Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]

[JouniS]

No.

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

Then don't buy one.

Next-generation Nvidia GPUs will have the usual architectural improvements as well as process improvements from going from Samsung 8 nm to TSMC 5 nm. That will give rather nice cost / power / performance improvements.

The highest-end GPUs are going to be more expensive and power-hungry because they will be bigger than current-generation ones. Rumors say that the 4090 will have almost 2x as many CUDA cores as the 3090, and it will run at a higher clock rate. If you only want the next-generation equivalent of the 3090, it could be the 4070.

Unless your hobby is cocaine or vintage cars, it’s not looking to be cheaper.

Gaming is rather cheap as far as hobbies go.

For example, travel can easily get expensive. A full-service hiking tour will probably cost $3k to $5k per person. If you fly economy and don't pay for any luxuries. And if you are into hiking, you need a lot of gear for a wide range of climates and conditions. Traveling for golf or photography can be similarly expensive.

Then there is sailing, which is the canonical example of an expensive hobby. There is no upper bound for how much money you can burn. That guy over there paid more for his boat than you will ever make, and it's not even a particularly nice boat.

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).

The prices of mid-range consumer electronics tend to follow middle-class salaries. I don't see much room for price growth unless there is serious inflation. The current prices are already a bit higher than people are willing to pay, both due to the component shortage and because people are still spending more time at home away from other money sinks.

 

[Ceed]

Most people are after notebooks, and 16" 3060 laptops from Lenovo and Asus (the two everyone seems to recommend) can be regularly found for around $1500, which is $2000 less than the equivalent 16" M1 Max. That's not really debatable.

The current desktop GPU situation is absurd though, to everyone's eyes, no argument there. Not quite as eye-watering as the tower desktop options Apple has on offer however, where to get the cheapest current-gen Radeon 6x00 series card you can from Apple, you'll be stepping into workstation-class hardware pricing and have to add the $2400 W6800X to your base $6000 desktop tower. Since we are comparing desktop towers with PCI add-on cards, that is. (the other desktops, the Mac mini and iMac, feature the M1, which, again, is about as performant as integrated Intel Xe graphics)

 

[GrumpyCoder]

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.

Is that really the case though? Number fo gamers, sure. It's all about market share. But hardware and pricing? To a degree, sure. You get less performance on macOS for the price or have to pay more for the same performance as PC. But that's still the case today. You can find 3050/3060 laptops cheaper than M1 Pro. And you can still get laptops with better performance than M1 Max costing about the same.

Thing is, days of annual upgrades for GPUs to make something playable is long over. We could always play games on the Intel Macs, not the highest resolution nor details, not the best FPS, but workable. Many people play on Iris. This is also causing confusion, so which is it, are the majority of games played with Iris type performance? 1650? 3050/3070? 3080? 3090? It seems like whatever it is, Mac Pro/Max is always the sweet spot?

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

No, they won't. If they already have one they might play games, but the same is true for M1 and Iris. Or they're hardcore gamers, then why bother with M1 Max and not get something better?

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.

AS were designed, software and hardware, to be productive machines with video/photo work in mind, hence the high fill rates. They were not designed with compute in mind, that's why they're somewhat disappointing for that use case. Games are somewhere in the middle.

 

[JMacHack]

Then don't buy one.

Next-generation Nvidia GPUs will have the usual architectural improvements as well as process improvements from going from Samsung 8 nm to TSMC 5 nm. That will give rather nice cost / power / performance improvements.

The highest-end GPUs are going to be more expensive and power-hungry because they will be bigger than current-generation ones. Rumors say that the 4090 will have almost 2x as many CUDA cores as the 3090, and it will run at a higher clock rate. If you only want the next-generation equivalent of the 3090, it could be the 4070.

I only added that to refute your assertion that next gen will be less power hungry and cheaper. I don’t plan on wasting my money on something that absurd.

