I believe that at the end of the day, developers will make games for macOS as long as it's profitable to do so. Increasing market share is the best way. So start selling more Macs. One way is to sell an affordable Macbook SE.
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Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]
- Thread starter Admiralbison
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Would it help if Apple hardware supported OpenGL and Vulkan?
It is a sad state of affairs when the iphone is capable of doing so so much more but yet the majority of society reduces it down to it's basic form, that being a gaming device and what is the one thing that gamers do more so than anyone else? they make game in-app purchases (game tokens, character skins, weapons) which is 'kerr-ching' in Apples book because it means the money keeps on rolling in due to the 15% and 30% commission on in-app purchases.
Why spends millions of $$$ on game publishers to make games for OSX when they can just sit back, do as little as possible on the app store and watch the money roll in. It just is not going happen, OSX is dead as a gaming platform in my opinion whilst iOS gaming exists.
Why spends millions of $$$ on game publishers to make games for OSX when they can just sit back, do as little as possible on the app store and watch the money roll in. It just is not going happen, OSX is dead as a gaming platform in my opinion whilst iOS gaming exists.
I actually take issue with the thread title because I'm not really convinced that Apple cares about iPad/iOS games either.
What Apple cares about is taking a 30% cut from IAPs and games generate a lot of those on iOS.
Apple also cares about recurring revenue, hence its (fairly meagre) efforts with Apple Arcade.
I think it's telling that since M1 there have been no major games released on Mac. We have Baldur's Gate 3 and Total War Warhammer 3 to look forward to but that's basically it apart from indie ports of iOS or Unity games.
I don't detect any passion from Apple for gaming as a hobby or a creative medium - on either of its platforms.
What Apple cares about is taking a 30% cut from IAPs and games generate a lot of those on iOS.
Apple also cares about recurring revenue, hence its (fairly meagre) efforts with Apple Arcade.
I think it's telling that since M1 there have been no major games released on Mac. We have Baldur's Gate 3 and Total War Warhammer 3 to look forward to but that's basically it apart from indie ports of iOS or Unity games.
I don't detect any passion from Apple for gaming as a hobby or a creative medium - on either of its platforms.
I'm not going to say its a chicken and egg situation since we know the egg came first, but we don't know if its a lack of AA and AAA games or a lack of interest that prevents gaming on Macs as a common activity. Apple is so profitable that they could easily subsidize porting AAA titles and actually put some weight behind Apple Arcade beyond simpler mobile gaming.
Gaming on a mobile device has a much wider market. My mom is not going to play a game, any game on her MacBook Air but will sit and play those simple addictive little games on her iPhone and iPad. Mac itself is not really a great choice for gaming for a few reasons. The price is high for a Mac, especially when you compare what you can get for a gaming PC for the same price tag. Macs are not upgradeable and non customizable save for stickers. Part of the gaming world is the PC builds themselves, RGB lights, building yourself, etc etc. Apple is closed off and less versatile, especially now with the move away from Intel and the ability to run Windows virtually or natively. There will always be some games that get released for Mac but I don't think it will ever be running up against all the latest and greatest games that are released for PC and console, where billions are being made.
That is because gaming is not creative but consumptive!
Gaming is as consumptive as movies and tv are and Apple is heavily invested in those mediums. Some amazing stories told in gaming. Red Dead 2 is the big one I think of, love the story and pacing of the game among the incredible open world that was created.
That's why I still have a Windows/Linux machine for gaming, that's it
I was thinking more on the game dev side for creativity, although plenty of games these days are creative - Minecraft is the big one there, but there are plenty of others.
So are Apple Music and Apple TV, but Apple is passionate about those.
It's like we've been having this conversation for 40 years. If gaming is important to you, don't do it on a Mac. I don't get why people who spend 40K on sportscar don't complain they can't do the same thing with it as people who spend 40K on Landrover or Jeep, they accept they're different tools for different jobs, yet people who buy a Mac complain it's not great for playing games, like this is a new revelation.
The higher performance M computers are proving that Macs are now good enough for gaming; games like Shadow of the Tombraider run well on the new Macs. Not with bleeding edge settings, but high quality settings are giving frame rates in the 50s and that's good enough for most people who would like to game, but are not hard-core gamers.
TLDR - Mac hardware is no longer the bottleneck.
I think it only ever was a bottleneck because the perceived Mac customer base (and presumably Apple did their research) weren't gamers and didn't care.
M1 Macs will be about as good for gaming as Amigas and Commodore 64s: potentially great while the tech inside them is contemporary, but as soon as it becomes out of date, you can't upgrade. That's why gamers use PCs because you can continually upgrade the bits inside to stay contemporary. Mac users don't however give a stuff about that, as long as their computer continues to churn through the work they bought it for (coding / video / photography / music-production, etc).
