Apple’s never been the gaming type. Sure, the Apple Pippin might have found its way into some homes, but other than that… no. The big fruit company’s always stuck to what it does best, which rarely includes gaming outside of Clash of Clans on the App Store. One of the big talking points from Apple’s Wonderlust event – aside from the slew of new products – was the iPhone 15 Pro’s gaming abilities, with a wave of AAA titles making their way to the device.
But can it run Crysis?
Apple only briefly mentioned a few; Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, The Division, and Death Stranding amongst them, and they’ll be playable thanks to that new A17 Pro Bionic chipset. Honestly, Apple could have left it there and we’d have been satisfied. It didn’t, announcing that the A17 Pro Bionic would support hardware-accelerated ray-tracing and MetalFX Upscaling.
To make matters better, it’s got Capcom on board, with the developer announcing that the two most recent RE games – Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil: Village would be running natively on the iPhone 15 Pro. That means no watering down and no cloud streaming. In fact, it’s made the feat even more impressive with support for HDR and a wide range of controllers (such as PlayStation’s DualSense), if the on-screen controls aren’t your thing.
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We haven’t had the chance to even cast our gaze on Apple’s latest round of iPhones, let alone defeat Osmund Saddler on it just yet. We’ll get there, but for now, we’ll have to take IGN’s word that the two-year-old Resident Evil: Village runs natively at a solid 30fps – something even Gotham Knights could only match on dedicated hardware – impressive.
Whip out an iPad instead
Apple hasn’t just reserved its AAA gaming push for the iPhone 15 Pro. It’s even offering certain games on the iPad, iPad Air and iPad Pro, though we’re not fully aware of what games those will be just yet or how they will perform. Pretty much any iPad packing an M1 chip or later will have access to Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil: Village, with a single purchase sufficing across the Apple iPad and Mac ecosystem (aside from RE: Village which needs a separate purchase to play on Mac).
The same holds true for Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, according to IGN, with one purchase being enough to play the game across the Apple ecosystem that’s got Apple Silicon (M1 and up) shoved inside. You’ll have to wait to play any of these games on the iPhone, iPad or Mac, though. Assassin’s Creed: Mirage for the Apple line-up is only expected to land in the first half 0f 2024, despite the game’s October release on consoles. As for the two RE games, those will be available sometime before 2023’s end, though exact release news isn’t available yet.
We’re sure to hear more news surrounding the launch of the other games hitting Apple’s hardware soon enough. A stray announcement of some new games for the iPhone 15 Pro wouldn’t go amiss, either.
