Apple: During this week’s iPhone 15 announcement, Apple emphasised the gaming potential of its new A17 Pro CPU. Three Apple officials spoke with IGN about the company’s aspirations to turn the iPhone 15 into the world’s “best game console.”
iPhone 15 Pro gaming potential
IGN spoke with Apple‘s senior director of GPU software, Jeremy Sandmel, Tim Millett, vice president of platform architecture, and Kayann Drance, vice president of global iPhone product marketing.
Millet highlighted that Apple’s goal is not to compete directly with certain consoles such as the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series S. Instead, the company is focusing on developing a platform and tools that would directly appeal to game developers. He said, “I think we’re focused on developers and game titles. Less trying to compete with consoles. I think the console is just a convenient way to talk about classic games and the types of games that developers are targeting, those who have successfully brought them there. We’ve done our best to try to provide developers with the same set of tools, and we’re working hard with them.”
Millet added, “There’s really amazing scaling technology built into the display itself. Scaling can be done by the GPU. So with features like ray tracing and mesh shading, and this really advanced computing architecture, the developer has access to all of these algorithms to figure out what’s the best balance of compute, quality, performance, frame rate, and resolution. And then we bring it all together in software and at the system level. We make sure to provide reliability, high performance, long battery life and easy storage so that anyone can play these amazing games. That’s why we’ve designed everything to make the game as comfortable as possible, including ensuring stable performance and battery life. We believe we have succeeded.”
In response to the prospect of the iPhone 15 Pro overheating and losing performance in strenuous games, Drance explained, “This is part of our advantage that we are designing for a specific iPhone model. So at a system level, we can work across teams to understand what performance we’re delivering, how it’ll translate into actual gameplay, and whether we can not only achieve those amazing frames. speeds, peak performance and graphics that Jeremy talked about and whether we can support them. I know we’re doing a lot on the SoC side, we’re doing a lot on the software side to make sure it’s a great experience.”
