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“Apple’s Gaming Machines”
In an interview discussing game console competition, physical controllers, and 4K display support, Apple wants gamers to know that they are serious about the iPhone 15 Pro.
The A17 Pro processor powers the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, which offers hardware-accelerated ray tracing and a 6-core GPU. These improvements are intended to turn these pro versions into strong gaming machines.
Apple’s Senior Director of GPU Software Jeremy Sandmel, VP of Platform Architecture Tim Millet, and VP of Worldwide iPhone Product Marketing Kaiann Drance spoke with IGN about the gaming push surrounding the iPhone 15 Pro and what it means.
4K gaming with external displays
USB 3.0 Type-C on the iPhone 15 Pro allows new functionalities such as mirroring content in 4K HDR on an external display. The first question concerns how this works in titles such as Resident Evil 4.
“As you probably know, there’s the display resolution and then there’s the gaming resolution, and then the frame rates, the game rendering,” he replied. “With technologies like MetalFX’s upscaling, we can sort of separate those two things.”
This means that the iPhone can run the games at high frame rates while maintaining good quality and upscale the output to fit the display resolution. Users can connect an iPhone 15 Pro to a 4K monitor and play games, but developers must support certain features.
“The building blocks are there,” Millet explained. “We can enable applications to enable those experiences, and the developer’s responsibility is, of course, to try to take those tools and piece them together to produce an experience for you, the player, so that it all comes together. “
Balancing power and efficiency
The iPhone 15 Pro should not overheat even when subjected to intensive gaming circumstances such as high-level graphics and frame rates. Developers have the tools to avoid “burning a hole through the back of the phone.”
MetalFX, for example, helps keep thermals under control due to the software’s scalability. But Millet illustrates how scaling is used across the system, not only in MetalFX.
“The display itself has a really amazing scaling technology built in,” Millet goes on to explain. “The GPU can scale. So, with capabilities such as ray tracing and mesh shading, as well as this extremely complex compute architecture, the developer can use all of these methods to determine the ideal balance of computation, quality, performance, frame rate, and resolution.”
An environment for gaming
Apple Silicon processors designed for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone all use identical base technology, allowing games to run on different platforms. Like Resident Evil Village, originating from Mac.
“We don’t want to speak for the developers here, we’ll let them sort of talk to their plans, but I would say Capcom brought out Resident Evil Village last year for Mac and now for the phone this year,” he continued. “And one of the things that fundamentally enabled that is this unification of the architecture of Apple Silicon and the iPhone Silicon and the iPad Silicon.”
Game controllers and touchscreens
One of the most significant restrictions of AAA gaming on devices such as the iPhone is the touchscreen. Apple has switched from prioritizing touch controllers in the past to allowing users to connect nearly any Bluetooth controller to the iPhone.
When it comes to AAA games that require controllers, Drance says developers can choose what works best for their game.
“Well, we’re mostly allowing that to be both; one, user choice, but also developers in terms of what they view as the best game experience,” Drance stated when asked about the subject. “Obviously, certain types of gameplay work well with on-screen controllers.” Some of them want an option to have the gaming in an external controller, and as you may have noticed, we showcased the Backbone controller, which works with the iPhone 15 Pro and provides an excellent experience.”
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