Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]

[diamond.g]

"Die hard gamers" (by which I take it you mean people who spend >$500 on a GPU alone for a PC) are like 5-10% of the market, tops. They're largely irrelevant.

5-10% of the overall PC market? Seems like a lot of systems TBH.

 

[leman]

Now we're going in circles. The current focus, for users of Mac products, is the right one. Whatever goes into "competing in the gaming market" entails, I want Apple to stay as unfocused on it as they have been.

Then I have to disappoint you. In the last couple of years Apple has been investing significant resources to make Macs more gaming friendly, including - but not limited to - development of state of the art gaming hardware and APIs, first class game controller support and developer tools. They prominently feature games during their product release events and they offer documentation on how to develop high-end games on Mac (although they could certainly put more effort on this area).

Games is just one type of software your Mac can run. There is no reason to overly “focus on it“ (whatever it means), but it is also extremely stupid to ignore this type of software overall. Not to mention that building a platform for gaming synergizes very well with building a platform for professional content creation, so why not cover both with the same effort? That’s exactly what Apple does.

 

[EntropyQ3]

Imagine if iOS had as few games compared to Android as Mac has to PC right now. Consider how (not) widespread iOS would be, were that the case. Observe how widespread Macs are in the world.

People... They seem to like games.

Sure, but you are doing what to me seems like a reversal of cause and effect. iOS has a rich gaming menu because it widespread, not because Apple focussed on gaming when introducing iPhones.
Just as they aren’t focussing on gaming when they are introducing their AS Macs. If they prove to sell well, then there will be a market because yes, people seem to like games.

That said, people who like games have a plethora of options. It’s not as if I can’t already spend my remaining lifetime times ten playing games on the devices I already own. While having a a wealth of high quality games on MacOS would be nice, it’s not as if anyone, Apple included, needs it.

I have some faith in the market economy, once there is a mass of users, there will be enterprising games companies who will want to exploit that market. But we are in very early days here. People want right now what is likely to take the better part of a decade, and since it doesn’t exist now, they blame Apple. I don’t think that’s completely rational.

 

[diamond.g]

Sure, but you are doing what to me seems like a reversal of cause and effect. iOS is has a rich gaming menu because it widespread, not because Apple focussed on gaming when introducing iPhones.
Just as they aren’t focussing on gaming when they are introducing their AS Macs. If they prove to sell well, then there will be a market because yes, people seem to like games.

That said, people who like games have a plethora of options. It’s not as if I can’t already spend my remaining lifetime times ten playing games on the devices I already own. While having a a wealth of high quality games on MacOS would be nice, it’s not as if anyone, Apple included, needs it.

I have some faith in the market economy, once there is a mass of users, there will be enterprising games companies who will want to exploit that market. But we are in very early days here. People want right now what is likely to take the better part of a decade, and since it doesn’t exist now, they blame Apple. I don’t think that’s completely rational.

I think iOS has a lot of games because of free to play (ad supported) games and loot box games are quite popular (and make a crap ton of money if you can keep folks engaged). That same energy hasn’t quite taken hold on PC/Console.

 

[throAU]

5-10% of the overall PC market? Seems like a lot of systems TBH.

No. 5% of the pc gaming market. Most of the pc market is not for gaming.

Mobile is far bigger than the pc gaming market.

And even amongst PCs with steam installed the m1 non pro/max is stronger than much of the steam install base.

 

[Ceed]

Sure, but you are doing what to me seems like a reversal of cause and effect. iOS has a rich gaming menu because it widespread, not because Apple focussed on gaming when introducing iPhones.
Just as they aren’t focussing on gaming when they are introducing their AS Macs. If they prove to sell well, then there will be a market because yes, people seem to like games.

That said, people who like games have a plethora of options. It’s not as if I can’t already spend my remaining lifetime times ten playing games on the devices I already own. While having a a wealth of high quality games on MacOS would be nice, it’s not as if anyone, Apple included, needs it.

I have some faith in the market economy, once there is a mass of users, there will be enterprising games companies who will want to exploit that market. But we are in very early days here. People want right now what is likely to take the better part of a decade, and since it doesn’t exist now, they blame Apple. I don’t think that’s completely rational.

Nobody focused on gaming when PCs, Macs, or Android phones came out either, considering they are general-purpose devices that do anything. Gaming just organically happened on all of them, except one.

 

[400]

Apple has always seemed the "almost ran" after every announcement on new upgrades suggesting a huge opportunity, for me anyway.

 

[diamond.g]

No. 5% of the pc gaming market. Most of the pc market is not for gaming.

Mobile is far bigger than the pc gaming market.

