So this works for both, FF7 Remake has sold a reported 5 million copies, are you guys telling me that 1 no currently selling Mac can play the game and 2 that Square Enix couldn't sell at least 5 million copies on macOS?
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A gamer's lament: Apple please let us game on the Mac!
- Thread starter groove-agent
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Where did you get that idea that I am saying no Mac can play games? I explicitly stated my 5700XT performs very VERY well. And at 1080p and 1440p gaming.
Again, developers need to optimize. Final Fantasy 7 Remake looks absolutely horrible sometimes on my base PS4. I can clearly tell its an upscaled image, probably running at 900p upscaled. It has bad texture issues. And only getting 30FPS. Yet it looks amazing on a PS5.
So, yes a Mac can play Final Fantasy 7 if proper optimizations are in place. Just like how id optimized Doom 2016 for the switch. And I bet you a high end Mac could match the quality of Final Fantasy 7 Remake as my base PS4 does. My 5700XT can play games at 1080p 30fps that look better than FF7 Remake on PS4.
I'm not much of a gamer so I have no idea what kind of market FF7 would have on the Mac, but if they thought they could sell 5 million copies on macOS, I don't see why they're not doing it.
Yes there is a texture pop-in issue. Which is probably due to the slow HDD, from my understanding the BC PS5 version still had the same problem. The lowest in game resolution on the PS4 is 1080p though, per DF.
I mean it uses UE4 and we know the Mac supports that Middleware/Engine. It is unclear why almost none of the UE games that are made are not also done on the Mac.
The other game that I was thinking of is Horizon Zero Dawn, they made a PC version and as far as I can tell have sold a total of 10 million copies of that game. There has to be 10 million Mac owners that would buy the game to play, no?
Must be the bad textures that make it look likes its 900p upscaled. I have an SSD in my PS4 and it did not help. FF7R Integrade fixed the texture issues, but its a PS5 exclusive. But regardless, 1080p at 30fps is not an amazing display of graphics. I definitely believe an iMac with a 5700XT has more than enough power to run FF7R if its optimized well. I can play better looking games with the 5700XT at 1440p at 60+ fps.
I agree that your iMac should be able to play the game, so should a M1 iMac. Yet it is more likely that Apple would buy Square Enix before the game appears on Apples platform, and that is a shame....
Yes that has always been my stance. Macs have always had the hardware to play games. Maybe not the 8K 100+ FPS that some people want, but it can play games very well. There is no need for Apple to chase that very very niche market that the RTX 3080Ti or 3090 satisfy.
Consoles are typically first priority. Windows is secondary and sometimes PC ports are a year to years after the console version (Horizon Zero Dawn, Final Fantasy 15). Windows gives the most marketshare, and going from an Xbox -> Windows won't have that much of an overhead in dev cost vs going from Xbox -> Mac. Xbox utilizes DirectX so that saves on the dev cost moving the game to Windows. Mac doesn't have Direct X so it would require a LOT of development time to port the game over to macOS.
Sony 1st party games don't use DirectX (on the Playstation). It is possible they use Vulkan. So there is no real reason why they couldn't use MoltenVK to have the games run on macOS along with the DX port for PC right @leman?
I thought that PlayStation has its own proprietary APIs? I don't know how they look like though.
Regarding Metal and MoltenVK... it's certainly simpler than rewriting the game in Metal, but of course, you still have to spend time debugging and fixing issues. It's not a compile and forget process, especially for more complex games. If I recall correctly, the recent WWDC video that covered Metro's port to Mac mentioned that one of the performance issues was due to a suboptimal resource binding algorithm used inside MoltenVK which required a patch to MoltenVK itself to fix.
No AAA game is going to be written for the Mac alone. The economic argument just isn't there.
The only way an AAA comes out for the Mac is through cross-platform development. That was true when AAA used to appear on the MAC, and it's true now that AAA no longer appear on the Mac.
The essential and most effective thing Apple can do to encourage AAA gaming to return to the Mac is to find ways to lower the cost of porting to Mac via an expanded toolset supporting the conversion pipeline.
I think the next round of Apple Silicon will be *capable* of some really good gaming, the kind you really need a game-optimized rig to beat. But the economic argument -- risk and cost of porting and such -- really gets better for Mac the easier and cheaper it is to port existing and upcoming games, and those are the gears Apple needs to grease.
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I feel like my quote was misunderstood. I’m annoyed by the constant claim that Apple needs NVidia gpus to be able to “game”. Often the “but cross platform development” argument gets thrown in as if having an NVidia card somehow makes it easier to port games (even when macs had NVidia cards, we still didn’t get ports).
Im not so delusional as to think Mac exclusive games will ever happen.
The core point of my ranting is that the blame doesn’t lie upon Apple for any games not being ported. It lies with developers and publishers not wanting to put forth the effort.
