In a recent interview with IGNan Apple executive claimed that the iPhone 15 Pro was “will be the best game console.” I was skeptical; even though Apple boasted about the capabilities of its new GPU in its A17 Pro chip, saying high-fidelity gaming like Resident Evil Villagethat Resident Evil 4 replay, and Death Stranding would all come to the iPhone 15 Pro, I didn’t believe they would run very well in practice.
But after actually watching footage of Resident Evil Village in action on an iPhone 15 Pro, I’m starting to think that Apple’s vision isn’t as far-fetched as I thought.
You can watch the game in a video from YouTuber Vincent Zhong, starting at 13:48. First, Zhang plays Village on the 15 Pro on a mobile game controller attachment and the footage looks pretty decent. But then comes the good part: Zhang connects the phone to an external display and a DualSense controller, and at least in his video, Resident Evil Village looks closer than I expected to the graphical quality of the game on a console.
I don’t think it will be a 1:1 match. According to the captions in Zhang’s video, the game’s resolution is locked at 1560 x 720 and its framerate is “currently” locked at 30 fps. And Zhang says the experience has its flaws: “The screen mirroring effect is definitely not as good as on the phone,” Zhang says. “Definitely not as good as the original effect on the game console.”
Still, I can see how hooking your phone up to a monitor to sling console-quality games from your iPhone to a big screen might be attractive. It can be especially useful when you are traveling or away from home. We’ll have to wait and see how good the final versions of iOS ports of the like are Village, RE4and Death Stranding indeed is – and if Apple can convince more developers to bring their console-quality games to the iPhone – but I’m a lot more intrigued by them than I was last week.
The gaming push for the iPhone 15 Pro is part of a larger recent focus on advanced gaming from Apple. For Macs, for example, it introduced a Proton-like utility that can run Windows games. Fingers crossed that this actually means more games I can play on my MacBook Air, but while I wait I’ll at least be able to give Baldur’s Gate 3 one shot.
