There are associated costs as well. These games are priced more like console games than iPhone games. Death Stranding is $40, although it is a universal app, which means your single purchase works on a Mac too (and with superior performance). But Assassin’s Creed Mirage is $50 and a long-awaited Mac port appears lost in the desert. Also, Death Stranding downloads close to 50 GB of data as you progress, and even “lightweight” AAA titles need 15 GB. Not ideal if you’ve a 128 GB iPhone. Apple would argue you can offload games and retain their data, but you won’t want to download dozens of GB every time you want to play.
Dig Into the App Store
Gripes aside, these releases remain objectively fun, even if they sit awkwardly between tech demo and something you’d actually want to play on a phone. It’s worth remembering, however, that they aren’t the first AAA efforts to make it to iPhone. Several publishers—most notably, Feral—have been bringing PC games to iPhone for years, and they’re often more suited to the hardware, because they’re less demanding.
Grid Autosport launched on PS3 and PC in 2014 and came to iOS three years later. It remains a great racer and works well on iPhone due to Feral’s optimized port. (The 2022 follow-up Grid Legends is due in December.) The 2018 PC release Wreckfest is now two years old on iPhone—and runs at 60 fps on the latest iPhone Pro. (Capcom’s recent Resident Evil 7 port benefits in a similar way.) These titles are also cheaper (usually $10 or less) and require less storage.
In fact, we’d argue the iPhone’s gaming strength stems from its rich back catalog rather than from shiny new toys. So while it might not replace your current-gen console, your iPhone can complement it as you explore older AAA titles—or the countless indies that originated on the platform. Much has been written about iPhone gaming having a reputation for junk prior to the current crop of AAA titles. That’s nonsense. There are plenty of great games if you know where to look.
Try All-You-Can-Eat Subscriptions
That said, you might not want to dig through App Store dross to find gems. Subscriptions provide a handy shortcut. Apple Arcade gets flak and rapidly ditched efforts to be the HBO of mobile gaming when it pivoted to engagement and retention. Yet plenty of quality remains, such as Balatro, What the Car?, and Shovel Knight Dig. Netflix has also built a quality mobile catalog that now includes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, Hades, and remasters of Grand Theft Auto and World of Goo.
When you want to move beyond mobile games and ports, try streaming. Xbox Cloud Gaming works well as a progressive web app saved from Safari to your Home Screen, giving you access to a rotating list of quality titles. Focusing on the other end of gaming history, Antstream Arcade (available on the App Store) combines retro games, worldwide high-score tables, and fun challenges. Both services require a solid, fast internet connection and—surprisingly—make an effort with touchscreen controls, even if the games they house were resolutely designed with a controller in mind (and are better played with one).
Emulation is another option for classic games, and received a boost when Apple in 2024 dropped its rule banning emulators from loading external files. This has resulted in several quality emulators appearing on the App Store, including Delta, PPSSPP, and RetroArch. Just be mindful that the emulation ecosystem lags far behind Android’s, in part due to remaining Apple restrictions making it impossible to emulate much hardware beyond the original PlayStation. Although if you’re old enough, that might be a blessing.
‘Consolize’ Your iPhone
So an iPhone can, to varying degrees, replace consoles from the PS5 back to the Atari 2600. But can it be a console? Apple had all the component parts of an “anywhere” console long before the Switch—Apple TV, AirPlay, cross-device game sync—but never connected the dots.
It still hasn’t entirely. Beyond native Apple TV titles (which, these days, mostly means Apple Arcade), you can mirror your screen to an Apple TV—or plug and (hopefully) play using a USB-C to HDMI cable or HDMI dock for a more robust experience. But there are shortcomings when mirroring an iPhone display.
Black borders abound. The distracting Home indicator is often present. There’s no landscape Home Screen nor any means to launch games using a controller. Button labels don’t always match the controller you use. You may suffer from a touch of lag. We found the best console-like experience actually comes from Delta—ironic, given that Apple for years rejected it. In part, this is because Delta uses the TV as a proper second screen rather than mirroring, which means no black borders.