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Apple built a DirectX 12 translation layer for Apple Silicon
- Thread starter senttoschool
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They are not making a Proton equivalent. They want native gaming, not Windows emulation. So far their business strategy has been very clear and consistent.
Apple has no interest in a Pippin 2.0 console. They want the existing hardware to be the go to for gaming, whether the iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Plus, the AppleTV already can work as their console, so no real need to create an entirely new console from the ground up.
Also I really think if they were going to make some offshoot product it'd be a camera anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
No reason to touch the camera market that is being actively displaced by phones. Sales of dedicated cameras are in free fall.
I can see them making a gaming console based on Metal over a camera.
They actually have everything they need. Put an M3 Max into a Mini and make a controller. That’s it. That’s an Apple Console.
I thought about that back in Dec 2020 when the Mac mini M1, PS5 & Xbox benchmark reviews matured.
The challenge even with the M1 was the cost. Very unlikely Apple would follow PS & Xbox's business model of subsidizing hardware through software sales. They never had to. They're more like Nintendo in this regard. They profit off the hardware & the software.
Mac gaming is being grown organically with each Mac chip refresh.
The Game Porting Kit was released on the 3rd announcement anniversary of Apple Silicon at WWDC 2023.
As it is Apple Makes More on App Store games than PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo + Activision + Windows COMBINED
Also entering a very mature market to compete with entrenched players is too much work for the return.
There are easier ways to make money while leveraging Apple tech, business processes and resources.
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What about customer experience though? I mean, it's great that Apple makes a lot of money though ad-based crappy games or microtransactions, but it doesn't help Mac owners who actually want to experience high quality gaming.
Hence the Game Porting Toolkit?
This is being done organically with each Mac chip refresh.
If you want to high quality entertainment today then buy a gaming PC or gaming console. It is far easier to do than to expect a Mac Pro with a Core i9 + RTX 4090.
The point I am making is wanted outcome today.
Mac gaming to Apple is more like an optional side quest you can delay if you want to reach 100% on all tasks.
My referencing the Mac Pro and those gamer parts is a hyperbole on time wasted waiting for something that may never come as the concept of modularized PC parts is being superceeded by SoC.
The AMD APU found in the Xbox and PlayStation is a form of SoC and Heterogeneous System Architecture
I agree with you that it's not likely, yet. My point is that Apple is more likely to make a gaming console than a camera.
All of your points are valid for why Apple won't make a gaming console.
However, I will caveat this by saying that I believe gaming is here to stay and it will only get larger over time. I think Nvidia's CEO said it best when he said that everyone will be a gamer in the future. I think his remarks will be proven to be true over time. And at some point, Apple might consider making a console. They don't have to make it at a loss because the Max SoC design is "free".
The M2 Max likely costs around $150 to manufacture based on transistor count and 5nm wafer costs. Add in $50 for the RAM and SSD. Apple can probably make a console for around $500 and still break even.
You might be interested in this post: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...le-of-playing-aaa-games-will-be-macs.2275962/
The most popular GPU on steam 3 years ago was the 1050ti, which the M1 matched in power.
Hence, it's not a hardware issue for the Mac. It's a software issue and Apple is finally addressing it.
Before, the problem was performance, but now it is performance/$. To be competitive in game consoles, Apple would have to invest in first-party games, design a SoC with a better GPU/CPU ratio and offer better pricing for SSDs and RAM. However, by focusing on gaming on macOS, Apple gives customers another reason to buy MBP instead of MBA. It helps bring in more money and costs less.
In my opinion, it's not even about performance/$.
The thing is, gamers need laptops too. They have jobs or they have school work. They need a laptop.
If Apple can put a powerful enough GPU for gaming in every Mac, which they have done, then it becomes a much easier choice to buy a Mac for productivity and also have the ability to game.
This is where I'm at. I buy Macs for productivity but I would like to play AAA games if I want to. I don't care about $/fps because my Mac does more than gaming.
The other end of the pipeline to focus on is game-dev.
Imagine you run a game studio, money is tight - you have 30 employees with 30 high-end desktop PCs. Someone mentions that you should make an Apple port because Macs are good at gaming now, and it will probably only take you say 2 man-months to port to Mac.
The problem then is that you're going to need to pick up say 5 Mac Studios, and it's not like you can replace 5 of your PCs - these have to be additional machines. Then you ask your Engine guys if they know Metal and they say no so suddenly those 2 man-months have gone up to 6 man-months and suddenly making a Mac port is looking at costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars and you have no chance of breaking even.
This is the reason why Apple are focusing so hard on dev tools first. Sure if the market was big enough, studios would push through these "pain points", but until then the best thing Apple can do is try to remove the pain points altogether.
