Sumo would have been a good buy, imho. They have also made macOS and iOS/tvOS games before. Plus it looks like they can work on a wide range of IP which could have been useful.
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A gamer's lament: Apple please let us game on the Mac!
- Thread starter groove-agent
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Epic and Apple are still fighting over money, so we’re all waiting and watching for any changes.
For a start, because the engine was developed with DirectX 11 as a target platform and doesn’t support macOS. And before anyone says “but why is it on Playstation then”… because Sony is using a custom version of OpenGL that has the same capability as DX11. Anything DX11 can do can be done on the PlayStation. macOS OpenGL/Metal can not do exactly the same thing DX11 can. You can make it look similar/the same, but the underlying functionality is different. and of course, as usual, number of sales is low on macOS.
I can thing of two reasons.
Developing an AAA game typically takes 3-5 years. The decisions which platforms to support initially are made early in the process. Because there was little information available about Apple Silicon Macs in 2018-2019, there was no way to know how many Macs would have good enough GPUs to make targeting them profitable.
Predicted minimum system requirements for Forspoken are quite close to M1 performance. The 2020 iMac and the MBP 16" with higher-end GPU options are the only consumer Mac that meet the recommended specifications. Because very few Macs are powerful enough for experiencing the game as intended, targeting them does not seem profitable at the moment.
Not even Metal 2.4? ?
There's also:
Metal Developer Tools on Windows Offer New Gaming Opportunities
Game developers are now able to more easily develop games for Apple devices using Windows machines, thanks to a new set of Metal developer tools...
www.macrumors.com
I think we really just need more powerful graphics hardware for more Mac users – then it should be worth it for more developers to release "bigger" games for macOS.
IIRC this is a d3d11 and d3d12 game since it looks like it has dxr. Wouldn't d3d12 be easier to port to Metal?
Aren't there more M1 Macs than PS5's?
Probably, but M1 Macs don't meet the recommended specifications. They are powerful enough to run the game but not powerful enough to provide the intended gaming experience.
In general, recommended specifications are more important than minimum specifications. They describe the midrange system needed for fully experiencing the game. A low-end system that doesn't meet the recommended specs may be able to run the game, but the experience will probably not be as good as it should be.
If there are not enough Macs that meed the recommended specs, sales are likely be low. And the people who buy are likely to complain about how poorly the game runs on their system. Both are reasons for not porting games designed for current-generation consoles to Macs.
Where are the recommended specs coming from? I don't see them on Square's site for Forspoken.
The best guess at the moment is GTX 1070 or equivalent and 16 GB RAM. As the game is designed as an PS5 "exclusive" running at 4k resolution, it makes sense to assume that the recommended specs are close to PS5.
It is a timed console exclusive so expect to see it on xbox in 23-24. The last game to use that Engine only recommended a 1060 which everyone here feels the M1 matches. I would suspect the PC recommendations will be similar (or the same really).
OpenGL is deprecated but not dropped. Of course there is no telling how many more versions of MacOS before it is actually dropped.
There are more M1 Macs than PS5’s right? Seems like there should be enough of a user base if they are willing to make a PS5 version of a game.
The difference is that not everyone buying an M1 Mac wants to game on it. That isn’t true of the PS5.
What's the percentage of M1 Mac users that bought their Mac to play some AAA titles?
Most developers who use Metal-compatible IDEs like UE4 and Unity can’t bother with Windows, PS5 and XBOX, so, if they want more money, which is going to be easier for them to bother with?
Answer: MacOS.
Actually i think it is close to 0%
I don’t think that the primary reason people buy a mac is gaming.
Apple wouldn’t spend time highlighting MacOS games at WWDC if it were close to 0%.
Its pretty darn close - at least using Steam's statistics. windows 96.49%, and macOS 2.49% (with Linux rounding it out at 1.02% but I didnt grab that)
Not that it was much higher before, but the cutoff from older 32-bit Mac games that worked pre-Catalina probably didn't help that number.
Still, wonder how many users that is in numbers? Steam has quite a large user base, so 2.49% macOS users should be quite a lot.
Nothing compared to Windows of course.I say it again – the problem with Mac gaming and ”bigger” more demanding games not being released very often for the platform is – in my opinion – that so few people with Macs have graphics hardware powerful enough compared to what many people on Windows PC's have. Basically only Mac Pro users has been competitive when it comes to that, and how big portion of the Mac user base are they? Can't be many percent.
Also, the the historical problem with OpenGL performance on macOS/OS X and what it means in performance loss to port a game from Windows has been noticed many times over the yers in that a game running in macOS a Mac runs much worse (frame rate wise) than if you start up the same Mac in Windows and run the game there.
But now we're in a new situation I think where Apple with their custom processors and graphics card has the possibility to get more powerful graphics hardware into the hands of more people, plus a graphics API (Metal) that is modern and optimized for the OS, things might change.
But it will take time (if it happens…). The question is how long.
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2010 it was over 8%. 2015 it was 3.43%. That was 4.28 million Mac gamers. With 2.49% it should still be 3.11 million on Steam. Many people also only buy games on Mac App Store. There is also GOG, Epic, Ubisoft and Origin. It's clear that many play mobile games but 3-4 million is still a large customer base. The average game sells only 32 000 copies and developers talk about 30 000 to 50 000 sales to break even. 3-4 million additional customers should be a good market to invest in.
Slowly but surely more games are being ported to Apple Silicon but native games are available mostly through Mac App Store until Valve decides to support Steam for ARM64.
According to https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Home there are 31 native ports, but not all games are on that list. Some games with native support are Myst, Asphalt 8 and 9, Total War: Rome Remastered, Baldur's Gate 3, Disco Elysium, Total War: Warhammer III, Path of Exile and EVE Online.
I think things are going to get better when M1X comes out next month with 16-32 GPU cores.
Slowly but surely more games are being ported to Apple Silicon but native games are available mostly through Mac App Store until Valve decides to support Steam for ARM64.
According to https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Home there are 31 native ports, but not all games are on that list. Some games with native support are Myst, Asphalt 8 and 9, Total War: Rome Remastered, Baldur's Gate 3, Disco Elysium, Total War: Warhammer III, Path of Exile and EVE Online.
I think things are going to get better when M1X comes out next month with 16-32 GPU cores.
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31 of which some are basically iPad versions. That is like counting all the apple arcade games, which some of those are.
Thake those away and the ipad port and you are probably left with 5 or so.