And even amongst PCs with steam installed the m1 non pro/max is stronger than much of the steam install base.

I wish the survey would show more details in the Mac breakdown.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Even if they have metrics to show that their game sold 5 million copies on the Mac, it will have sold 5 million copies without them doing any of the work to help get it to run on the Mac. That’s a pretty good return on an investment of zero.

If only it would be close to anywhere near 5 million copies. Reality is, it's a fraction of that and in general not worth to bother about macOS. But yes, if users make games run, that's even better from a financial point of view.

All this also feeds into AR/VR.

Dead already. There are very specific applications for AR/VR, gaming is just a gimmick. Sure it's not to Apple-only users, so it will create a hype at first and then die like it did anywhere else. I've worked with AR/VR in the past and at some point we stumbled across a study that basically said something like a small fraction of users buying into it keep using it, for the rest they try it and forget.

The switch is the best selling console right now and it has low end hardware from 2017 in it.

Switch is selling for a simple reason, Nintendo IP namely Mario and Zelda. Add Pokemon to that if you will. No one else in the industry can do that. Sure you have Uncharted, Last of Us, but not to the same degree as Nintendo. Sega used to be there with Sonic, but they vanished to early from the console market. So unless Apple or anyone else can come up with their "Mario" and "Zelda", it's not going to happen and many people will go where the graphics are polished. Also, Switch is more like a 2nd console, many Switch owners own other systems as well, be it PS, Xbox or PC.

What are game specific optimizations?

DX is more "software driven", you can optimize how things work. Metal is closer to the hardware, the API doesn't allow for as much customization. Hardware and software are tailored for specific tasks, that's why they shine for very specific tasks and are poor for others. MS hat a similar approach with the xb360. They essentially punched holes through the API and used specific registers and part of buffers for very specific tasks. You gain performance, but lose flexibility. See M1 Pro/Max, they absolutely shine for photo/video work (high fillrates), while compute is poor in direct comparison.

So specific optimizations are that, find a way to make certain things run better in software.

Now we're going in circles.

We've been going in circles for a while now.
It's really simple in the end. AAA gaming on Macs won't happen until it's financially feasible for the developers/studios. In the end, that means people actually buying and not "there are x Mac users and they could all potentially buy a game". If ifs and buts were candy and nuts...

In the end, we'll see what happens. Studios jumping on DX12 won't help as games will no longer work via Parallels or Crossover. Neither will stopping x86_64 emulation in Win10 ARM.

 

[EntropyQ3]

Nobody focused on gaming when PCs, Macs, or Android phones came out either, considering they are general-purpose devices that do anything. Gaming just organically happened on all of them, except one.

You are oversimplifying. Brutally. For most of it's history, MacOS has held a 4-5% marketshare in personal computing space. Gaming as entertainment go where there are people who are pay for it, so games that go for the slice of the public that are interested in gaming on their PCs, are obviously going to target the 95%. Even so, Macs have still had a limited, but still available buffé of games. Then Boot Camp came along, and the Mac users who for whatever reason didn't want to buy a gaming PC, could still access the full smorgasbord of Windows gaming without having to pay full price two years later for a functionally limited port of PC games. Which of course reduced the addressable market for games under MacOS even further, even though Apples PC market share crept upwards.

A year ago, nobody knew what kinds of systems Apple would build with their own processors. (We still don't really if tea leaf reading doesn't count.) Or if they would be popular with the buying public. At least now we know that their introductory systems have sold well by Apple standards. But a gaming company thinking about what platforms to support is still flying blind compared with the statistics available for other platforms. And there is also the question about demographics - what titles are Apple buyers interested in if a company were considering taking a chance?
And if offered on MacOS, will Mac consumers actually buy them there, or will they prefer the Switch for its pass-it-around utility and ease of playing in bed, or the PC where they are guaranteed to get all the extra updates and access to mod community creations? Game publishers have no idea.

First some publishers need to take a risk, the results of those early efforts can then be analysed, and after that the bulk of the game publishers at least have something to go on to assess their odds of a decent ROI. Reaching even that point puts us firmly in the second half of this decade. Then projects are greenlighted (or not), take their time to be produced, polished and finally published.
I happen to believe in a fairly bright future for MacOS gaming, but the key word there is "future".

And it's not as though there aren't question marks. There is no question that the availability of games to be played on Macs (MacOS or Boot Camp) has never been as low as with these AS Macs. And still these are the best selling Macs ever. "Ditching gaming gained Apple the biggest MacOS audience ever!" is a headline that would actually be supported by cold hard data. And click-bait provocation aside, it's pretty reasonable to assume that by and large, these customers aren't terribly interested in gaming specifically on their Macs, or they wouldn't have bought them in the first place.

