Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]

[400]

I look at the excitement over M1, I now see better chips around for the MacBooks, if as expected the new iMac surfaces, what will that have? Point here is say for example that the next wow game is released, will it be on the next up M chip, or whatever M chip is around and will the rate of Apple M upgrades still mean that buying in today guarantees that to run a future title, all the best bits will be hobbled just to get it to run in fuzzy vision or just say won't run M1.

Past experience say this is what I expect to happen.

Never bought a console (yet) but had a windows laptop for a short while for course work and was able to get a good game from Fallout 3. Though tried wineskin once with S.T.A.L.K.E.R and steam and was able to get a good frame rate. Didn't pursue it though.

 

[laptech]

It fails at the first hurdle. The numbers just aren’t there for AAA.

How do you know for sure that it will fail?

Why spend all the time and money porting a game to such a small market?

could the reason be why the market is so small is because there isn't any AAA Mac OS games attracting gamers to Mac OS.

The truth is that any mac owners who are interested in AAA gaming will have a PC or Console anyway.

That could be argued because the games they want to play are not available for Mac OS thus having no option but to purchase a PC or game console to do so.

For years the argument for there not being AAA games for Mac OS has been 1) Mac OS gaming market is too small, 2) mac hardware has not been upto the task of profeciently running AAA games and 3) when there is mac hardware capable of profeciently running AAA games, the price of the machine does not make it financially viable to the consumer when the same game can be played on PC hardware for much cheaper costs.

Ever since the release of Apple Silicon (AS) machines, the machines have been praised to high heaven due to their technical specifications and prowess when compared to their PC counterparts. Now with the release of M1 Pro's and the GPU, the same is being said all over again with more so in how strong the CPU and GPU chips are when again compared with their PC counterparts. Now if all these claims are to accepted as truth then there is not excuse on the game publishers side to say Apple does not have suitable hardware to run AAA games. Price is no longer a factor either as the new macbooks come reasonably priced compared to their PC counterparts therefore technically, the only stumbling block is how small the Mac OS gaming market is but that can be argued that it is small because there isn't any AAA games attracting gamers in the first place.

 

[Irishman]

In what way is it a “lazy take” exactly?

Sure. We all have opinions, he’s just expressing his in a video. He’s not an insider or someone who has Apple’s ear where it touches on gaming.

No matter how much I might agree with him, he’s just one guy, and he’s made a short video with no original research.

 

[Ceed]

Were we all to be so humble, and make content only for ourselves.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Uh... Larian have actually gone native M1 + Metal so.... if they can do it at "very very low cost" anybody can.

No. Let me put it plain and simple and maybe a little exaggerated, because I'm a little tired discussing things over and over again with people who never worked in the industry and have done such things. You want your games and try to justify anything with wishful thinking, which is ok too. So sorry, but...
What Larian is doing is childs play, they're using a fraction of complexity of typical AAA games, so things are "easy".
Or in other words, how difficult can it be to port a C64/Amiga game to M1+Metal? (again exaggerated)

I don't think a lot of people realise how conceptually similar DX12, Vulkan and Metal actually are vs. the bad old days of OpenGL vs. DirectX9 or whatever. Which makes porting the small part of the engine to do rendering relatively easy vs. past APIs.

So since you figured out what a whole industry can't, let's start at the very beginning and let us know how you handle the memory residency management, driver state tracking, mapped memory synchronisation for CPU/GPU, lifetime management for objects and the binding model of a D3D12 as a whole in Metal? The argument buffers in Metal or obviously not capable of handling all this 1:1, so I keep wondering how "it's easy do to" works, unless of course one uses a very small subset of DX12 capabilities that matches that of Metal. Or are you using compute and issue draw calls manually? The other option is to start from scratch.

If all of this is so easy, I have to wonder why many assets/resources sold ready for use for engines like Unity and Unreal are platform specific. Could you try to run ML-Agents in Unity (again, click of a button?) on Windows, Linux and macOS and report back? It's "multi-platform" but on macOS broken (proxy communication). I gave up macOS support for one of my Unity based projects because of it. It's just not worth the time investment.

And BG3 doesn't look "dated". It looks pretty damn good actually.

I used "dated" to make it sound polite. We seem to have different definitions of how things look and your view also differs a little from that of typical "gamers". Let me say it again... bluntly, it looks like crap.
That doesn't matter though, because the focus of this game is not on looks, people won't buy it for that. When a game doesn't even have properly working shadows, then something is off by a mile. Again, people are not buying it for that, but they pay attention to it for many, many AAA games. Light-source <-> shadows. So yes, stuff like that is "easy" to port, because it's very, very basic.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

I mean if I am already using my Mac for other stuff in my living room it seems like it would be easier to fire up a game of Halo Infinite on it versus having to either go in my sons room to play the Xbox or go into our spare room to play on my PC. I mean if it were available on PS5 I could play it there, but it isn't...

