Ian Bolton
Arm Ltd
Ian has over twenty years of commercial software development experience, specialising in performance optimisation for desktop/server and designing and building games for mobile. As part of the Developer Relations team at Arm, he collaborates with game studios and game engine developers to support and enhance their experiences on Arm platforms.
Ian Bolton is speaking at the following session/s
From Potatoes to Super-chips: Optimising Player Experiences Whatever the Mobile Device
Mobile players expect smooth, responsive gameplay regardless of whether they’re playing on an older phone/tablet or on a modern flagship device. For developers already targeting mobile, or considering extending PC and console experiences onto mobile, hardware fragmentation across many vendors and generations remains one of the biggest challenges to delivering great player experiences.
In this talk, Nordeus share practical lessons from developing and optimising Top Goal, a football title currently in soft launch aimed at supporting a wide range of devices and regions. Arm will complement this with insights into on-device profiling techniques that empowered the Nordeus team to make efficient and effective performance improvements where it counts.
The session will cover accessible, free profiling tools available to developers today, along with concrete examples of feature scaling and optimisation strategies that preserve gameplay feel across low-end and high-end devices alike. We’ll also discuss why mobile is increasingly important for player retention, enabling engagement between PC and console sessions in short, everyday moments.
Attendees will leave with a clear, practical approach to tackling device fragmentation, improving player experience, and making informed performance decisions that scale from “potatoes” to modern super-chips.
Session Takeaway
- Why to profile on real devices, early and often. (Emulators and desktop builds don’t reflect real-world CPU, GPU, or thermal behaviour)
- How to optimise for frame stability and responsiveness, not just FPS. (Consistent frame pacing and low input latency define player experience)
- How to scale features intelligently, not indiscriminately. (Preserve gameplay feel across “potatoes” and super-chips by targeting the biggest bottlenecks first)
Session speakers
