Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]

[laptech]

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.

No, Apple develop good computer hardware, it is others who then tag it as 'gaming grade hardware'. Take the Mac Pro, that thing oozes gaming performance hardware BUT the only reference Apple make to gaming which is under their 'design' heading is the ability of the machine to 'build gaming environments', build, not play. Dell, HP, ASUS, all of them would be praising the gaming performance of a machine like that and they do, all 3 of them pro-actively promote and market their gaming laptops and desktops but not Apple. They have the machine to do it but they do not market it or promote it as a machine capable of playing games. The only ones that do are 3rd parties.

It is the same with monitors. All 3 of those companies i've mentioned actively promote some of their monitors as good for gaming but again not Apple.

I remember once reading an interview with Sir Clive Sinclair, the inventor of the sinclair range of computers about why he initially designed his computer and he said it was so children could learn about the wonders of programming and computers but what was his computers mainly used for? yep, gaming. Wozniak didn't design the Apple computer to be a gaming machine, he built it to be an educational device and Jobs being the man he was, saw the potential of the machine as an educational tool. He never promoted Apple computers as gaming devices/tools and Apple has stuck to that principle.

 

[laptech]

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...

developer.apple.com

'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...

developer.apple.com

'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...

developer.apple.com

'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.

All of that shows is that others are leading the charge into gaming, not Apple. Yes Apple is showing that they are prepared to help others achieve their goals but Apple is not going out of their way to promote that THEY are directly getting involved into gaming.

 

[Ethosik]

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.

That’s fine if that fits your goal and wants/needs. As you stated for your work, mine is also not correct for all cases (you are proof). I can just speak that I am only devoting to windows to maximize the audience and sales with a 96% usage in Steam.

 

[leman]

No, Apple develop good computer hardware, it is others who then tag it as 'gaming grade hardware'. Take the Mac Pro, that thing oozes gaming performance hardware BUT the only reference Apple make to gaming which is under their 'design' heading is the ability of the machine to 'build gaming environments', build, not play. Dell, HP, ASUS, all of them would be praising the gaming performance of a machine like that and they do, all 3 of them pro-actively promote and market their gaming laptops and desktops but not Apple. They have the machine to do it but they do not market it or promote it as a machine capable of playing games. The only ones that do are 3rd parties.

It is the same with monitors. All 3 of those companies i've mentioned actively promote some of their monitors as good for gaming but again not Apple.

I remember once reading an interview with Sir Clive Sinclair, the inventor of the sinclair range of computers about why he initially designed his computer and he said it was so children could learn about the wonders of programming and computers but what was his computers mainly used for? yep, gaming. Wozniak didn't design the Apple computer to be a gaming machine, he built it to be an educational device and Jobs being the man he was, saw the potential of the machine as an educational tool. He never promoted Apple computers as gaming devices/tools and Apple has stuck to that principle.

Mac Pro is prolly not a good example, simply because it is priced out of reach for most customers. Regardless, while I do think that your historical account on Steve Job's attitude to gaming is stop on, this is not what we have today. The reality is that Apple spent a lot of $$$$ and engineering talent on developing a very efficient gaming GPU and a dedicated forward-thinking advanced gaming API to go with it. They have developed rich frameworks for games, added support to contemporary console controllers and many dedicated developer tools that directly target gamedev. They have extensive documentation and dedicated sessions on developing games for Apple platforms, and contrary to what you claim, they did showcase gaming on their hardware multiple times. Check out the M1 introduction session for example, where they show Baldur's Gates gameplay footage. They also regularly showcase games when introducing new iPhones or iPads.

The thing is, if one applies your logic consistently, one could claim that Apple does not care about image or video editing on the Mac. There are more APIs and hardware features related to gaming on Apple Silicon that related to content creation. There are also more developer sessions that discuss how to make high-performance games than how to make high-performance video editors. But of course, claiming something like that would be silly.

