A gamer's lament: Apple please let us game on the Mac!

[JouniS]

TF2 is a particular sore spot, that aside it’s up to devs to keep current with standards.

For example, Adobe, a paragon of being slow is already committing to Apple Silicon. Same with DaVinci Resolve. And others as well.

Developers continue supporting their games as long as people continue buying them. That usually means 1-2 years at most.

Games are primarily content, and people don't like buying the same content over and over again. The fact that games are also software is irrelevant from a business perspective.

 

[vir]

Games are finished software.

 

[Realityck]

Couldn’t have said it better myself, games are not living software, with developers ready and waiting (most have closed shop). They are capsules in time. They are a good book or film in your collection.

Many games are not like a linear book or film where you have a beginning and end and you do nothing but read or watch. A good game should be very interactive, requiring commands, choices, timing, to get to some change of status or ending. But you might be making a observation that some games just lack any real finesse where there are simple challenges along some limited paths never mind the graphics environment and once you are done they are like something you read or seen. The key to a great game is what is its replay value.

 

[vir]

Games are an experience.

 

[Irishman]

Right, what is your point. You start a game and you stop a game. You had a memorable entertainment experience. One you might want to revisit some time. Like a book, album, film, whatever.

Oh but wait, an album is not linear like a movie, you can skip tracks and stuff! Aw man, my argument is ruined

Hey, you can be as negative and pessimistic about Apple as you want, it’s a free country. And I know that you probably think you’re the only reasonable voice here, and we’re all passionate about games and gaming.

Noone is debating you. Nobody is trying to OBLITERATE your arguments with facts and logic.

The stakes aren’t that high, man.

Like you, I was really worried about Apple potentially shutting out those classic 32-bit games, games that I had already bought and played and loved. My response to that back then, before Catalina came out, was to decide to keep Mojave.

So, that’s what I did, and turned off auto-updates in system preferences.

 

[JMacHack]

Couldn’t have said it better myself, games are not living software, with developers ready and waiting (most have closed shop). They are encapsulated creative works. They are a good book or film in your collection. Works of art and entertainment are not mere “software”.

And the industry is keeping up with standards just fine. Every game is using DirectX.

Counterpoint:

Temptation of the Apple: Dolphin on macOS M1

From the announcement made on November 10th, 2020, users have had high hopes for the new Apple M1 devices. With its powerful Apple Silicon processor smashing benchmarks all over the place, users and developers were both asking if a native Dolphin build would be possible. Now we have the answer...

dolphin-emu.org

Imagine defending multi billion dollar companies for not updating their games for 64-bit (a standard that has been out for a decade) when hobbyists made an emulator native in their spare time for free. Those games weren’t even made for PCs in the first place.

Now imagine listening to game companies say “boo hoo we can’t use opengl from 2007 anymore, guess we won’t make anything for Mac “ and buying it hook, line, and sinker.

It’s a perfect example of gamer entitlement. “Everything must revolve around MUH GAMES!” Compatibility has to be paramount because of “MUH GAMES!” No progress may be made without MUH GAMES!”

 

[JMacHack]

And if you’re seriously worried about compatibility, here you go:

Mac Mini Desktop Late 2014 | 3.0 i7 16GB 256 SSD PCIE Refurbished - Very Good | eBay

Hard Drive: 256 SSD PCIE. This refurbished Apple Mac mini Desktop can be an excellent example of the easy to use functionality and high level of quality that Apple products are known for. Year: Late 2014.

www.ebay.com

Here’s a Mac that’s compatible. It even runs Windows.

 

[laptech]

When Intel mac's came onto the scene, Apple had the perfect oppertunity open to them to build a mac gaming machine but they didn't. Due to the mac's using x86 architecture it would have been much simplier to port a pc x86 game to mac x86 but again, no one did. Yes there was games written of mac os but nothing that would tempt gamers away from windows pc. Now that Apple has more to ARM, it is going to be a lot harder for game publishers to port x86 games to mac ARM. Would the publishing houses do that? personally i do not think so because these publishers look at Apple and see what they are doing on the gaming front, motherboards, memory intergration, graphic cards and there is nothing so why would the publishing houses spend time and money porting games to a system that Apple is not interested in pursuing or even promoting.

If Apple were not preapred to develop gaming macs and have AAA games written for them when they had the perfect oppertunity with intel macs, they certainly are not going to do it with ARM, in my opinion.

 

[JouniS]

Imagine defending multi billion dollar companies for not updating their games for 64-bit (a standard that has been out for a decade) when hobbyists made an emulator native in their spare time for free. Those games weren’t even made for PCs in the first place.

Game emulators have always been hobby projects, but a hobby project does not imply limited developer resources. Good developers are expensive, and interesting hobby projects can often afford doing things that make no financial sense for a for-profit business.

When I was younger, I was involved in volunteer projects of all kinds. There was a rule of thumb that if your expenses were X but you now have to pay for your offices/storages/workshops/other facilities, your expenses rise to 10X. And if you have to hire people instead of relying on volunteers, your expenses can easily be 100X. Hiring people is a ridiculously inefficient way of using money.

