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EntropyQ3

macrumors 6502a
Mar 20, 2009
718
824
I want to believe there are game developers who are tempted by AS, or have already bought an M1 Mac, and are asking "what if ...?"
Of course there are. But they aren’t producing AAA titles, which by definition has very high budgets. The production of those titles are decided in boardrooms of a few big publishers and tasked to a quite limited number of studios with the resources and experience to pull such projects off. Sometimes they still fail.
If you look at the credits of such a product, they are quite similar to big Hollywood productions in terms of scope. The actual low level coding is a small part of the production, compared to asset creation, multi-lingual voice acting revording, QA, yada yada yada.

Any given enthusiastic developer or even studio is simply not in the AAA league. AAA games production is decided on the grounds of expected ROI and created shareholder value, not hardware performance metrics.
 

0128672

Cancelled
Apr 16, 2020
5,962
4,783
Of course there are. But they aren’t producing AAA titles, which by definition has very high budgets. The production of those titles are decided in boardrooms of a few big publishers and tasked to a quite limited number of studios with the resources and experience to pull such projects off. Sometimes they still fail.
If you look at the credits of such a product, they are quite similar to big Hollywood productions in terms of scope. The actual low level coding is a small part of the production, compared to asset creation, multi-lingual voice acting revording, QA, yada yada yada.

Any given enthusiastic developer or even studio is simply not in the AAA league. AAA games production is decided on the grounds of expected ROI and created shareholder value, not hardware performance metrics.
Well, of course, all that's known about AAA games, but I was thinking more about indie devs like Eric Barone and small studios like Snowman, thatgamecompany, Might and Delight, and Giant Squid.
 

EntropyQ3

macrumors 6502a
Mar 20, 2009
718
824
Well, of course, all that's known about AAA games, but I was thinking more about indie devs like Eric Barone and small studios like Snowman, thatgamecompany, Might and Delight, and Giant Squid.
Yup, nevertheless it seems that a reminder of market realities of the gaming industry is needed every second page of any gaming related thread here. ?
I think you are quite right, short term we are far more likely to see projects from smaller studios than the big publishers. Game development spans a huge range, and for most of us it seems that degree of gaming fun has a rather tenous connection to development budget.
 

groove-agent

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 13, 2006
1,919
1,816
Yeah, I mean if Apple can offer comparable graphics performance at a much lower power consumption there are even deeper reasons to get more gaming to happen on Apple's platforms. :)

I don't know if this was posted anywhere else in the thread:


The video mentions compelling reasons for gaming to come to the Mac, but AAA titles? That's evidence yet to be seen. However, maybe if more titles / money are going to Mac/ Apple hardware, that would be a good primer indeed.
 

groove-agent

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 13, 2006
1,919
1,816
I just got my M1 Pro 16" MBP. It handles World of Warcraft like a champ. Sadly it's one of the few games that's compiled for M1. Surprisingly the laptop fans don't really spin up even though I'm maxing out my frames at 100fps. I can see the eve of Mac gaming if Apple can convince gaming studios to make M1 compliant games.

I'd love to see games like Valheim come out on M1. It's a small footprint resource-wise, but is a really fun and relatively popular game.
 

ian87w

macrumors G3
Feb 22, 2020
8,704
12,638
Indonesia
I think the entry for games on Apple Silicon would be through iOS gaming.

Game developers in the end relies on sales. In terms of market share, Windows is king. This is why even console games are ported to Windows.

Second would be consoles, as game developers and the console manufacturers are in a locked ecosystem. Meaning more money and easier development. This is so worth it that some devs prioritized consoles over Windows.

This left Macs with scraps. With tiny marketshare, and majority are still using pathetic Intel integrated graphics, it's just not attractive.

Enter iPhones and iPads. Game developers are really warming up to iOS as a platform. It's essentially similar to consoles. And IAPs are raking in the dough. With Macs are now on the same base hardware as iOS devices, I'm predicting that mobile game developers would be the ones embracing Apple Silicon first.

