Gaming | September 22, 2023
No one saw it coming, but Apple will allow selected titles to be played natively on the iPhone 15 Pro, which already has a price and release date. The new generation will hit the market on September 22nd (with reservations starting from the 15th of this month), but the surprise came when, at a specific moment during the presentation, it was announced that four games currently on consoles would be coming to the iPhone 15 Pro.
That’s right, Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Death Stranding, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage will be playable natively on the iPhone 15 Pro by the end of this year. In addition, the phone will be capable of hardware-accelerated ray tracing (four times faster than software) thanks to the new A17 Pro chip, the first of its kind with 3 nanometers. This upgrade includes a new 6-core CPU design with two high-performance cores that are up to 10% faster than their predecessors, as confirmed by Videocardz.
This marks the biggest GPU redesign in Apple’s history, with performance even up to 20% faster than the previous generation. Additionally, the chip in both the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max includes a dedicated AV1 decoder, promising more efficient and higher-quality video streaming experiences. It also supports video output up to 4K at 60 fps HDR and faster data transfer.
Apple states that the iPhone 15 Pro “becomes a ridiculously powerful mobile gaming machine, enabling higher-quality graphics and rich, immersive game worlds never before seen on a smartphone.” They also mention, “We’ve added entirely new features to the GPU, such as mesh shading, which allows games to create detailed environments while consuming less power,” as reported by VGC.
Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, has stated, “This new level of performance will enable new games for the iPhone 15 Pro that were previously only available on consoles, PC, or Mac.” He also acknowledges that “it’s the first time the console version of Assassin’s Creed will be available natively on a smartphone.”
Apple has also taken the opportunity during the presentation of the iPhone Pro 15 and Max to break down some very interesting technical features that represent an improvement over the previous iteration.