I think iOS has a lot of games because of free to play (ad supported) games and loot box games are quite popular (and make a crap ton of money if you can keep folks engaged). That same energy hasn’t quite taken hold on PC/Console.

Quite. Thank God for small blessings.

 

[Ceed]

For most of it's history, MacOS has held a 4-5% marketshare in personal computing space.

Forgive me for stating the incredibly obvious, but shouldn't the question then be "Why aren't people taking up the Mac? What's wrong with it?"

Perhaps solve that, and the games will come (because, again, whether they "care" or not, people like games on their devices, they do not like no games on their devices).

 

[grandM]

iOS is not a gaming platform. The devices that run iOS are not gaming platforms. The fact that devs make games to run on iOS devices does not define the device or iOS as 'game specific'. It is a sad reflection on society that there are electronic devices and computers that are capable of doing so so much more but yet all society seems to want is devices and computers that allow them to play games. As my computer lecturer once said 'If you want to play games, buy a device that is specificly designed and built to play games, not a computer'.

Gaming is very profitable hence why many software programmers look to find ways to get electronic devices to play games. A electronic device manufacturer will build a device that is designed to serve a specific function either within the manufacturing industry or education industry and a long comes hackers and modifiers trying to hack/modify the devices firmware/software so it can run games.

But going back to iOS, specifically mobile phones. The mobile phone networks wants it's customers to use the phone as much as possible because it means customers are using up their contracted daily/monthly allowance. The longer a customer uses their phone, the more money the network gets and thus the network provider needs apps that will keep customers tied to their phones and what kind of apps are best at keep customers tied to their phones? yes you guessed it, games.

The network providers need to keep their customers using up their daily/monthly allowance because in doing so it means money keeps on rolling it but to do this, the network provides needs a mobile phone that is capable of doing the things the network provider wants. Apple is more than happy to obidge because it's in the business of making electronic devices. Apple provides an electronic device with certain hardware specifics. What network providers and customers do with that device is not Apple's concern. It is the same principle that is applied by gun manufacturers. They build the gun but what the customer choses to do with that gun is not the concern of the gun manufacturer.

So we must buy typewriters again? That lecturer of yours...

 

[EntropyQ3]

Forgive me for stating the incredibly obvious, but shouldn't the question then be "Why aren't people taking up the Mac? What's wrong with it?"

We know the answer. It's not cheap. Never were even in 1984. And these days - it doesn't run Windows, locking it out from the overwhelming majority of the big accounts. The only market share it can gain is in the relatively small number of users that float between platforms, and completely new private users that don't have to run legacy software.

There's not many of those in the greater scheme of things, but by looking around at cafés in my university town, Apple already does a good job of selling to that category. One of the reasons I believe that gaming under MacOS will improve from where it is now.

 

[diamond.g]

We know the answer. It's not cheap. Never were even in 1984. And these days - it doesn't run Windows, locking it out from the overwhelming majority of the big accounts. The only market share it can gain is in the relatively small number of users that float between platforms, and completely new private users that don't have to run legacy software.

There's not many of those in the greater scheme of things, but by looking around at cafés in my university town, Apple already does a good job of selling to that category. One of the reasons I believe that gaming under MacOS will improve from where it is now.

Aren’t we the same bunch of folk that will say “find a notebook pc with the same specs for a cheaper price”?

 

[Unregistered 4U]

If only it would be close to anywhere near 5 million copies. Reality is, it's a fraction of that and in general not worth to bother about macOS. But yes, if users make games run, that's even better from a financial point of view.

That’s the point though. Very few games EVER sell 5 million copies, if it happened, it would be an amazingly remarkable thing. What I’m saying is that if a Windows game publisher looks at their sales and can see that they sold X number of games, no matter how many, to Mac users who did the work getting it to run themselves, that only says that there’s a lot of folks willing to take those steps on their own, not that there’s a market for Mac games.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Forgive me for stating the incredibly obvious, but shouldn't the question then be "Why aren't people taking up the Mac? What's wrong with it?"

Nothing is wrong with it, many businesses are buying Macs and then run Windows on it. Especially those who want a clean look in their offices to "impress" visitors/clients. Most business software is on Windows. Being able to install Windows gave Macs a massive boost in sales. Watch this go the other way once the chip shortage is over. Back in the day it used to be the DTP market Apple targeted, today it's YouTubers, photographers and musicians. In addition, we have the "hype" from the successful YouTubers telling all the kids to buy Macs because that's how you make millions every months with YouTube and maybe TikTok. That is nonsense of course, but it works.