It would be difficult for the AAA devs, as they already have consoles and PC as their focus. Apple Silicon is a different architecture.
 

Yebubbleman

macrumors 603
May 20, 2010
6,024
2,617
Los Angeles, CA
I just got my M1 Pro 16" MBP. It handles World of Warcraft like a champ. Sadly it's one of the few games that's compiled for M1. Surprisingly the laptop fans don't really spin up even though I'm maxing out my frames at 100fps. I can see the eve of Mac gaming if Apple can convince gaming studios to make M1 compliant games.

I'd love to see games like Valheim come out on M1. It's a small footprint resource-wise, but is a really fun and relatively popular game.
Don't hold your breath. The only real reason why gaming ever had any kind of a surge on the Mac was due to macOS and Windows having the same processor architecture and components. It made it fairly easy to port. Apple has never had success getting big developers to port things to the Apple TV, and that has console caliber graphics on just the A8 and A10X/A12. The M1 and M1 Pro/Max could totally kick ass from a hardware standpoint, but porting existing games to Apple Silicon (on top of porting from Windows to Mac) isn't worth it for the vast majority of game studios out there. While gaming was something you could buy a higher end Intel Mac for and, at worst case, do in Boot Camp, I buying an Apple Silicon Mac for gaming sounds like an exercise in disappointment.
 

laptech

macrumors 601
Apr 26, 2013
4,135
4,456
Earth
I think a very good way to judge Apple's stance on gaming is to look back to see if Apple has every promoted or marketed any of their machines as a gaming tool or gaming machine? because the only adverts I have ever seen from Apple are them showing off their machines capabilites on desktop software, video and photo production/editing, music production/editing, education teaching tools. The only time I have every seen an Apple game advertised/marketed is when it was done by the game publisher themselves in a magazine dedicated to the macs.

I know both Jobs and Wozniak worked at a gaming company before they created Apple and I am therefore wondering if their time at that company is why their computers were not going to be marketed or aimed at gamers. Out of all the interviews both Jobs and Wozniak gave over the years, I wonder if they were ever asked why they never focused on gaming for their machines.
 

Janichsan

macrumors 68040
Oct 23, 2006
3,127
11,948
Don't hold your breath. The only real reason why gaming ever had any kind of a surge on the Mac was due to macOS and Windows having the same processor architecture and components. It made it fairly easy to port.
The days where having the same CPU architecture really played a major role are long gone. Games are no longer written in Assembly. If the appropriate compiler support and compatible middleware is available, porting a game from one architecture to another is not much of a problem.

Bigger issues are Apple dropping crossplatform standards in favour of proprietary solutions (i.e. Metal) and Apple's declining market share in the gaming sector: on Steam, Macs have been dropping from >10% to <3% long before the switch to Arm based CPUs has been announced.

Apple has never had success getting big developers to port things to the Apple TV, and that has console caliber graphics on just the A8 and A10X/A12.
This has less to do with the hardware capabilities and more with the restrictions imposed by Apple: apps Apple TV are only allowed to have a certain size and have* to be playable with that stupid remote. You can't squeeze a modern triple-A title into this lousy amount of gigabytes Apple allows for the apps.

(* Or at least had to. I'm not completely sure if Apple has lifted that particular restriction by now.)
 
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leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,523
19,679
I think a very good way to judge Apple's stance on gaming is to look back to see if Apple has every promoted or marketed any of their machines as a gaming tool or gaming machine?

Yes. They showcased games like Baldur's Gates 3 and Metro during the developer conference keynote and also at the M1 Mac announcement event. Based on their marketing it is clear that they see the base M1 (MacBook Air etc.) as a consumer casual gaming machine, among other things.

They also have multiple developer resources about game creation and they have been progressively improving their tooling and frameworks. In terms of platform capability, Metal is a top-notch API for game creation and Apple G13 offers excellent rasterization performance with low energy consumption. Of course, it's nothing a hardcore gamer would get exited about, but its very solid baseline performance that is sufficient to running any modern game (including the more demanding ones) with reasonable settings.
 