Also equivalent means the same tier. Exactly zero people say “well, I want to upgrade to the newest gen, but want the same performance so I’ll go with a 4070 from my 3080.”

Gaming is rather cheap as far as hobbies go.

Not for long ?

For example, travel can easily get expensive. A full-service hiking tour will probably cost $3k to $5k per person. If you fly economy and don't pay for any luxuries. And if you are into hiking, you need a lot of gear for a wide range of climates and conditions. Traveling for golf or photography can be similarly expensive.

Then there is sailing, which is the canonical example of an expensive hobby. There is no upper bound for how much money you can burn. That guy over there paid more for his boat than you will ever make, and it's not even a particularly nice boat.

I’m sure if you include the most expensive hobbies on the planet, you can argue that gaming is cheap. But costs are creeping into territory that I spend on my guitar and music addiction and that’s unjustifiable.

The prices of mid-range consumer electronics tend to follow middle-class salaries. I don't see much room for price growth unless there is serious inflation. The current prices are already a bit higher than people are willing to pay, both due to the component shortage and because people are still spending more time at home away from other money sinks.

The absurd prices are a function of their insistence on getting their shiny. And if people weren’t willing to pay these prices, then these prices wouldn’t be so high, and next gen wouldn’t be planned to be more expensive.

 

[diamond.g]

I only added that to refute your assertion that next gen will be less power hungry and cheaper. I don’t plan on wasting my money on something that absurd.

Also equivalent means the same tier. Exactly zero people say “well, I want to upgrade to the newest gen, but want the same performance so I’ll go with a 4070 from my 3080.”


Not for long ?


I’m sure if you include the most expensive hobbies on the planet, you can argue that gaming is cheap. But costs are creeping into territory that I spend on my guitar and music addiction and that’s unjustifiable.


The absurd prices are a function of their insistence on getting their shiny. And if people weren’t willing to pay these prices, then these prices wouldn’t be so high, and next gen wouldn’t be planned to be more expensive.

We are seeing GPU tiers moved up in price brackets (something gamers nexus has complained about). IIRC nivida pricing has increased at least 100 bucks from the 10 series -> 20 series. The pricing (msrp) stayed the same for the 30 series but they moved the performance brackets over (so a base 3080 is faster than a 2080ti) which somewhat muddies how Nvidia will handle the 30 series to 40 series transition. If Lovelace is twice as fast as Ampere I would expect it to be due to them increasing the number of CUDA cores again. I am not sure if the power consumption will actually double though since PCIe 5 seems to have a ~670W ceiling and we already have "stock" cards that can draw 480W (Asus strix 3090).

 

[JouniS]

Also equivalent means the same tier. Exactly zero people say “well, I want to upgrade to the newest gen, but want the same performance so I’ll go with a 4070 from my 3080.”

The tiers are just arbitrary marketing BS that changes with every generation. Most people consider the price/performance/power trade-offs and choose the one that fits best in their situation.

I’m sure if you include the most expensive hobbies on the planet, you can argue that gaming is cheap. But costs are creeping into territory that I spend on my guitar and music addiction and that’s unjustifiable.

Gaming used to be a weirdly egalitarian hobby where almost anyone could save enough money to buy the best gear there is. Now the situation is normalizing and the 1% have something to spend their money on if they want a better gaming experience.

 

[Ceed]

Gaming is more popular and culturally accepted than it's ever been in the history of the medium. With $399 PS5s and $399 Steam Decks, that's not in any danger of changing. M1 and Iris Xe are good enough, even. Ultra settings are not important. Most people go with whatever the graphics default to (medium), they open the game and click play. Very inexpensive hardware can handle that scenario.

The elite hobbyists just want things like 60 or 120+ fps, 1440p/4K, or extremely maxed out ultra settings that look the same as high settings. That stuff feels good because you paid into it, but regular people don't care.