Imagine you run a game studio, money is tight - you have 30 employees with 30 high-end desktop PCs. Someone mentions that you should make an Apple port because Macs are good at gaming now, and it will probably only take you say 2 man-months to port to Mac.
The problem then is that you're going to need to pick up say 5 Mac Studios, and it's not like you can replace 5 of your PCs - these have to be additional machines. Then you ask your Engine guys if they know Metal and they say no so suddenly those 2 man-months have gone up to 6 man-months and suddenly making a Mac port is looking at costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars and you have no chance of breaking even.
This is the reason why Apple are focusing so hard on dev tools first. Sure if the market was big enough, studios would push through these "pain points", but until then the best thing Apple can do is try to remove the pain points altogether.
Just as productive laptops can play games, gaming laptops can be productive, too. You, like many Mac users, want a Mac you can play games on. But I doubt a gamer would choose an MBP over a gaming PC laptop because it has better productivity tools. Gamers would choose a laptop that offers high FPS at an affordable price, and so far, the MBP can't compete on that.
It looks like you can use the Metal shader converter in Windows.
Metal shader converter - Metal - Apple Developer
Metal shader converter converts shader intermediate representations in LLVM IR bytecode into bytecode suitable to be loaded into Metal. It’s available as a library and a standalone executable.
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Of course.
It's a slightly different target. Gaming laptops target people who want to play games first, maybe productivity second. Macs, the other way around.
It just so happens that Macs will vastly outnumber gaming laptops. In the end, game sales could be equal between the platforms because there are more Macs than gaming laptops but gamers buy more games for each gaming laptop.
You don't take a Mac to a LAN gaming party. At the same time, you can't take a gaming PC into an office. Heck, you might look dumb if you take a gaming laptop with LEDs into a classroom. As far as I know, Macs are the most popular computers on college campuses.
If you only count PC notebooks that can play games, you should also only count MacBooks that can play games. Do all MacBooks with Intel or M1/M2 MBAs have the hardware to play games?
worldwide or in the US?
In 3 years, 50% of all computers capable of playing AAA games will be Macs
Edit: December 13th, 2021: Apple will sell about 27 million Macs in 2021. Assume that 80% are M1/M1Pro/M1Max Macs, then Apple will have sold 21 million Macs capable of playing AAA games. According to IDC, the number of gaming computers (desktops and laptops) sold in 2021 is projected to be 47...
forums.macrumors.com
Unclear. Maybe 1st world countries? In the US, for sure.
I don't think it'll ever be worth the effort.
The translation tool doesn't play nicely with DRM, and I believe PC GamePass, unlike Steam is basically just one giant DRM system (to prevent you just downloading all the games and quitting your sub)
I think it's probably quite likely that someone will make a tool that sits on top of the Game Porting Toolkit though and makes using it easy for the average gamer.
The translation tool doesn't play nicely with DRM, and I believe PC GamePass, unlike Steam is basically just one giant DRM system (to prevent you just downloading all the games and quitting your sub)
I think it's probably quite likely that someone will make a tool that sits on top of the Game Porting Toolkit though and makes using it easy for the average gamer.
The market for digital still cameras have dropped to a little over 8 million.
This is similar in size to the PC workstation market at under 7.7 million.
R&D effort chasing the "last 1% of performance" or the law of diminishing marginal returns.
Not really up there in terms of priorities.
The activity of gaming may change little but the hardware people will be doing it on, will.
Gamers will be very unhappy but APUs, SoCs and Heterogeneous System Architecture is the only direction for the gaming PC going forward.
Reason being, Moore's Law.
A M2 Max in desktop without PCIe slots is $2k.
Apple is better off making Animojis.
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I know, I am just unexcited about having to pay for games that I already get through the service (like Microsoft Flight Simulator).
As long as nvidia owns the PC game market for GPU's APU's are not going to take hold. Intel will have to come out swinging a lot harder with Celestial to get the market to shift (along with having an answer for DLSS 3). AMD hasn't shown interest in making the APU's they sell to Sony and MS available to general users.
They'll hit Moore's Law.
APUs, SoCs and Heterogeneous System Architecture were a pseudo workaround on physics.
What I am pointing out is that tech not based on the above 3 will be outclassed into the near future largely because of cost & performance per watt.
This tech's being implemented on the Switch, Xbox and PS5 now.
PC gaming modularized nature will work against it as to get better performance you need to increase input power.
In the EU there's new regulation putting a cap on allowed power consumption on TVs. If that were to translate to desktops and even laptops then the dGPU and CPU will be capped as well.