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diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,438
2,666
OBX
Yes. They showcased games like Baldur's Gates 3 and Metro during the developer conference keynote and also at the M1 Mac announcement event. Based on their marketing it is clear that they see the base M1 (MacBook Air etc.) as a consumer casual gaming machine, among other things.

They also have multiple developer resources about game creation and they have been progressively improving their tooling and frameworks. In terms of platform capability, Metal is a top-notch API for game creation and Apple G13 offers excellent rasterization performance with low energy consumption. Of course, it's nothing a hardcore gamer would get exited about, but its very solid baseline performance that is sufficient to running any modern game (including the more demanding ones) with reasonable settings.
As long as games are written for the hardware.
 

AHDuke99

macrumors 68020
Nov 14, 2002
2,309
127
Charleston, SC
Is the latest macOS just really bad for games or what? I noticed playing Heroes of the Storm that performance was much worse than I remember in previous OS's. I was playing on a 16" MBP Intel from late 2019. I could run the game on high settings previously but now it barely runs on low settings.
 

MysticCow

macrumors 68000
May 27, 2013
1,564
1,760
It handles World of Warcraft like a champ.

As it should. WoW Classic should run like a beast there also, even with Rosetta2, because it's from 2004. But WoW alone doesn't make Mac gaming suddenly viable. That's just tokenism.

Is the latest macOS just really bad for games or what?

It isn't the OS itself, but the rather Byzantine workings of XCode and a piss-poor implementation of any OpenGL, Metal included, that truly prevents this. And the good cross platform gaming mechanism is owned by EPIC (Fortnite!).
 

AHDuke99

macrumors 68020
Nov 14, 2002
2,309
127
Charleston, SC
As it should. WoW Classic should run like a beast there also, even with Rosetta2, because it's from 2004. But WoW alone doesn't make Mac gaming suddenly viable. That's just tokenism.



It isn't the OS itself, but the rather Byzantine workings of XCode and a piss-poor implementation of any OpenGL, Metal included, that truly prevents this. And the good cross platform gaming mechanism is owned by EPIC (Fortnite!).

That makes sense. I know Blizzard is letting Mac support pretty much slide aside from Warcraft, but I was surprised how poorly HOTS ran nowadays. I should be able to run it on at least medium in macOS on a 16" Intel MBP with the Radeon 5300M GPU. But alas.
 

star-affinity

macrumors 68000
Nov 14, 2007
1,997
1,333
This has less to do with the hardware capabilities and more with the restrictions imposed by Apple: apps Apple TV are only allowed to have a certain size and have* to be playable with that stupid remote. You can't squeeze a modern triple-A title into this lousy amount of gigabytes Apple allows for the apps.

(* Or at least had to. I'm not completely sure if Apple has lifted that particular restriction by now.)
At least the playable with the remote requirement was lifted in 2016:


File size is 4 GB since 2017 with 20 GB of addition content allowed:


Not sure if that has changed since then, but it sure would be enough for an modern AAA tile even if the hardware was capable of running it. With a maximum of 64 GB for the Apple TV that is also a problem. Even the close to 1 TB storage in the latest consoles gets filled up quickly since each game requires so much storage.
 

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,438
2,666
OBX
At least the playable with the remote requirement was lifted in 2016:


File size is 4 GB since 2017 with 20 GB of addition content allowed:


Not sure if that has changed since then, but it sure would be enough for an modern AAA tile even if the hardware was capable of running it. With a maximum of 64 GB for the Apple TV that is also a problem. Even the close to 1 TB storage in the latest consoles gets filled up quickly since each game requires so much storage.
The Matrix demo on PS5 is 26 GB. I guess if you drop the high resolution textures it would fit.
 