In the end, the money for Apple is in the app-market and that's where we're headed. A unified macOS and iPadOS.

Aren’t we the same bunch of folk that will say “find a notebook pc with the same specs for a cheaper price”?

For gaming? Price is a factor, sure. But it's not difficult to find a cheaper laptop with similar gaming performance, which gets hotter and doesn't have the same battery life. If that matters is up to the use case.

That’s the point though. Very few games EVER sell 5 million copies, if it happened, it would be an amazingly remarkable thing.

All it takes is one or two games like Diablo 3 and that should be enough. Blizzard learned the hard way ($$$) and stopped bothering.

 

[EntropyQ3]

Aren’t we the same bunch of folk that will say “find a notebook pc with the same specs for a cheaper price”?

Sure, but then people don't necessarily need or want "the same specs".
Real life example - the ongoing Black Friday sales in an electronics chain where I sometimes shop lists NO laptop computer out of 38 that costs as much as the lowest tier MacBook Air! They go from a sixth (!) of the price up to just below.
God help you if you actually want some RAM or storage in your Mac laptop.

These forums have a distinct ivory tower feel to them when it comes to computer spending. The municipality where I live buys roughly 2000 laptops annually to the high school students. Apple makes nothing even remotely close in terms of cheap awfulness, they cost a quarter of a MacBook Air. People buy computers to do the tasks they can't do on their phone, which these days largely seems to be accessing old data, the odd job thing and running a screen big enough for aging eyes, none of which need to cost of a Mac. It never did. The bulk of the market was always below Apple level, and modern Apple has for the most part been fine with skimming the cream off the computer market.

(The mere idea to evaluate the worthiness of the M1Max on the basis of how it runs emulated games is hilarious and sad at the same time. It reminds me of the children of the wealthy who compete with each other in ordering the most expensive champagnes they can find on the menus only to spray them over their peers.)

 

[JouniS]

I'll also add to my post. Right here on the same desk I have a Radeon 6900XT equipped gaming PC.

It makes a whole heap of coil whine while playing DOS2.

It sounds like there is something wrong with your PC. My gaming PC makes a low hum when it's idle and when I'm playing games. If it starts making noise, there is probably a dust build-up somewhere and it's time to clean the case.

Silent operation is one of the biggest benefits of the traditional tower case. You can use big fans running at low speeds, and the air can flow freely. High-performance laptops and all-in-ones always sound angry when they start approaching the maximum heat output.

 

[diamond.g]

It sounds like there is something wrong with your PC. My gaming PC makes a low hum when it's idle and when I'm playing games. If it starts making noise, there is probably a dust build-up somewhere and it's time to clean the case.

Silent operation is one of the biggest benefits of the traditional tower case. You can use big fans running at low speeds, and the air can flow freely. High-performance laptops and all-in-ones always sound angry when they start approaching the maximum heat output.

Coil whine isn’t abnormal. I hear some in my water cooled 6900xt depending on how loaded down I have the card.

 

[throAU]

It sounds like there is something wrong with your PC. My gaming PC makes a low hum when it's idle and when I'm playing games.

Yeah, and the MacBook Pro is DEAD SILENT, whilst running D:OS 2.

i.e., the PC is noisier.

Don't get me wrong - the PC isn't LOUD.

My PC is built with silence in mind; All SSD, massively overbuilt cooler on the Powercolor Red Devil 6900XT (the fans barely spin), 280mm liquid cooler on the CPU.

Coil whine is a thing on high end GPUs (both of my Vega 64s and my 6900XT all have it), and the MacBook Pro simply doesn't have any.

 

[JouniS]

Coil whine isn’t abnormal. I hear some in my water cooled 6900xt depending on how loaded down I have the card.

Coil whine is abnormal if it's loud enough to bother you. Such level of noise is avoidable, and it's generally a sign of low-quality components or manufacturing.

 

[throAU]

Coil whine is abnormal if it's loud enough to bother you. Such level of noise is avoidable, and it's generally a sign of low-quality components or manufacturing.

Where did I say it bothered me?

I said the MacBook is quieter (due to being totally inaudible with fans OFF, and no audible coil whine) running this game.

it is. which is nuts. because I've used desktop replacement/high end/discrete GPU laptops before (both PCs and Macs) and they've all been crap. Its quieter than my Nintendo Switch when running something like Breath of the Wild.

/end

 

[laptech]

So we must buy typewriters again? That lecturer of yours...

Such an idiotic repsonse.

 

[elbert]

Triple A will come out 2023 or later

Why gaming devs would lose money making Mac games

 

[diamond.g]

Triple A will come out 2023 or later

Why gaming devs would lose money making Mac games

Seems like conflicting statements.