In a revealing interview with IGN, Apple’s Senior Director of GPU Software, Jeremy Sandmel, and VP of Platform Architecture, Tim Millet, shed light on the iPhone 15 Pro’s advanced gaming features. The smartphone’s A17 Pro chip boasts a cutting-edge GPU with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which brings console-grade games like Resident Evil 4 and Assassin’s Creed: Mirage to mobile platforms.
When questioned about the possibility of extending these high-quality games to Apple’s silicon-based iPads and Macs, Millet stated: “The developers are going to work with us to do it.” Sandmel elaborated on the seamless transition between platforms, attributing it to the unification of architecture across Apple Silicon, iPhone Silicon, and iPad Silicon.
This allows for identical game rendering and quality across multiple devices, including gaming PCs and consoles.
The console-level gaming capabilities are primarily made possible by the A17 Pro chip’s technological advancements, Apple’s first-ever chip using TSMC’s 3-nanometer fabrication process. This could also imply that future iPads and Macs will feature similar capabilities with next-generation M3 chips.
The iPhone 15 Pro includes built-in DisplayPort support via its USB-C port, allowing for 4K/60Hz video output to DisplayPort-equipped external displays or TVs. Previous iPhone models, with Lightning ports, only supported video mirroring up to 1080p. When asked whether this feature would let gamers play on external displays, Sandmel mentioned that technology like MetalFX’s upscaling would enable games to run at high frame rates and then upscale to the resolution of the external display.
While iPhones currently don’t have a dedicated extended display mode, they do support screen mirroring through wired connections and AirPlay.