I don't think anyone is arguing that some people want games for macOS... and some people don't. It probably doesn't hurt to have them, but people constantly insisting that macOS must get AAA now because AS arrived and the universe will collapse if it doesn't happen is ridiculous. It's wishful thinking, nothing else. The hope is kept alive by spreading nonsense such as, devs are lazy, they're bought by MS, etc. because in reality it's a click of a button to port.

The reality is, it can be simple, for simple games. It can be time and money consuming for complex (developing wise) games, which AAA games typically are. And for those games, it's just not financially feasible to port. That's the hard truth, even if people who want games on their Macs don't want to hear it. In that sense, a typical Mac owner seems to form a new reality, to make things better.

There's a Myst review by John Walker who said it plain and simple how some people behave and as a first time Mac user in the 80s, the occasional hopping around after that to using Macs as my primary drivers since the G4, I have to agree. I'm not going to sweet talk Apple or Macs, I want to use something that gets a job done and if Macs can't and Windows will, then toss the Macs and use Windows instead. Here's part of the review, which made me laugh, because he's right:

Myst was, of course, a game championed by the worst people who existed in the 1990s: Mac owners. Mac owners had a problem. They'd spent a vast amount of money on a machine that had about seven games available for it total, no right mouse button, and no eject button on the floppy drive. They'd been sold such a lemon, and such an expensive lemon, that there was nothing for it but to double-down and pretend it was by far the superior choice. "Well actually it's MUCH better for graphic design work," they'd say, having never done any graphic design work, nor ever intending to. ("And why should I need an eject button when I can drag this icon laboriously across the desktop and drop it on this other icon instead? Or more usually unfold a paperclip and frantically wedge it into this tiny hole on the front of the machine conveniently located where your PC wastes space with a button.") And they'd delude themselves and all those around them that the scant few games they could play were all absolute stone-cold classics. Thus Myst. The Macciest of all Mac games, a shiny veneer plastered across empty nothingness.

 

[laptech]

I don't think anyone is arguing that some people want games for macOS... and some people don't. It probably doesn't hurt to have them, but people constantly insisting that macOS must get AAA now because AS arrived and the universe will collapse if it doesn't happen is ridiculous. It's wishful thinking, nothing else. The hope is kept alive by spreading nonsense such as, devs are lazy, they're bought by MS, etc. because in reality it's a click of a button to port.

.......

You have completely misinterpreted the issue of this debate and have chosen to focus on one or two members misguided comments as the source for your post.

The main thrust of this debate is not that members want AAA gaming right now because AS has arrived or that the hope of Mac OS gaming is being kept alive due to certain levels of nonsense. Granted there are some vocal individuals putting their misguided views and opinions forward (in my opinion) but for the most part and for the rest of us (hope i am not speaking out of turn), all we want to know is now that with Apple AS, there is a strong case to put forward that AS hardware has the strength and capabilities of coping and handling AAA games but none of the AAA game publishers have come forward to say they are interested in porting any of their AAA games to work on this new AS hardware and naturally those mac users who like to play AAA games are asking why? The hardware is now right, the pricing is now right so is it just down to lack of numbers in gamers that is stopping them?

Hardware, pricing of hardware and low numbers of mac gamers has always been used by the AAA game publishers as their reasons for not porting their AAA games to Mac OS. With AS, Apple has now removed 2 of those 3 reasons. Therefore is low numbers of Mac OS gamers the only reason the AAA game publishers is using as justification for not porting their AAA games to Mac OS because if so I think many will consider it a weak justification if 2 out of the 3 reasons have been removed.

 

[Lihp8270]

How do you know for sure that it will fail?


could the reason be why the market is so small is because there isn't any AAA Mac OS games attracting gamers to Mac OS.


That could be argued because the games they want to play are not available for Mac OS thus having no option but to purchase a PC or game console to do so.

For years the argument for there not being AAA games for Mac OS has been 1) Mac OS gaming market is too small, 2) mac hardware has not been upto the task of profeciently running AAA games and 3) when there is mac hardware capable of profeciently running AAA games, the price of the machine does not make it financially viable to the consumer when the same game can be played on PC hardware for much cheaper costs.

