Your sentiments have been echoed by others in these forums that are game devs as well, yet some people don’t listen.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]
- Thread starter Admiralbison
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You are missing the point. If we cannot count games running in Rosetta in your arguments, then we should not be allowed to count games that are as old as Direct X 8 titles on Windows PCs. Let's make this a little bit better discussion, whether its running in translation or not, can game X run on MacOS?
Lets be real here, how many current games truly need THE POWER (tm) that people here demand - RTX 3080s and ray tracing? The most popular GPUs on Steam for Windows are 1060, 1660, 1080, 2060 and more. Elden Ring can be played at 1080p on my GTX 1080. I have no ray tracing, or direct storage, or anything that these people demand. How many titles NEED these features?
If Doom 2016, Witcher 3 and other popular games can be made to run on the Nintendo Switch (which had an outdated GPU when it launched, let alone years later), then they can port games to macOS. Why don't they? Marketshare. Its that simple.
Even if a $300 Windows PC came with equivalent of an RTX 3080 GPU performance, but MacOS had 80% marketshare, I would devote my resources to making my game macOS first. Its all about marketshare.
And lets also be real here, Windows PC doesn't always get games immediately either - Horizon Zero Dawn? God of War? Final Fantasy 7 Remake? Those weren't on PC on day one. It takes time to port and optimize. I will leave this here. Its not sunshine and rainbows on Windows.
I don’t get why people have difficulty wrapping their heads around that fact either. Especially when it comes straight from actual devs like yourself!
That video does a good job at a high level on some issues. Even going from Windows to macOS, dealing with some shaders is a bit of a pain. And Linus was spot on with his Direct X 11 vs 12 comment. I started looking at Direct X 12 but quickly saw it was way too involved for one developer where 11 does a lot of stuff for you. In the end, I ended up using MonoGame since I love the C# language so much, and my game is not that demanding to begin with so I can use it.
I’ve heard that criticism about dx12 a lot actually. And one of the people I respect the most as a programmer is a huge fan of c#. I’ve never used it personally but I could see myself liking it since I’m a fan of C.
What am I, gaming digest weekly? There are dozens if not hundred games being released on Steam every month. I see new mac-compatible game suggestions in my steam feed every day. You are the one making wild claims that no new games come to the Mac. You have to provide proof for that, I’m not your Google assistant.
So what? They are working, right? There will be more native games coming out as the time goes on and ARM Macs become more ubiquitous. Feral already said that Mac games they are going to release in the future will be ARM native. Anyway, as long as Apple Silicon seamlessly runs Intel-based games, these are first-class citizens on macOS. Your attempt to pretend like they dont exist is silly.
And yet around 20% or more steam games work on macOS. Weird, huh?
Not many I suppose? I know only three, but there are probably more indie games. Why is this relevant to the current discussion? M1 runs Intel games just fine. See my comment above.
Apple doesn’t need directstorage because on Apple Silicon you can directly map file contents into GPU RAM. No need to jump through any hoops.
Right, a single iOS port of a decade year old game proves something. That there are new games coming for the Mac daily is just coincidence. ?
You are out of topic my friend. Apple is focusing on mobile game, not Mac game which is my point. A number of game ported to AS Mac is a great example. You clearly dont want to know the fact.
I guess these people haven't purchased business class systems before with Xeons where a $5,500 Dell comes with a GPU that not even beats the RTX 3060! These are common prices and different tools for the job computers.
1. If we count titles released for Steam on Mac in 2021 and 2022... 5449.
2. Over 500 titles on Steam are flagged as M1 native.
Also, here's the thing. You don't have to remake the whole game to bring it over to Mac. You don't have to re-record the sound, remake the graphics, etc. There's changes and tweaks to be made, sure, but it's likely not going to be as expensive as making the whole game anew.
So if a small company, or a small part of a dev team, could bring a game across for cheaper, and get a cut of sales... you know, they might make money.
It really depends on the kind of game.
There are plenty of casual games, plenty of indie games that are on macOS. You’ll get tons of hits if you look for macOS games on itch.io for example.
You will, however, not get many “AAA” games on macOS, that’s true.
It currently makes no business sense. AAA games cost insane amounts of money to make. macOS has an under 3% share on Steam according to the surveys, while Windows is over 96%.
While some Macs might be able to handle those graphically intensive games, that’s a very small percentage and not necessarily worth the investment of time and money.
There are plenty of casual games, plenty of indie games that are on macOS. You’ll get tons of hits if you look for macOS games on itch.io for example.
You will, however, not get many “AAA” games on macOS, that’s true.
It currently makes no business sense. AAA games cost insane amounts of money to make. macOS has an under 3% share on Steam according to the surveys, while Windows is over 96%.
While some Macs might be able to handle those graphically intensive games, that’s a very small percentage and not necessarily worth the investment of time and money.
Apple gives you the same exact APIs and features across both mobile and desktop, with the difference that the desktop is being faster. They are not responsible for what the actual devs do. It's not like Apple is going from shop to shop and nags people to make or not make games for their platform. They build the tools, the community decides where to go with it.
