YouTuber shows iPhone 15 Pro is a legitimate gaming console

Published Sep 20th, 2023 7:33PM EDT

Image: Vincent Zhong/YouTube

The iPhone 15 Pro has two new features that make it a legitimate gaming console: the A17 Pro chip and a USB-C 3.0 port. YouTuber Vincent Zhong proved exactly that by connecting the new iPhone to an external monitor and a PS5 controller to play Resident Evil Village.

He’s able to play the game in 1560x720p, with HDR on, and locked at 30fps. Although Vincent Zhong says the game doesn’t look as good as it would on an actual console, the gameplay is very smooth, especially when you know that a smartphone is running it.

Thankfully, with Apple not adding any real restrictions to its iPhone 15 Pro USB-C port, users can connect the iPhone to pretty much any peripheral.

In addition, Apple’s new A17 Pro is an insanely good processor for a smartphone. Built on 3-nanometer technology, it features a complete redesign to its GPU, includes an AV1 decoder, and packs hardware-accelerated ray tracing.

Here’s what Apple has to say about the A17 Pro system on a chip:

The new CPU is up to 10 percent faster with microarchitectural and design improvements, and the Neural Engine is now up to 2x faster, powering features like autocorrect and Personal Voice in iOS 17. The pro-class GPU is up to 20 percent faster and unlocks entirely new experiences, featuring a new 6-core design that increases peak performance and energy efficiency. Now with hardware-accelerated ray tracing — which is 4x faster than software-based ray tracing — iPhone 15 Pro offers smoother graphics, as well as more immersive AR applications and gaming experiences.

This is why, as you can see in the video below, the iPhone 15 Pro can bring console-quality gaming to the palm of our hands with modern AAA titles like Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4, Death Stranding, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage.

BGR‘s Joe Wituschek goes ever further, saying that these console-quality games arriving on the iPhone 15 Pro are just the beginning:

 I don’t think Apple is going to take long to bring that capability to its other devices. Apple Arcade has shown that game developers can release a game for all of the company’s devices at the same time, from the iPhone and the iPad to the Mac and the Apple TV.

As Apple updates these other devices, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the company enable the same experiences on the iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. This would be an enormous selling point for gamers. Right now, the Nintendo Switch is the only major console that you can unplug from your television in order to take your games with you.

The new iPhone 15 models will be available starting this Friday, September 22.

José is a Tech News Reporter at BGR. He has previously covered Apple and iPhone news for 9to5Mac, and was a producer and web editor for Latin America broadcaster TV Globo. He is based out of Brazil.