Ever since the release of Apple Silicon (AS) machines, the machines have been praised to high heaven due to their technical specifications and prowess when compared to their PC counterparts. Now with the release of M1 Pro's and the GPU, the same is being said all over again with more so in how strong the CPU and GPU chips are when again compared with their PC counterparts. Now if all these claims are to accepted as truth then there is not excuse on the game publishers side to say Apple does not have suitable hardware to run AAA games. Price is no longer a factor either as the new macbooks come reasonably priced compared to their PC counterparts therefore technically, the only stumbling block is how small the Mac OS gaming market is but that can be argued that it is small because there isn't any AAA games attracting gamers in the first place.

People aren’t going to go out and pay the money for an M1 Max to play games.

If your aim is gaming then typical PCs and consoles still offer better value for money.

The market is people who would be buying a MBP anyway who may also want to play games on it.

 

[Ceed]

Yeah, a $3500 laptop is going nowhere. That price is bonkers to most people.

And the basic vanilla M1 in $1000 Macs is on par with today's Intel Xe integrated graphics:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/M1-7-Core-GPU-vs-Iris-Xe-G7-96EUs_10560_10364.247598.0.html

So, nothing's changed, except the architecture is even less compatible than before.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

all this back and forth debate/arguement about AAA games for the mac is why I posted the question saying one of the editors from macrumours should contact the game publishers asking them why they wont make their AAA game titles available for Mac OS.

With every large company having a dedicated team to respond to tweets, you’d likely do just the same or better by just tweeting it yourself. If they have a response they plan to give, it’s not like MR would get a response and you wouldn’t. And then, you wouldn’t have to use MR as a go-between. Ask the questions you have directly to them and not worry if MR would have gotten a better answer if they had phrased the questions as YOU would have.

The game publisher then codes the game for Mac OS, sit's back and see what happens. If the uptake is low then the game publisher and the mac community will have had it's definate answer.

I cannot see why such a scenerio cannot be done because lots of other companies use this method to see if it is viable to mass produce something or not, they test the water first by making a one off to see if it get's people interested or not. A game publisher could do the same thing with Mac OS gaming (maybe it's already been done, I don't know)

If a person already knows that the water is shallow and filled with a few tiny fish, they don’t buy a boat with rod, tackle, bait, sounder to find out if they can catch anything, though. Developing a game is not easy or cheap. Supporting it after it’s released eventually costs more than it cost to make develop the game in the first place. That’s a LOT of effort to go through without a definite return on investment and would very likely put the owner in hot water with the shareholders or board.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Although it made me into an Apple troll. lol Perhaps I'd have more friends if I was into BattleField 2042!

It’s not just you. Apple effectively turns over their customer base every 20 years or so, replacing past customers with a larger group of new customers. Those old customers that continue to be excited about the new and changing landscape continue on with Apple. Those that don’t become the trolls

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Apple needs to pay for a six month (???) GTA6 exclusive on Apple silicon, totally optimized for Metal & raytracing, and have GTA6 preloaded on every Mac sold...

And a commercial with Justin Long (I'm a Mac) and John Hodgman (I'm a PC) where PC is looking excited over Solitare, Mac is all "Lame...", PC moves on to Minesweeper, Mac yawns loudly, then launches GTA6, PC is blown away, cut to in-game scene where they are picking up hookers... ;^p

If this is a joke, it’s funny

 

[Unregistered 4U]

The truth is that any mac owners who are interested in AAA gaming will have a PC or Console anyway.

OR, trying to figure out how to run Windows executables on a Mac

 

[cardfan]

I am of the same. If I am on my iMac doing some video/picture work and I want to play a quick game of Ghost Recon or Divison 2 before bed I can't, I would have to move over to my PC to do that but then I am like, what's the point, i only wanted to have quick games before bed, why go throught the effort of closing down the iMac and powering up the PC. I shouldn't have to but alas due to the stance Apple and games publishers take, I have to.

It’s like a second to turn off the iMac screen and go where my loaded pc is with 38” gaming monitor, controllers, kb, gaming mouse, etc. No need to boot up, it’s left on.

Plus here’s the thing. I already have Xbox/pc game pass and steam games for pc. For future games I’m getting windows version even if somehow a Mac version was offered (heck maybe both would be I dunno).

Also you keep saying apple has solved problems with AS. Cost and hardware. M1 is a joke for games. M1 max looks capable but it’s at least 3k+ to get that gaming laptop 3060 performance. And aside from chips what hardware? M1 mini? A MacBook Air? The 24” iMac running an iPad chip? My pc desktop laughs at anything apple has out currently. Maybe apple gets better with upcoming iMac but that hasn’t happened and that is hardly a gaming monitor.