Which again brings me to reiterate what has already been said: Apple offers a very solid foundation for game development and deploying on all Apple devices. It is up to the developers to take advantage of this offering. The reasons why we don't have many high-end games on the Mac are mostly cultural (and in part historical). We don't know what will happen in the future, but I think there are good reasons to expect at least some short in anti-Mac gaming culture bias going forward. The hardware and software is just too good to pass by. And when folks will see that new titles like Warhammer 3 works as well on their friend's M2 MacBook Air as on their thick and heavy gaming laptop, they will start wondering.

P.S. I recently looked into the possibility of building myself a small gaming PC. It's been some time that I last looked at the market and I was absolutely horrified. One used to be able to build a decent gaming box for around one thousand euros. Now you can't even get a good GPU at that price. And what happened to the prices of other components? It's ridiculous. Talk about "Apple tax".

 

[laptech]

Mac Pro is prolly not a good example, simply because it is priced out of reach for most customers. Regardless, while I do think that your historical account on Steve Job's attitude to gaming is stop on, this is not what we have today. The reality is that Apple spent a lot of $$$$ and engineering talent on developing a very efficient gaming GPU and a dedicated forward-thinking advanced gaming API to go with it. They have developed rich frameworks for games, added support to contemporary console controllers and many dedicated developer tools that directly target gamedev. They have extensive documentation and dedicated sessions on developing games for Apple platforms, and contrary to what you claim, they did showcase gaming on their hardware multiple times. Check out the M1 introduction session for example, where they show Baldur's Gates gameplay footage. They also regularly showcase games when introducing new iPhones or iPads.

The thing is, if one applies your logic consistently, one could claim that Apple does not care about image or video editing on the Mac. There are more APIs and hardware features related to gaming on Apple Silicon that related to content creation. There are also more developer sessions that discuss how to make high-performance games than how to make high-performance video editors. But of course, claiming something like that would be silly.

Which again brings me to reiterate what has already been said: Apple offers a very solid foundation for game development and deploying on all Apple devices. It is up to the developers to take advantage of this offering. The reasons why we don't have many high-end games on the Mac are mostly cultural (and in part historical). We don't know what will happen in the future, but I think there are good reasons to expect at least some short in anti-Mac gaming culture bias going forward. The hardware and software is just too good to pass by. And when folks will see that new titles like Warhammer 3 works as well on their friend's M2 MacBook Air as on their thick and heavy gaming laptop, they will start wondering.

P.S. I recently looked into the possibility of building myself a small gaming PC. It's been some time that I last looked at the market and I was absolutely horrified. One used to be able to build a decent gaming box for around one thousand euros. Now you can't even get a good GPU at that price. And what happened to the prices of other components? It's ridiculous. Talk about "Apple tax".

Do not get confused with Apples PR marketing strategy of inticing buyers with views of gameplay as any indication of Apples interest into gaming because they are not. Apple are persistantly trying to get the younger generation to become part of Apples ecosystem and they are not going to do it by showing casing how good a machine can render an image in photoshop. It has always been a case of know your target audience and the target audience are interested in games. The problem is Apple does not do gaming but these new potential customers do not know that.

As for the GPU, this is EXACTLY the problem I mentioned about in one of my posts, it's people using gaming references when refering to their chips. No where in any of Apple's PR on their new GPU mentions anything about gaming. All Apple have done is built a very efficent GPU, it is 3rd parties who keep saying it's an efficent gaming GPU.

 

[leman]

No where in any of Apple's PR on their new GPU mentions anything about gaming.

But they do? It's right there in their marketing material on M1 GPU performance? From the M1 product pages (direct quotes):

- 3.1x faster game performance
- 8-core GPU. Plays hard. Works wonders.

The newsroom announcement of M1 literally shows a game screen with a controller when they talk about GPU performance.

 

[Random_Matt]

Plenty of CRPG and strategy games, looking forward to BG 3 and Dune: Spice wars. If you are a massive gamer, then you bought the wrong platform.

 

[Ethosik]

But they do? It's right there in their marketing material on M1 GPU performance? From the M1 product pages (direct quotes):

- 3.1x faster game performance
- 8-core GPU. Plays hard. Works wonders.