 

[diamond.g]

Gaming is more popular and culturally accepted than it's ever been in the history of the medium. With $399 PS5s and $399 Steam Decks, that's not in any danger of changing. M1 and Iris Xe are good enough, even. Ultra settings are not important. Most people go with whatever the graphics default to (medium), they open the game and click play. Very inexpensive hardware can handle that scenario.

The elite hobbyists just want things like 60 or 120+ fps, 1440p/4K, or extremely maxed out ultra settings that look the same as high settings. That stuff feels good because you paid into it, but regular people don't care.

I think some of that depends on the game. Currently BF2042 is getting pretty poor steam reviews for no apparent reason to me.

 

[laptech]

I think some of that depends on the game. Currently BF2042 is getting pretty poor steam reviews for no apparent reason to me.

I have no definate proof, just observations from past history but I have noticed that if you have a game that people consider to be expensive you start seeing poor reviews of the game on forums and social media because what happens is eventually the game publisher lowers the price of the game to try and get more people interested in purchasing it. I have no idea if this is what is happening here but I have seen the same pattern time and time again with some games.

 

[diamond.g]

I have no definate proof, just observations from past history but I have noticed that if you have a game that people consider to be expensive you start seeing poor reviews of the game on forums and social media because what happens is eventually the game publisher lowers the price of the game to try and get more people interested in purchasing it. I have no idea if this is what is happening here but I have seen the same pattern time and time again with some games.

After looking at some of the reviews it appears folks think the game is broken. Complaints range from settings changes not improving performance, to vehicles being broken, to game modes not working right.

To be fair that is just Steam, no telling how the game is doing on consoles (outside of trusting something like Metacritic).

 

[Janichsan]

Currently BF2042 is getting pretty poor steam reviews for no apparent reason to me.

If you'd played it, the reasons would be glaringly apparent for you. Even more so if you have played earlier games in that series.

 

[diamond.g]

If you'd played it, the reasons would be glaringly apparent for you. Even more so if you have played earlier games in that series.

That is fair, I never really got into the BF series.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Not sure if BF2042 is broken, but it certainly needs a few patches until it becomes "stable" for gameplay/bugs and crashes. But that's the rule for the Bugfield Battlefield series.

 

[kamikazeeMC]

It's not even the technical issues, but rather core design choices.

 

[Realityck]

 

[ackmondual]

.....

I think the future of computing will always be to own both PC and Mac. And why not? Mac offers stability and ecosystem - perfect for work and productivity. PC offers upgradability and compatibility with a wider library of games at a fraction of price of a Mac.

....

Well, I do wonder how many are like myself... perfectly fine doing productivity on a PC, while also using same PC for video gaming.

 

[the8thark]

Apple doesn’t have what it takes to build the Mac platform to be contend in gaming…because Apple can‘t do AAA gaming.

That is not the issue at hand. The issue is Apple do not want to spend the billions of dollars to buy up game studios who can do AAA gaming. That is exactly want Microsoft is doing. Buy up the studio then it does not matter what hardware architecture is being used, the games have to adapt to it. Because they got bought out and are now exclusively working for the parent company.

I view it similar to Nintendo vs sega with Sony looming in the shadows. It’s just a matter of apple putting the pieces it has together if they desire at all to do so.

Nintendo vs Sega was totally different. Not at all comparable.

Back in the 90's both Nintendo and Sega developed their own games (and consoles too). Just in the late 90's and early 2000's Sega could not put out enough good games and they flubbed their hardware rollout . . . and you know the story from there. Sega kept making games and never stopped. Just now on non Sega hardware.

Sony vs Microsoft is two platform holders (both who do not develop games) in a war to see which one can buy up more studios to make games for them.

But that apple logo on a console should scare the daylights out of the current console leaders.

I feel Apple's shareholders and investors would be more shocked by that. Apple's attempt at that back in he 90's was terrible. I would not be surprised if there would be an investor revolution if Tim or another VP tried to push that on Apple.

Wouldn't this bolded phrase be more accurate if you dropped the computer part of the gaming market? Traditionally the mobile gaming market isn't included in the computer gaming market (nor in the console gaming market).