I am definitely in the minority since my (hobbyist) game is built for the Mac first. Why? Several reasons. First of all, thats the hardware I happen to own and use. Second, I am interested in targeting the iPad/iPhone as I think my game would work very well there and there is a significant market, probably even bigger than the PC. Third, ease of development. I am not using a middleware, my engine is fully custom and Metal + Apple Silicon make it extremely easy for me to do advanced prototyping with complex data structures. The programming model is simply much saner than what you get on the other side. Also, if my (non-trivial) multithreaded code works correctly on ARM, it will probably work correctly on x86 (stronger memory model). Fourth, my motivation on QA and optimisation is exactly the opposite to yours. Apple users expect high quality software that seamlessly work with the system. And Apple systems give you multiple tools to tweak your animation quality, timings, power efficiency, color accuracy etc. On the Windows side these things either don't exist or are unreliable at best. So it makes sense to me to fine-tune my engine for the Apple platform (e.g. design the renderer in a way that it maximises battery runtime) and then just do whatever for Windows because it's not what a Windows user expects anyway.
Just giving my few cents. Definitely not arguing that my approach is better for everyone.
This is one thing I keep on hearing from people is that Apple is focusing on mobile gaming. Where exactly is the evidence of this? Apple provides the tools so ANY app can be written. What apps are made is the decision of the app devs, not Apple.
All Apple has done is provide the platform and the tools for apps to be built. Apple have then basically said to app dev's 'here's everything you need to build an app, now go build'. Apple didn't tell coders to build games. It was obvious to see which direction coders were going to go because all they had to do is look towards the PC market and console market to see what would be the obvious app to code. Apples genius was with the IAP commission fee. The fact that mobile gaming is at the height that it is is not Apples doing, all of it is down to the app devs and their insatiable greed to get in to a very profitable market.
Apple are not interested in gaming and never have been. They do not actively develope their own games, they do not actively promote gaming (others do it), they do not promote the gaming hardware qualities of their machines.
Just a quick remark on this. Apple does spend considerable amount of effort and money to develop gaming grade hardware. And they do promote gaming during their consumer oriented events.
Apple Arcade
Apple Arcade is a game subscription service that anyone can enjoy, with 200+ incredibly fun games — all without ads or in-app purchases.
www.apple.com
That's a half-assed service. Apple loves services due to continued revenue. Had they actually cared about it, it could have been SO much more. A quick gathering of indie games isn't really caring at all.Apple Arcade
Apple Arcade is a game subscription service that anyone can enjoy, with 200+ incredibly fun games — all without ads or in-app purchases.www.apple.com
Not really, developer are the problem not Apple as your title suggests.
Apple can care all they want, but if devs are not developing is useless.
I partially agree, but Apple Arcade is aimed at a very specific audience, casual gamers, and for them it is almost good.
Mac has never been a game platform.
Sure, its had its moments... but it's a long time since Marathon or - ?
I don't know enough about the market to understand why for instance the amazing new Silicon chips haven't been a huge magnet for game makers. Mostly though it comes down to history - Macs are not known as gaming machines. Full Stop.
Even if Silicon continues to outperform "PC", the game makers know their market is still going to comprise mostly PC owners, because - the PC crowd aren't dumping PC enmasse to migrate to Mac, just because Apple says their new Macs are better. So the market share wont improve. And so game makers will continue to ignore Mac.
Sure, its had its moments... but it's a long time since Marathon or - ?
I don't know enough about the market to understand why for instance the amazing new Silicon chips haven't been a huge magnet for game makers. Mostly though it comes down to history - Macs are not known as gaming machines. Full Stop.
Even if Silicon continues to outperform "PC", the game makers know their market is still going to comprise mostly PC owners, because - the PC crowd aren't dumping PC enmasse to migrate to Mac, just because Apple says their new Macs are better. So the market share wont improve. And so game makers will continue to ignore Mac.
That is no evidence of Apple being interested in gaming. All they have done is no different to the app store, they have provided a mini app store where they have collected all the current top games from the app store and dumped them into this mini app store and called it Apple Arcade.Apple Arcade
Apple Arcade is a game subscription service that anyone can enjoy, with 200+ incredibly fun games — all without ads or in-app purchases.www.apple.com
Optimize high-end games for Apple GPUs - WWDC21 - Videos - Apple Developer
Optimize your high-end games for Apple GPUs: We'll show you how you can use our rendering and debugging tools to eliminate performance...
'Optimize your high-end games for Apple GPUs: We'll show you how you can use our rendering and debugging tools to eliminate performance issues and make your games great on Apple platforms. Learn from our experiences working with developers at Larian Studios and 4A Games as we help them optimize their games for Apple GPUs.'
Tune CPU job scheduling for Apple silicon games - Tech Talks - Videos - Apple Developer
Graphically-intensive games can be very demanding on hardware resources, requiring hundreds or even thousands of CPU jobs to be processed...
'Graphically-intensive games can be very demanding on hardware resources, requiring hundreds or even thousands of CPU jobs to be processed every frame. We'll show you how you can organize those jobs to maximize CPU efficiency and performance on the M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chips. Learn how you can fine-tune your games to deliver a better overall experience to your players.'
Discover advances in Metal for A15 Bionic - Tech Talks - Videos - Apple Developer
Discover how you can elevate your apps and games with Metal and the A15 Bionic. We'll help you take advantage of Apple GPU family 8 with...
'Discover how you can elevate your apps and games with Metal and the A15 Bionic. We'll help you take advantage of Apple GPU family 8 with the latest Metal features: Learn how to save memory with Lossy Compression, dive into complex shadow mapping techniques with Sparse Depth and Stencil Textures, and process images faster with SIMD Shuffle and Fill instructions.'
--
I won't say that Apple is 100% dedicated to gaming, but that seems to indicate that they're at the least curious/interested in it, considering the oldest video there seems to be from WWDC 2021.