When Apple announced the iPhone 15 at its Wonderlust event, it introduced, as it always does, its next-generation smartphone processor: the A17 Pro.
Exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, the new silicon chipset boasts all the usual performance upgrades you would expect: its CPU is 10% faster, the Neural Engine doubles in speed and the GPU is 20% faster. You know the drill.
However, unlike most years, Apple dropped a bombshell announcement about four major AAA games that are coming to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max: Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil Village, Death Stranding and even the yet-to-be-released Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
Ubisoft also demoed The Division: Resurgence during the keynote, and while it appeared to run like a dream on iPhone 15 Pro, it was already scheduled to be released as a mobile game.
The other four games listed have only ever been released on PC and video game consoles, like the Sony PlayStation and Xbox. Never on handheld, and certainly never on mobile devices.
Of course, we won’t know just how well these games perform on iPhone 15 Pro until we get the chance to review both the handsets themself and the games as they are released. But Apple used the games to demonstrate the A17 Pro’s “hardware-accelerated ray tracing,” a technology used in modern video games to render more realistic lighting and shadows.
Different games use ray tracing in different ways. Some games use the technology to highlight subtle improvements to shadows in-game, while others like Spider-Man on PlayStation 5 use ray tracing to create incredibly realistic reflections on water and reflective surfaces. Ray tracing is best demonstrated with a side-by-side video comparison. Check out the video below for an example of how the game Cyberpunk 2077 uses ray tracing to create more realistic lighting:
Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil Village and Death Stranding will be released on iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max later this year, while Assassin’s Creed Mirage will be released on iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max in 2024.
Ubisoft is currently taking sign-ups for the closed beta of The Division Resurgence with the game officially releasing later this year.
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