MysticCow

macrumors 68000
May 27, 2013
1,564
1,760
That makes sense. I know Blizzard is letting Mac support pretty much slide aside from Warcraft, but I was surprised how poorly HOTS ran nowadays. I should be able to run it on at least medium in macOS on a 16" Intel MBP with the Radeon 5300M GPU. But alas.
My mini in my signature only runs WoW in Win 10. It doesn’t support Metal and is making its last stand in Windows for the next 5 years.

I can almost do without the macOS anymore. Almost…
 

Janichsan

macrumors 68040
Oct 23, 2006
3,127
11,948
File size is 4 GB since 2017 with 20 GB of addition content allowed:


Not sure if that has changed since then, but it sure would be enough for an modern AAA tile even if the hardware was capable of running it.
Let's take a look at the installation sizes on consoles of a couple of popular AAA titles from the last years: the 8 year old Assassin's Creed: Black Flag already takes up 20 GB, DOOM (2016) up to 70 GB, GTA V up to 76 GB, The Last of Us 2 78 GB, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) a whopping 175 GB.

No, 20 GB is not even close to be enough for a modern AAA title.
 
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diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,438
2,666
OBX
Let's take a look at the installation sizes on consoles of a couple of popular AAA titles from the last years: the 8 year old Assassin's Creed: Black Flag already takes up 20 GB, DOOM (2016) up to 70 GB, GTA V up to 76 GB, The Last of Us 2 78 GB, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) a whopping 175 GB.

No, 20 GB is not even close to be enough for a modern AAA title.
To be fair there is a lot of asset duplication that probably wouldn’t be needed on a platform with solid state storage.
 

Janichsan

macrumors 68040
Oct 23, 2006
3,127
11,948
To be fair there is a lot of asset duplication that probably wouldn’t be needed on a platform with solid state storage.
Games haven't gotten much smaller on the new consoles with SSD, even when taking the effects of higher resolution assets into account.
 

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,438
2,666
OBX
Games haven't gotten much smaller on the new consoles with SSD, even when taking the effects of higher resolution assets into account.
HD Texture packs on the PC ends up being between 15-30GB depending on the game. So it is not for nothing clearly. To be fair, tvOS devices don’t have enough ram to run HD Texture packs to begin with, so it is kind of moot right? After all Fortnite was only ~10GB on iOS but like 30 on PC.
 

thejadedmonkey

macrumors G3
May 28, 2005
9,240
3,499
Pennsylvania
The problem is that a graphics API is insanely complex, and there are always going to be bugs and edge cases that need to be addressed. When your typical AAA game studio finds a bug, they can reach out to AMD/nVidia/Intel, or Microsoft and Sony for help. Eventually the issue gets resolved, the AAA studio doesn't need to hack their game engine for specific hardware, and development continues.

If anyone tries to contact Apple about a bug, there's a giant stone wall and nothing gets fixed until the next point update, if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, it may never get fixed.

That's why developers don't target macOS. It has everything to do with Apple's attitude. And until Apple's attitude changes, there will never be the swath of games on macOS like there is for Windows or even Linux.
 
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star-affinity

macrumors 68000
Nov 14, 2007
1,997
1,333
The problem is that a graphics API is insanely complex, and there are always going to be bugs and edge cases that need to be addressed. When your typical AAA game studio finds a bug, they can reach out to AMD/nVidia/Intel, or Microsoft and Sony for help. Eventually the issue gets resolved, the AAA studio doesn't need to hack their game engine for specific hardware, and development continues.

If anyone tries to contact Apple about a bug, there's a giant stone wall and nothing gets fixed until the next point update, if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, it may never get fixed.

That's why developers don't target macOS. It has everything to do with Apple's attitude. And until Apple's attitude changes, there will never be the swath of games on macOS like there is for Windows or even Linux.
At least Apple has been interested in some collaboration with game developers. Can't see why that won't continue.

”Larian Studios will be collaborating with Apple and Elverils on porting the game to iPad.”



Baldur's Gate 3 too:

 
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