I would argue that Mac hardware has never been the bottleneck for games. The bottleneck has been Apple drivers. When they decided to deprecate OpenGL, the video drivers for even powerful GPUs stagnated, hampering game performance. That is why simply using BootCamp with Windows allowed games to work so much better on the Apple hardware. This is by no means indicative that Windows is a better OS for gaming, but just indicative of Apple holding back games through inaction. Games that received metal ports tend to perform much better on Apple Hardware (because that is where Apple is focusing their efforts), and in fact because Rosetta2 seems to translate OpenGL calls to Metal, some OpenGL games run smoother on M1 based hardware than on Intel based systems. Many folks use this to point out how much better M1 systems are than the systems they replaced, which is invalid. You can't directly compare a game running OpenGL on an older Intel Mac against the same game on M1. You *might* get a more valid comparison if you compared BootCamp scores against M1 metal scores though....
I am NOT saying that Intel based Macs are superior to M1, this is simply false. The new Apple Silicon systems are superior to the Intel systems they replaced, in almost every way. There are a few things that Intel-based Macs just do better (and you know what that is, if you need it), but for most of us, there is no question.
PS. You don't buy a Mac system to play computer games, period. However, that doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't play games on one
Game On!
Very good points. I meant bottle neck in the sense that previously you had to spend a significant amount of money for a dedicated GPU in the 15/16" MBPs, and forget about gaming on the 13" laptops, while now all of their M1 computers are capable of decent frame rates.I would argue that Mac hardware has never been the bottleneck for games. The bottleneck has been Apple drivers. When they decided to deprecate OpenGL, the video drivers for even powerful GPUs stagnated, hampering game performance. That is why simply using BootCamp with Windows allowed games to work so much better on the Apple hardware. This is by no means indicative that Windows is a better OS for gaming, but just indicative of Apple holding back games through inaction. Games that received metal ports tend to perform much better on Apple Hardware (because that is where Apple is focusing their efforts), and in fact because Rosetta2 seems to translate OpenGL calls to Metal, some OpenGL games run smoother on M1 based hardware than on Intel based systems. Many folks use this to point out how much better M1 systems are than the systems they replaced, which is invalid. You can't directly compare a game running OpenGL on an older Intel Mac against the same game on M1. You *might* get a more valid comparison if you compared BootCamp scores against M1 metal scores though....
I am NOT saying that Intel based Macs are superior to M1, this is simply false. The new Apple Silicon systems are superior to the Intel systems they replaced, in almost every way. There are a few things that Intel-based Macs just do better (and you know what that is, if you need it), but for most of us, there is no question.
PS. You don't buy a Mac system to play computer games, period. However, that doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't play games on one
Game On!
Of course you haven't, that's the wrong way to hold a keyboard.
I feel that Macs are in a catch-22: few people game on Macs since there are so few games, and there are few games on Mac since so few people play games on Mac. Since most people are on Windows/Consoles, and I'm sure it takes a lot of work to optimize games specifically for Mac, I doubt that I'll see Macs as a serious gaming platform anytime soon.
That said, I'd love to see how a truly optimized AAA-level game would work on an Apple Silicon Mac. See what they can do!
That said, I'd love to see how a truly optimized AAA-level game would work on an Apple Silicon Mac. See what they can do!
This is an area where Windows is far superior, from DirectX support to drivers that support a wide array of peripherals, even from many years ago.
The Mac will never be a first-class platform for gaming. And I'm glad that is the case, as I believe Windows computers are horrible to get work done but stellar machines for gaming. macOS is the exact opposite.
The Mac will never be a first-class platform for gaming. And I'm glad that is the case, as I believe Windows computers are horrible to get work done but stellar machines for gaming. macOS is the exact opposite.
That I wholeheartedly agree with. I absolutely loved my old polycarbonate 13" MacBook. That laptop was awesome! Perfect size for portability, screen was not to small, but did suffer from a sub-par resolution :-(. Ultimately I switched to a 15" MacBook Pro for the dedicated GPU and the higher display resolution, but I never had any affection for it LOL. I was always torn having to spend more, just to get the features I needed. The price keeps increasing. Originally the bottom-line price was $1800, then jumped to $2200, and with my 16" jumped to $2700, and my latest 16" with M1 Max (for the 32-core GPU) $3499. It's too bad that Apple doesn't allow for more diversity in build options. I could probably get by just fine with an M1 with 32-core GPU and 32 GBs of RAM