When Apple came out with EGPU support, I saw a dim light at the end of the tunnel. I could dual boot my Mac and run a decent graphics card, even if there was a slight loss in frames from thunderbolt.
Now with Apple Silicon, the support for EGPUs have been dropped, and you no longer can dual boot and run Windows natively. So now if you want to game, you have to have a separately maintain another system or settle for Apple Arcade (yawn). Right now, I maintain a PC for gaming. I pull out a separate keyboard, mouse, audio interface each time I want to casually play. Each time I use a Microsoft product, I want to hang myself and makes me appreciate the Apple ecosystem more.
Gaming isn't just for nerds anymore. It's a common form of entertainment. The phrase "Macs don't game" really needs to die. Hopefully Apple Silicon can produce some killer GPUs to persuade gaming studios to develop their games on this platform.
This is my dream.
This crops up a lot, so it seems quite a few people share your dream. But "quite a few" doesn't necessarily go very far in the boardrooms of game publishers. Even when a couple of years down the line when Apples complete line-up is their own silicon, and you have an installed base of 50 million or so, a publisher needs to consider ROI and opportunity costs.
From one angle, there will be a decent installed base of reasonably capable hardware, backed by customers that clearly are capable of spending money to get something nice. Also, most machines are sold directly to end users rather than to corporate or administrative accounts, so those end users are much more likely to spend on software.
That's good.
However, Macs are not a platform that attracts people who buy hardware to play games. Those customers buy consoles or PCs, and game publishers haven't cultivated an audience on the Mac for their products. So the user base are likely to consist of casuals and/or people who have access to other platforms to game on.
So how much
more revenue is likely to flow in from a Mac port that isn't directly taken from the same person buying the same software on another, more gaming oriented platform?
That's going to be really tricky to predict - which means risk.
Certain genres of games may find a decent audience, and publishers can slowly gather data that helps them make decisions and reduce risk. But that will take time.
An Xbox sx costs $499, has 16GB of fast RAM (8GB on baseline Macs) and 1TB of fast SSD (256GB minus OS and base apps on baseline Macs). If you want to extend your baseline Mac to a point where you can store a few games on the SSD and let them have some room to live in RAM, you are going to have to pay. A lot. More than the cost of a separate device. And you still won't get the gaming performance or selection of a console. At current prices, extending a Mac to be more gaming worthy doesn't make a lot of sense unfortunately.
So I don't have particularly high hopes that the big publishers will start adding MacOS to their list of default platforms. They may, at best, make judicious choices, and bring stuff like strategy titles and some RPGs to the platform, as well as some titles with very broad appeal. But add Indies and some titles carried over from iOS, and you have a gaming landscape that is likely to satisfy those who are looking for some entertainment on the side. And since the developers who do support MacOS will enjoy not only the user base but also the absence of a lot of big hit titles competing for consumer cash, there is likely to be a sustainable gaming eco-system with its own flavour. Eventually.
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