Mobile gaming is still PC gaming. Modern smartphones are PCs by definition.
In my opinion it just mobile PC vs traditional PC.

 

[diamond.g]

Sony vs Microsoft is two platform holders (both who do not develop games) in a war to see which one can buy up more studios to make games for them.

This isn’t right. Both Sony and Microsoft have internal studios that make games for them they they didn’t flat out buy before hand.

 

[maflynn]

That is exactly want Microsoft is doing. Buy up the studio then it does not matter what hardware architecture is being used, the games have to adapt to it. Because they got bought out and are now exclusively working for the parent company.

Microsoft is making bold moves, where in one fell swoop strengthening their subscription service by orders of magnitude and weakening Sony's ability to offer a wide variety of games. Sony has been very quiet, too quiet it. I recall a few months ago hearing a report where the small independent developers were revolting and airing their complaints about how expensive and awful it is working with them.

Report: How PlayStation Is Failing Indie Developers

Indie Devs Question Whether to Bother with PS5, PS4 Ports in the Future​

Given this total lack of support, it leads some developers to question whether they should bother with ports to PS5 and PS4 in the future. Sony "were easily the worst performing in terms of sales and by far the most demanding and hardest to work with in terms of getting on to the platform. As an indie developer, you have limited resources. So you have to ask yourself if it's worth the time and energy committing to a port when they aren't going to promote you and sales are going to be significantly lower than all other competing platforms."

Sony vs Microsoft is two platform holders (both who do not develop games) in a war to see which one can buy up more studios to make games for them.

My take is that MS would rather not go head to head with Sony, they tried to offer their gamepass on the iOS app store, but apple rejected it. I think MS would be very pleased if Sony would allow GamePass and MS' game catalog available on the playstation.

 

[scaramoosh]

I do not understand why they continue to ignore it considering it basically drives Windows at this point. The M1 chip was the perfect time to strike, why not stick it in the Apple TV and release it with a controller or something? Try to get people on board?

They continue to do nothing, but Valve right now are getting praise for the Steam Deck, using an SoC that wishes it was the M1.

 

[JMacHack]

Because they have the lion’s share of profits from the biggest gaming market, mobile.

And the desktop gaming crowd is actively hostile towards Apple. Console makers have exclusivity deals.

 

[thedocbwarren]

Because they have the lion’s share of profits from the biggest gaming market, mobile.

And the desktop gaming crowd is actively hostile towards Apple. Console makers have exclusivity deals.

This. There are so many deals and studios involved in how AAA games are released (lets put aside the tooling for a moment) that make this tricky. Mobile dwarfs gaming on PC but a large amount and that is iOS dominant. End of the day they are different markets but the numbers for Mac mac this a hard sell.

 

[dugbug]

We all want this. Maybe now with their capable low power GPUs we can see some movement here. Pretty please.

 

[thedocbwarren]

We all want this. Maybe now with their capable low power GPUs we can see some movement here. Pretty please.

It's not the GPU that is the issue. I play games on my M1 with ease and great performance. It's the technology behind the games (Direct-X, Vulcan) that causes a lot of friction. It's the fact that Mac gaming is far too few people. That said it's more of an issue of barrier to entry given you can't grow numbers if you don't try. Apple would have to license something and translate their tooling to work with games so Windows games work easier. Studios have exclusives with vendors. We are now seeing more studios purchased by big vendors like Microsoft and Sony so fewer choices are going to occur and more exclusives. I don't see this improving in any way. I do see the PC gaming market changing to streaming and more away from the PC style gaming as younger crowds are trending mobile.

Forgot to add GPU vendors also "encourage" their proprietary tech to make a game optimized to their hardware (cough...Nvidia.) Given that, it makes Mac gaming even more difficult and bigger barrier to entry.

 

[bobcomer]

I do not understand why they continue to ignore it considering it basically drives Windows at this point.

Businesses drive Windows, not gaming.