Written by Mounas Hawass Monday, September 18, 2023 08:00 AM during the keynote speech to unveil the series iPhone 15 This week, Apple put a little emphasis on the gaming prowess of its new A17 Pro processor, and in a new interview with Taylor Lyles of gaming site IGN, a trio of Apple executives provided more details about the company’s plans to turn the iPhone 15 into “the ultimate gaming console.” ” In the world.
According to the American website 9to5mac, the iPhone 15 Pro is powered by the all-new A17 Pro chip, which focuses greatly on improving the performance of the graphics processing unit, and the new “professional” graphics processing unit provides a new six-core design that Apple says not only improves performance, but also efficiency. Power, and you can expect up to 20% faster GPU performance, along with hardware-accelerated ray tracing for the first time.
To delve deeper into the iPhone 15 Pro’s gaming focus, IGN sat down with Jeremy Sandmell, Apple’s senior director of GPU software, Tim Millett, vice president of platform engineering, and Kiann Drance, vice president of global iPhone product marketing.
In the interview, Millett emphasized that Apple’s goal is not necessarily to compete directly with specific consoles such as PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series S, and instead, its focus is on building a platform and tools that directly attract game developers:
“I think we’re focusing on the developers and the titles that are in gaming, less on trying to compete with consoles. I think console is just a convenient way for us to talk about classic games and the types of games that we’re targeting developers, who have been successful in getting it out there. We’ve done our best to try to provide Same set of tools for developers and we work hard with them.
In response to the iPhone 15 Pro potentially overheating and failing to maintain performance in high-intensity games, Drance explained:
“That’s part of the benefit of our design for a specific iPhone model. So, at the system level, we’re able to work across teams to understand how the performance we’re enabling, how it’s going to manifest in actual gameplay, and whether we’re going to be able to not only hit those great frame rates And the peak performance and graphics that Jeremy talked about, but also whether we’ll be able to sustain that, I know we’re doing a lot on the SoC side, we’re doing a lot on the software side to make sure we enable that experience to be a great experience.
Millett added that part of the responsibility also falls on the developer to strike the perfect balance between performance, quality, and more:
The screen itself has some really amazing scaling technology. And the GPU can do the scaling, so, with features like ray tracing and mesh shading and really advanced compute architecture, the developer has access to all of these algorithms to figure out what’s the best balance between compute, quality, performance, frame rate, and resolution, and then we put it all together in Software and at the system level, we make sure that there is sustainable, high performance, long battery life and comfortable retention of the experience for someone to play these great games, so we have designed everything to make the gaming experience great, including making sure that the performance and battery life are sustainable, and we believe we have succeeded. In doing so
Sandmell points out the old adage that “the best gaming console is the one you have with you” but that’s not what Apple is targeting this time around. Instead, Sandmell believes the iPhone “will be the best gaming console”, bar none.
In addition to the interview itself, it’s worth noting Apple’s decision to conduct an interview on IGN specifically. It’s an example of the company moving outside its normal marketing circles in an attempt to reach a new audience with a special interest in gaming.
