Surprise from Apple. During the Wonderlust keynote, where the manufacturer presented new devices, we also learned about the A17 Pro, a beastly chip that promises to take the iPhone 15 Pro to another level. Mainly, with regard to the graphic processing. Believe it or not, these terminals will be capable of running games from the current generation of consoles, which is not a minor issue.
At its conferences, Apple usually gives space to developers to show various playable experiences. However, this year was different than what we were used to. Capcom, Kojima Productions and Ubisoft had their moment on stage to announce that Resident Evil 4 Remake, Resident Evil: Village Death Stranding and Assassin’s Creed Mirage They are on their way to the iPhone 15 Pro. Be careful, they are the same versions that saw the light of day on the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
The best of all is that, although the demonstrations were brief, they all boast spectacular graphics—for a smartphone. Apple is not even turning to Cloud Gaming to rely on external graphics processing, no. The iPhone 15 Pro, thanks to the A17 Pro’s GPU, is taking care of everything natively.
It’s the first time we’ve seen console games landing directly on iPhones, and you can be sure they won’t be the last. Apple is redoubling its efforts in gaming, a terrain in which historically it had been left behind. Even in his computers we already see significant advances in that direction. At WWDC 2023 they presented a DirectX 12 emulator that allows you to run Windows games on macOS. The next big step is in the hands of the developers.
It is worth mentioning, however, that the availability of Resident Evil 4 Remake, Death Stranding and Assassin’s Creed Mirage It is limited to the iPhone 15 Pro. Why? They are the only devices whose chip can support such processing.
The A17 Pro, which Apple describes as “The beast of gaming”integrates a 6 core GPU. Is 20% faster than that of the previous generation (A16 Bionic). It is also capable of offering Hardware Accelerated Ray Tracing, which is 4 times faster than the software proposal. “This translates into much smoother graphics and super-realistic lighting. It is the fastest ray tracing on a smartphone,” they add.
Likewise, the A17 Pro of the iPhone 15 Pro introduces the MetalFX Upscaling, a technique that combines the potential of the GPU with the Neural Engine to “generate high-resolution graphics using much less power.” These features are of utmost importance, especially because of the limited autonomy that smartphones have.
It will be interesting to see what other video game companies are interested in launching their console games on the iPhone 15 Pro. For now, Apple has already joined forces with Capcom, Ubisoft and Kojima Productions.