Most high end games are made with nvidia in mind. G sync. Ultra wide monitors. You can even get a MSI gaming laptop at Walmart for 599.

Apple hasn’t solved anything but made gaming an even worse scenario for macs in the short term with fractured base now. They don’t want to solve anything. They’ve no interest in macs imo but to do the least bit to keep them viable because hey you need macs to develop for iOS. I’m surprised the focus on video and music is still there but that, and only that, defines what pro is for them.

It’s hard to blame apple otherwise. They do bring in more gaming revenue than all consoles plus pc gaming put together. And that growth rate as well. It’s still my opinion apple will do a console at some point and macs may enjoy some spillover benefits from it.

 

[januarydrive7]

[...]
Also you keep saying apple has solved problems with AS. Cost and hardware. M1 is a joke for games. M1 max looks capable but it’s at least 3k+ to get that gaming laptop 3060 performance.
[...]
Most high end games are made with nvidia in mind. G sync. Ultra wide monitors. You can even get a MSI gaming laptop at Walmart for 599.
[...]

Do you mean an MSI gaming laptop with the most popular gaming card in existence, the 1650? The 1650 that is pretty much on par with the M1? If that's the case, then the cheapest macs you can buy are on par with the most popular gaming cards available in terms of gaming capability, omitting game compatibility.

 

[Lihp8270]

Do you mean an MSI gaming laptop with the most popular gaming card in existence, the 1650? The 1650 that is pretty much on par with the M1? If that's the case, then the cheapest macs you can buy are on par with the most popular gaming cards available in terms of gaming capability, omitting game compatibility.

But what’s the price difference?

Of course I understand the benefits and I think the MBP offers worthy value for the extra cash in its keyboard, screen, battery, build quality etc.

But I think for the majority of gamers. They wouldn’t care

 

[Ceed]

Do you mean an MSI gaming laptop with the most popular gaming card in existence, the 1650? The 1650 that is pretty much on par with the M1? If that's the case, then the cheapest macs you can buy are on par with the most popular gaming cards available in terms of gaming capability, omitting game compatibility.

M1 is not on par with the 1650, it's much closer to integrated Intel Xe graphics. Look at Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Total War, and Borderlands 3:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/GeForce-GTX-1650-Mobile-vs-M1-7-Core-GPU-vs-Iris-Xe-G7-96EUs_9828_10560_10364.247598.0.html

(you might say "that's Rosetta, not optimal", I will say "that's what you get in actual real life, and games are typically not CPU-bound anyways")

 

[laptech]

What I am finding interesting is that in some of my posts I have pushed the argument about how good the hardware is in Apples AS machines and the reason for doing so was because of the amount of people from Apple, hardware reviewers, technology reviewers and critics and actual owners of the hardware, all saying just how good and fantastic the AS machines are but yet in here, when the issue of AS hardware is pushed, out come the responses that AS hardware actually is not that good for gaming. So which is it, AS macbooks are the best on the planet but no good for gaming or some Intel laptops are actually the best on the planet because they can do everything that a AS macbook cannot not, which is gaming.

So if some people in here are saying AS is no good for gaming but is good for everything else, then why are Intel laptops that perform just as well as AS machines that CAN do gaming are lambasted as being rubbish when compared to an AS machine?. I am a mac user and own mac hardware BUT as far as i'm concerned, if a company and it's supporters claim it's machine is the best there is but yet is no good for gaming than that machine is rubbish in my opinion.

 

[Ceed]

Never once said M1 or Intel Xe are rubbish for gaming. They both play games quite well at low or medium settings, as long as they are not bleeding-edge titles like Cyberpunk 2077 or something. You can have a decent gaming experience with integrated graphics, if you moderate your expectations (and the game is actually available, of course).

 

[januarydrive7]

M1 is not on par with the 1650, it's much closer to integrated Intel Xe graphics. Look at Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Total War, and Borderlands 3:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/GeForce-GTX-1650-Mobile-vs-M1-7-Core-GPU-vs-Iris-Xe-G7-96EUs_9828_10560_10364.247598.0.html

(you might say "that's Rosetta, not optimal", I will say "that's what you get in actual real life, and games are typically not CPU-bound anyways")

I explicitly said M1 is comparable to 1650 in terms of performance, omitting game compatibility.
So yes, not what you get in real life, but this is about capability, not compatibility.