 

[star-affinity]

I feel good about them being the biggest game store on PC. That’s all I’m talking about.

Thanks star-affinity for the list of temporary Rosetta games. To my tastes it looks like mostly unrecognizable shovelware (Get in the Car, Loser?) mixed in with a small handful of nice strategy games. I’d pick Civ 6 from that pile of blah, though I don’t play strategy much. Wish my 450 out of 480 lost Mac games would come back.

My main point was that there definitely seems to be interest from game developers to be on the Mac. At least it's not as bad as some seem to think? Path of Exile was relatively recently released and it seems an Apple silicon version is coming.

But sure, it's sad that all those 32 bit games doesn't run on later macOS versions that only run 64 bit apps, but I the same time I can understand that we have to move on. It will happen with Windows too (although it seems Windows 11 will keep 32 bit app support), and like has been said – there's always Mojave.

 

[leman]

Good news: Steamworks has been updated with native Apple Silicon support. This opens up a way to ship native games on Steam without jumping through awkward hoops.

 

[Irishman]

Couldn’t have said it better myself, games are not living software, with developers ready and waiting (most have closed shop). They are encapsulated creative works. They are a good book or film in your collection. Works of art and entertainment are not mere “software”.

And the industry is keeping up with standards just fine. Every game is using DirectX.

Only Windows games that don’t use OpenGL, or its next-gen iteration, Vulkan.

 

[vir]

Games target DirectX.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Jesus, an emulator is not a game, it's a piece of software, like iTunes or DVD Player, which falls exactly right into what I was saying.

Let me add something to it. Not only is it an emulator, but it emulates games for system that came out in 2001 and 2006. So we're talking 15+ years old technology. Given that Nintendo consoles even back then were already technically outdated the day they released (compare Wii with PS3), that helps as well.

In addition, the Wii graphics API is proprietary, but similar to OpenGL with a fixed function pipeline. The closest OpenGL version to it is 1.1 dating back to 1997. That's 24 years ago.

 

[vir]

Emulators are cool.

 

[MysticCow]

When Intel mac's came onto the scene, Apple had the perfect oppertunity open to them to build a mac gaming machine but they didn't. Due to the mac's using x86 architecture it would have been much simplier to port a pc x86 game to mac x86 but again, no one did.

Because Apple shot themselves in the foot. They decided “Intel Integrated Crapware” graphics were the way to go for PROFESSIONAL MODELS (13 inch MBPs). Who the hell plays anything other than Candy Crush on Intel Integrated Crapware???

Game devs took one look at this and laughed their collective asses off. Metal or not, who is going to program a AAA game for Intel Integrated Crapware? Nobody, and the result was nothing coming out for macOS.

Apple decided that doubling down on Intel Integrated Crapware later down the line was such an impossibly smart move, yet should never have been in anything other than the cheapest mini and/or Air. We should have kept a mini Pro with some discrete graphics like in 2011 for the rest of the line.

It isn’t the game devs fault when Apple intentionally crippled the systems. Here’s hoping Apple Integrated Graphics can plug up the massive hole in the dam that Apple intentionally caused.

 

[leman]

Because Apple shot themselves in the foot. They decided “Intel Integrated Crapware” graphics were the way to go for PROFESSIONAL MODELS (13 inch MBPs). Who the hell plays anything other than Candy Crush on Intel Integrated Crapware???

Game devs took one look at this and laughed their collective asses off. Metal or not, who is going to program a AAA game for Intel Integrated Crapware? Nobody, and the result was nothing coming out for macOS.

Apple decided that doubling down on Intel Integrated Crapware later down the line was such an impossibly smart move, yet should never have been in anything other than the cheapest mini and/or Air. We should have kept a mini Pro with some discrete graphics like in 2011 for the rest of the line.

It isn’t the game devs fault when Apple intentionally crippled the systems. Here’s hoping Apple Integrated Graphics can plug up the massive hole in the dam that Apple intentionally caused.

What would have been an alternative? The 13“ is a portable business laptop aimed at various professionals, not gamers. Portability and battery life was main priority, not GPU performance. Using a dGPU in those models would have compromised the core concept of the machine.

 

[laptech]

It would be interesting to know if there is an interview or media article somewhere that has either Steve Jobs ot Tim Cook being asked why Apple does not build gaming computers because I am sure the question has come up from time to time.

 

[star-affinity]

It would be interesting to know if there is an interview or media article somewhere that has either Steve Jobs ot Tim Cook being asked why Apple does not build gaming computers because I am sure the question has come up from time to time.

There's some quotes from Phil Schiller talking about it in 2015 in this MacRumors article:

Apple's Past Sideloading Plans, Ecosystem Lock-in Strategy, and More Revealed in Internal Documents

Documents highlighted by The Verge and disclosed as part of the Apple vs. Epic Games trial have revealed that Apple discussed plans for sideloading...

www.macrumors.com

We and the major game developers have tried high-end gaming on the Mac... but have failed to generate any sizable business in that genre.

