.