This is amazing Resident Evil Village it plays as good as it does on the iPhone. The game is just as compelling as when I first played it on PS5, and I was blown away by how well it translated to the smaller screen. But the game’s graphics aren’t the most interesting thing happening with this release — I’m much more excited about what could be in store for Apple games in the future.
Let’s start by talking about A village first. I’ve only played a little over an hour of a preview of the game on the iPhone 15 Pro Max — long enough to survive the lycan attack in the snow village. One area where the port doesn’t translate well is the iPhone’s touchscreen. I tried using the game’s touch controls, but they were terrible; they were a challenge to use even in the game’s opening sequence, where all you have to do is carry a baby to the crib. But the iPhone itself behaves like a console. Once I broke down and connected my DualSense controller, things felt almost exactly like I remembered them on my PS5, and the controls came back to me right away. (This familiarity, unfortunately, didn’t make the Lycan attack any less stressful.)
While this part played great, I’ve already run into a few minor gripes with the iPhone port. Like some other mobile games, I had to download A village in pieces. i understand why – A village is a different animal than something like this Words with friends — but I still wasn’t a fan of waiting through the initial app download, then downloading a few gigs after opening the app, and then another downloading a few gigs after I ‘bought’ the main game and Winters’ Expansion DLC in the app. Parts of the game are also not adapted to the phone interface. When I used my DualSense controller, the in-game buttons featured an Xbox / PC controller layout. In photo mode, I was prompted to use the screenshot feature on my computer.
However, these are relatively minor issues and I’m honestly amazed that I can fully play Resident Evil Village on a device that fits in my pocket. I haven’t traveled much beyond the village attack, so I can’t tell you how well the iPhone port holds up in later parts of the game. And A village on the iPhone it will only work on the iPhone 15 Pro series due to its A17 Pro chip; Sorry I can’t play A village on my beloved iPhone 12 Mini. Still, it’s pretty damn cool A village can it work on iPhone at all.
It’s also a sign of what Apple may have in store for its broader gaming strategy. The iPhone is already a huge gaming platform, which happened even despite things like Apple’s platform fees and restrictions on cloud gaming. But while there are many higher fidelity experiences like Genshin Impact or Call of Duty: Mobilemost iOS games aren’t the kind of thing you’d sit down and play on your console or PC.
This is something that Apple is starting to fix. iOS gaming is a huge cash cow for Apple, but Mac gaming almost certainly isn’t, so you can see why the company might want to change that. To give the Mac any gaming relevance, Apple has been making strides since the Mac’s transition to custom silicon to convince developers to port their games, but the PC still has a far greater number of titles available – even Valve ditched the Mac support for Counter-Strike 2.
But guess which AAA game you are i can playing on mac? This is true: Resident Evil Villagewhich came to the Apple Silicon Mac almost exactly a year ago.
This part of Apple Silicon is key. Apple’s phone and computer chips share similar architectures, so if a developer already ports a game to run on Apple computers, it’s suddenly easier for Apple to convince developers to port their games to the company’s phones and tablets as well.
The terrain is starting to tighten. Capcom is also gearing up to release the excellent Contagious evil 4 remake for iPhone 15 Pro, iPads with M1 chips, and Macs with M1 chips later this year (for as much as $60), and if you buy it on one of those platforms, you can play it on any of them thanks to Apple’s Universal Feature for purchase. (A villagein particular, it does not support Universal Purchase.) Port of Director’s Cut of Death Stranding coming to these devices as well. Assassin’s Creed Mirage and The revival of the division are also preparing for the iPhone 15 Pro, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they make it to the Mac as well.
“We’re really looking at these multi-generational SoC architectures in the phone, in the iPad, now in the Apple Silicon Mac. And we’re going to see that as part of a big unified platform, specifically a graphics and gaming platform,” Apple’s Jeremy Sandmel said in an interview with IGN. “So that’s the opportunity here for those game developers.”
Perhaps we’ll get more details at Monday’s Scary Fast event. The show is expected to feature new Macs that could be frighteningly fast, which could mean they’ll be Apple’s first computers with next-generation M3 chips built using TSMC’s 3nm process. MacRumors reports that the event could focus on Apple’s high-end gaming efforts and possibly include a “major tie-up with a Japanese game developer.” If Apple does announce new Macs, it will likely also talk about games and features like macOS Sonoma’s Game Mode, which prioritizes access to the Mac’s CPU and GPU, and its Proton-like Game Porting Toolkit, which makes it easy to port games on Windows to Mac.
Dream with me a little here: imagine many more games coming to Mac, support Universal Purchase so you only have to buy them once, and have a cross-save feature so you can transfer your progress to Apple devices. This means that if you’ve already bought into the Apple ecosystem, you could theoretically play any of these games whether you’re at your desk on your Mac or on your iPhone on the bus, and pick up right where you left off on the device. which you last played.
It’s an idea we’ve heard before with things like the Steam Deck, Xbox Cloud Gaming, or even the Super Game Boy. But as someone who’s only bought Apple phones and computers for over a decade, I’d like to be able to play games interchangeably on iPhone and Mac.
If all of this works as I imagine, I’d be much more inclined to buy games on Apple devices than on other platforms. I don’t see myself leaving the Apple ecosystem anytime soon, so it would be great to be able to play games on the devices I already carry with me almost everywhere. I guess I’m not the only one, so this is probably why Apple is starting to get into high-end gaming after usually ignoring it. And the company already has a robust (and now more expensive) subscription service in Apple Arcade that could be tweaked to support that dream future.
I really hope Apple reveals its gaming plans at Monday’s event. But while I wait, I’ll try to hide A village on my iPhone — a sick part of me wants to relive the scariest part of the game again.