Apple has been making strides in the gaming space. With last year’s iPhone 15 Pro lineup, Apple announced its intention to bring console-quality gaming to iOS, harnessing the power of Apple Silicon’s graphics rendering capabilities. This included titles from popular franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Resident Evil, and more.
As someone used to playing these types of titles on more powerful hardware, the idea of experiencing them on a smartphone was intriguing. Now, with the launch of the iPhone 16 series, Apple is doubling down on its “console-level” gaming ambitions, introducing Mac “Game Mode” to iPhones, improving performance, and expanding its game library.
To put these claims to the test, I chose the new iPhone 16 Pro Max to evaluate its gaming prowess based solely on gaming experience, avoiding benchmarks and metrics.
Testing AAA titles
I started with some of the heavier iPhone-exclusive games, like Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Resident Evil 4, and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. So how does the experience compare to dedicated gaming consoles? While it’s not exactly the same, Apple’s promise of delivering a solid gaming experience on iPhones remains, albeit with some compromises.
It seems that the developers have the freedom to decide which aspects of the game to compromise in order to optimize them. For example, Assassin’s Creed Mirage runs smoothly and Ubisoft maintains much of the open-world experience, but even at the highest graphical settings, images appear slightly pixelated, despite notable attempts to smooth out details.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage on the iPhone 16 Pro Max
On the other hand, Capcom’s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard boasts impressive graphics, but you can feel the trade-off in terms of smoothness, particularly during scene transitions, where jitters are evident with motion blur disabled. Resident Evil 4 fared slightly better in terms of movement and transitions, likely due to its lower resolution, which frees up hardware resources for a more stable frame rate.
Resident Evil 7 Biohazard on iPhone 16 Pro Max
I also had the opportunity to play Infinity Nikki, which is still in beta as of this writing. While the gameplay wasn’t as smooth, it’s reasonable to expect improvements upon its official release.
Despite some compromises, the light and shadow details in these games are on par with those of actual handheld game consoles, thanks to Apple Silicon’s hardware-accelerated ray tracing. This means that the GPU dedicates some cores specifically to rendering light rays, improving lighting and shadow visual effects.
As for thermal management, the iPhone 16 Pro Max stayed surprisingly cool, with only slight warmth near the camera after an hour of gaming. The new Game Mode in iOS 18 likely contributes to this, optimizing performance by prioritizing game processing and limiting background activities. Additionally, native controller support in most exclusive games is a welcome feature.
While I’ve only tried a few, there are heavier titles with their mobile versions available exclusively on iOS, including Resident Evil Village, Death Stranding: Director’s Cut, and more.
Testing popular mobile games
Beyond exclusive titles, I also tried more available games like Genshin Impact, Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat, FC Mobile, and others. The iPhone 16 Pro Max offers a 120 FPS mode for Genshin Impact, providing a noticeably smoother experience than the 60 FPS mode. However, prolonged gameplay caused overheating, resulting in sudden frame drops. In my opinion, the best experience was at 60 FPS with high graphics settings – great images without significant jitter in frames.
Games like FC Mobile, Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat, Injustice 2, and Real Racing 3 were easily handled by the hardware and ran smoothly and smoothly.
For multiplayer titles like Battleground Mobile India (BGMI), you can select the Extreme Frame Rate (60 FPS) option. On this lower graphics setting, gameplay was smooth, with minimal warm-up and no stutters. However, switching to higher graphics settings, such as HDR, introduced occasional stuttering and more noticeable heat.
Verdict
Overall, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is among the top-tier gaming smartphones, although it is not marketed as a gaming phone. It lacks certain software features found on dedicated gaming devices, such as performance customization, the ability to exceed set frame rates, and native performance monitors, but it still offers an impressive gaming experience.
While it hasn’t yet reached the level of game consoles or dedicated gaming machinery, Apple is steadily closing the gap. With a growing library of exclusive titles and long-awaited support for retro game emulators, the iPhone 16 Pro Max has something for every type of gamer.
First published: October 4, 2024 | 12:47 p.m. IS
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