Wonder what what they concluded were the reasons for it to go wrong? Too few users with powerful enough graphics hardware on the Mac perhaps? And what about a graphics API that's up to date and runs well on macOS?

I think Apple has the potential to cover both of those things now with their own GPUs and Metal API. But I also think a replaceable GPU is important for a gaming focused computer. Most often it is the GPU that will bottleneck before the CPU. If it's only Mac Pro computers starting at $5,999.00 that will have replaceable graphics in Apple's computer offerings it will be hard to to compete with what people can get on the PC/Windows side of things.

But maybe Apple isn't aiming for that and can still ”be in the game” somewhat with the ”fixed hardware” that consoles also has.

 

[Janichsan]

Developers continue supporting their games as long as people continue buying them. That usually means 1-2 years at most.

Games are primarily content, and people don't like buying the same content over and over again. The fact that games are also software is irrelevant from a business perspective.

Couldn’t have said it better myself, games are not living software, with developers ready and waiting (most have closed shop). They are encapsulated creative works.

That's no longer fully true. "Games as a service" are the current big thing and intend to tie the players for years and years. A significant part of the revenue stream are no longer the retail costs of the game, but additional spendings like microtransactions, lootboxes, seaon/battle passes, etc.

This applies especially to multiplayer games like the aforementioned Team Fortress 2.

 

[leman]

I think Apple has the potential to cover both of those things now with their own GPUs and Metal API. But I also think a replaceable GPU is important for a gaming focused computer. Most often it is the GPU that will bottleneck before the CPU. If it's only Mac Pro computers starting at $5,999.00 that will have replaceable graphics in Apple's computer offerings it will be hard to to compete with what people can get on the PC/Windows side of things.

It’s very unlikely that any of the Apple Silicon Macs will ever have replaceable graphics. The very idea is incompatible with Apples hybrid computing paradigm. From this perspective, Macs will never become dedicated gaming machines - too expensive, too inflexible.

However, Apple‘s game is different. They have no intention of building a gaming Mac. Instead, they want to make every Mac capable of baseline gaming. The Mac is built around the idea of a jack of all trades machine, and Apples technology enables them to design premium personal computers that can do pretty much anything. It’s the overall value proposition that’s unique, not any of specific capabilities.

 

[star-affinity]

It’s very unlikely that any of the Apple Silicon Macs will ever have replaceable graphics.

Do you think that is the case also for Apple's Silicon Mac Pro? ?
For the more consumer level Mac desktops you're probably correct that it's unlikely that they'll ever get replaceable graphics. Or maybe Apple could make external graphics a thing also with their own silicon.

 

[laptech]

There's some quotes from Phil Schiller talking about it in 2015 in this MacRumors article:

Apple's Past Sideloading Plans, Ecosystem Lock-in Strategy, and More Revealed in Internal Documents

Documents highlighted by The Verge and disclosed as part of the Apple vs. Epic Games trial have revealed that Apple discussed plans for sideloading...

www.macrumors.com

We and the major game developers have tried high-end gaming on the Mac... but have failed to generate any sizable business in that genre.

Wonder what what they concluded were the reasons for it to go wrong? Too few users with powerful enough graphics hardware on the Mac perhaps? And what about a graphics API that's up to date and runs well on macOS?

I think Apple has the potential to cover both of those things now with their own GPUs and Metal API. But I also think a replaceable GPU is important for a gaming focused computer. Most often it is the GPU that will bottleneck before the CPU. If it's only Mac Pro computers starting at $5,999.00 that will have replaceable graphics in Apple's computer offerings it will be hard to to compete with what people can get on the PC/Windows side of things.

But maybe Apple isn't aiming for that and can still ”be in the game” somewhat with the ”fixed hardware” that consoles also has.

I wonder if it was end cost of the machines that hampered them because Apple is very well known for how expensive their computers are. In the quoted comment it states '....but have failed to generate any sizable business in that genre'. This has to beg the question of why? For many many years many mac owners have been asking for mac gaming machines so I believe demand was there but that quote seems to say otherwise. Did Apple chose the wrong hardware for their gaming machine which meant gamers were put off from buying them? A gaming device needs to have a 'killer' game that intices people to buy the machine. Nintendo had 'killer' game Mario, Microsoft had 'killer' game Halo. did Apple not have such a game, thus potential buyers were put off?

Note: 'killer' game is in reference to a game that is considered so darn good that people are willing to buy the machine just so they can play that game.

 

[vir]

PC has the games.

 

[laptech]

Do you think that is the case also for Apple's Silicon Mac Pro? ?
For the more consumer level Mac desktops you're probably correct that it's unlikely that they'll ever get replaceable graphics. Or maybe Apple could make external graphics a thing also with their own silicon.

I think there is a possibility of external graphics because companies such as HP, DELL, ACER and ASUS have all built laptops that have had a special adapter on them that can use an external GPU. I remember seeing an ASUS laptop being reviewed a few years ago on a well known tech youtube site that does reviews that showed an ASUS laptop using an external 1080ti GPU.

The question is will Apple build an ARM machine with such capability built into it.