 

[Ceed]

It isn't though. It performs like an Intel Xe in compatible games. Going from Rosetta to native is not going to matter much for GPU-bound games. That's the actual capability, give or take a few fps. Remember, Deus Ex and Total War are already using Metal, and they still perform that way, well behind a 1650.

 

[JMacHack]

Honestly the most compelling argument itt is GrumpyCoder’s. If the tools don’t work then you’re SOL. Everything else is just pure ********.

Especially concerning PC parts prices, lol people blowing $400 on an entry level gpu new, or $250 or more from 5 years ago wanna lecture on price consciousness? Next gen gpus are expected to be even more expensive and power hungry.

Imo, Apple has done their part in providing relevant libraries. They aren’t the owners of Unity, Unreal, or any other engine. Supporting Mac is on those people, if they want to support MacOS they will or won’t, we’ll see.

For the people whining about games on Mac, nothing has changed, and it probably won’t ever. You know what you’re getting into when you buy into the smaller platform. If you don’t, then that’s on you. You’re (likely) an adult who can make your own purchasing decisions. I know personally the jokes about “no games for mac” go back 20 years.

And for anyone wanting the landscape to change, we’re 1 year into the as transition. I’m frankly surprised there’s as many native programs at all, considering half the lineup is still on Intel. You’re gonna have to be patient to see if support comes or not.

 

[januarydrive7]

It isn't though. It performs like an Intel Xe in compatible games. Going from Rosetta to native is not going to matter much for GPU-bound games. That's the actual capability, give or take a few fps. Remember, Deus Ex and Total War are already using Metal, and they still perform that way, well behind a 1650.

Ignore me -- I'm working on little sleep. I was thinking closer to 1050/ti. Nothing to see here.

 

[JouniS]

Especially concerning PC parts prices, lol people blowing $400 on an entry level gpu new, or $250 or more from 5 years ago wanna lecture on price consciousness? Next gen gpus are expected to be even more expensive and power hungry.

Next-generation GPUs are expected provide more performance using less power and for a lower price. It's also expected that there will be higher-end options available than in the current product range. There are now enough highly-paid professionals and other wealthy gamers that hardware manufacturers are starting to target them specifically. If they spend $10k or $20k on a PC that can run games at 8k / 120 Hz, it's still cheaper than the hobbies many of their peers have.

However, the mid-range market (~$2k for a desktop + peripherals or a laptop) is more relevant for the viability of a gaming platform than the high end (and beyond). For that price, people currently expect something comparable to current-generation consoles (which are still rather new). The M1 Max GPU would be competitive, except that Apple bundles it with unnecessary features such as too many CPU cores, too much RAM, a high-end SSD, and a high-end display. Because gaming PCs are supposed to be GPU-heavy rather than balanced, Mac gamers would end up paying high-end prices for mid-range performance.

If the component shortage ever ends, the mid-range market will probably drop back to something like $1.5k to $2k, which makes Apple pricing even worse for gaming. Again, not because Macs are inherently expensive but because Apple is not selling GPU-heavy configurations.

 

[JMacHack]

Next-generation GPUs are expected provide more performance using less power and for a lower price.

No.

Dunno about you, but 400w gpus just aren’t appealing.

It's also expected that there will be higher-end options available than in the current product range. There are now enough highly-paid professionals and other wealthy gamers that hardware manufacturers are starting to target them specifically. If they spend $10k or $20k on a PC that can run games at 8k / 120 Hz, it's still cheaper than the hobbies many of their peers have.

Unless your hobby is cocaine or vintage cars, it’s not looking to be cheaper. And again, I don’t want to hear lectures on being “cost conscious” from the peanut gallery.

However, the mid-range market (~$2k for a desktop + peripherals or a laptop) is more relevant for the viability of a gaming platform than the high end (and beyond). For that price, people currently expect something comparable to current-generation consoles (which are still rather new). The M1 Max GPU would be competitive, except that Apple bundles it with unnecessary features such as too many CPU cores, too much RAM, a high-end SSD, and a high-end display. Because gaming PCs are supposed to be GPU-heavy rather than balanced, Mac gamers would end up paying high-end prices for mid-range performance.

The shoe’s on the other foot now. It’s not too difficult to get every other component than a gpu.

If the component shortage ever ends, the mid-range market will probably drop back to something like $1.5k to $2k,

I don’t see that happening. MSRPs are climbing generationally now, and the end consumer has shown that they’re willing to tolerate it. The price creep arguably began before the pandemic. (Those of us with functional memory will remember the GTX 480 cost $500, a price that would only get you a xx60 card now, if they were available).