The constant bitching at Apple over the lack of games, to me, is an extension of the standard “gamer” hostility towards Apple. This attitude shifts the blame from publishers or developers of games they like to a company they don’t.
Apple has made computers that are physically powerful enough to run most games, and has provided apis and programming environments to run things optimally on their hardware and OS.
These readily available and free tools go unused by major publishers and developers.
Then they should buy some major publishers and developers to force games to be made. (Or buy the exclusivity for the games)
Sorry -- I took it as saying that cross-platform isn't worth pursuing, not that "cross-platform" was another way of saying "It's gotta be NVidia or it's not really a game."
It’s okay, I know that I have trouble getting my thoughts across, especially when I get my pants in a knot.
I just bought an M1 Mac mini. I did a quick test with World of Warcraft (compiled for Apple silicon) although it was classic but with the graphics on ultra which uses more of the contemporary graphics. I could run it on all the highest settings at max fps (60) easily at HD. I don't think I heard the fan spin up although I only had time to try it for 5 mins. I was really impressed although it's a little early to tell.
The other technology that Apple might have their eye on is stream gaming services like Google Stadia or Nvidia GeForce NOW. I've read that if you have the bandwidth, it's actually very good. Some reviewers call it the future of gaming.
The only problem is that most of the games I play are not available for streaming. Stream gaming you could do on pretty much any device even if it's not practical.
I know you can stream games from your gaming machine on a Mac over your LAN. I might give this a try via Ethernet. This way I can have a gaming machine in whatever room I want, and play it on the Mac. This way no fan noise, and no overheating the room you're in.
The other technology that Apple might have their eye on is stream gaming services like Google Stadia or Nvidia GeForce NOW. I've read that if you have the bandwidth, it's actually very good. Some reviewers call it the future of gaming.
The only problem is that most of the games I play are not available for streaming. Stream gaming you could do on pretty much any device even if it's not practical.
I know you can stream games from your gaming machine on a Mac over your LAN. I might give this a try via Ethernet. This way I can have a gaming machine in whatever room I want, and play it on the Mac. This way no fan noise, and no overheating the room you're in.
Streaming services already work and there is not much that Apple can do to improve them. GeForce Now for example has been ARM native since spring and it works reasonably well, even though the list of supported games could be better.
Some folks here have suggested that Apple gets into remote game streaming themselves, but frankly, I don’t see why they would be interested in running a subsidized Windows VM farm.
They could use their own hardware with Proton -> MoltenVK -> Metal wrappers...
Ugh, why? What’s the point? If they wanted to go that route, why not just support a fork of Proton for Mac and let the users run games directly?
The economics of game streaming are weird. I doubt that Nvidia makes much money of it. For them, it’s a way to further cement their dominant market position and ultimately sell more GPUs. Stadia is different since it actually sells you the games, but I’d be damned if I am paying Google $$$ for something that might not work tomorrow.
Exactly, so if they decide to close the shop I can still play those game elsewhere. With Stadia you are screwed. And sure, if Valve goes bankrupt, I lose all my games as well, but at least I can play them offline and anywhere I want.
But even at $10 per month I doubt that GeForce Now makes money. Those datacenter + support are expensive to run. I can only see it break even if the large portion of the users never actually use the service. As I said, I think that the plan behind GeForce Now is not much making money from streaming but retaining Nvidia's grip on the game market and hooking new people on gaming (so that they can sell them dGPUs later on).
As to Apple... I see absolutely no point of them getting into this game. Steaming solutions exist and they work rather well. Apple is not going to make any money here. And they are not going to improve the perception of Macs as gaming devices if their "solution" to gaming on Mac is to run Windows games on a wrapper. And finally, I don't see them using their cutting edge limited supply chips on something that frivolous. Why would they waste those precious chips on a destined to fail business unit when they can sell them for good $$$ in a Mac Pro (where they actually would be useful)?
P.S. I have a founder's subscription to GeForce Now, but I haven't played a single game there in the last four months. No game I currently would be interested in is available. I still keep my subscription because $100 per year for a service like that is a joke.
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Tencent is buying Sumo (the folks that made Sackboy and Crackdown 3). It is a shame Apple wouldn't/didn't bid for them.
Tencent is buying British game studio Sumo for $1.27 billion
Tencent’s latest major investment in gaming.
I’m of the opinion that Apple would sink a lot of money into a studio for zero return if they bought one. I’ve detailed how pc gaming culture is anti Apple, I think they’d just skip whatever exclusive that was released.Tencent is buying Sumo (the folks that made Sackboy and Crackdown 3). It is a shame Apple wouldn't/didn't bid for them.
Tencent is buying British game studio Sumo for $1.27 billion
Tencent’s latest major investment in gaming.www.theverge.com
A thought I had though, what if Apple had a studio that would offer to port existing games, a la Feral and Aspyr.