The newsroom announcement of M1 literally shows a game screen with a controller when they talk about GPU performance.

I don't think people will be satisfied until Apple spends 10-20 minutes each keynote discussing gaming?

Sorry, for my Macs, I prefer them to focus on the WORK side of things and not GAMING. This is why I find iPhone announcements so boring is all the time spent on the camera when the iPhone 6 camera is as good as I will ever need.

 

[Krevnik]

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.

I was wondering if someone would point that out before I reached the end of the thread. DirectStorage (and Sony's similar tech) helps systems that use dedicated VRAM.

Apple gives you the same exact APIs and features across both mobile and desktop, with the difference that the desktop is being faster.

Also what I was thinking. Metal is the same on both platforms, and games don't really want to sit on top of UIKit or AppKit unless they absolutely have to. And if you are using tools like Unity, same general deal.

It's a QA/QC/Effort decision, not a technical one.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Plenty of CRPG and strategy games, looking forward to BG 3 and Dune: Spice wars.

For macOS? Isn't it Windows exclusive for now with the option to bring a console version later? I've not heard anything about a Mac release, but I'm not actively following it, so they might have changed it?

 

[diamond.g]

For macOS? Isn't it Windows exclusive for now with the option to bring a console version later? I've not heard anything about a Mac release, but I'm not actively following it, so they might have changed it?

I think they are using the same engine as their other game which has a MacOS release. So the assumption is there may be a MacOS version for this as well. But they have to get through EA first (or so their faq says).

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Of course it did. And yet Animal Crossing probably made more much money overall

And Minecraft made even more than that!

 

[Unregistered 4U]

OR bring AAA games to Apple Arcade.

AAA games want their AAA loot boxes. No AAA games would even entertain the notion as they’d make MUCH more money anywhere OTHER than Apple Arcade.

 

[Fred99]

Look, it's quite simple. Gaming is a business, its about money - not YOU, or me. It doesn't matter what we want, it matters what makes money. Apple, with their 30% cut of the app store makes more profit in gaming every year than ALL the other gaming companies COMBINED. So why would Apple go through the hassle of designing engines, or whatever else it takes for you to play PC games on Mac when its going to cost them a **** ton, and return very little, and basically nothing in comparison to what they make now.

It's simple economics - there's no need for Apple to do this, there's no business case or profit to be made by Apple for doing this, so why on earth would they.

Want to play PC games, buy a gaming PC. Apple won't be supporting you here.

 

[Irishman]

Look, it's quite simple. Gaming is a business, its about money - not YOU, or me. It doesn't matter what we want, it matters what makes money. Apple, with their 30% cut of the app store makes more profit in gaming every year than ALL the other gaming companies COMBINED. So why would Apple go through the hassle of designing engines, or whatever else it takes for you to play PC games on Mac when its going to cost them a **** ton, and return very little, and basically nothing in comparison to what they make now.

It's simple economics - there's no need for Apple to do this, there's no business case or profit to be made by Apple for doing this, so why on earth would they.

Want to play PC games, buy a gaming PC. Apple won't be supporting you here.

So, why is Apple "doing this" on the iPhone and iPad?

Why is Apple bringing all the same functionality from the A-series iPhone and iPad side to the Mac?

Why are they making a scalable architecture to the Mac side (with M1), if not to "do this"?

Why is Epic Games adding top-tier feature support to their new Unreal Engine 5 Official Release? I just finished watching this video, so it seems like Lumen support for Mac is rolling out - at least in Lyra - in higher settings.

Don't they know what you know?

 

[leman]

So, why is Apple "doing this" on the iPhone and iPad?

Why is Apple bringing all the same functionality from the A-series iPhone and iPad side to the Mac?

Why are they making a scalable architecture to the Mac side (with M1), if not to "do this"?

I think I agree with @Fred99 that Apple is not going to get directly involved in the gaming business. All these talks about Apple-branded console, about Apple hiring or paying game devs, I find it fairly unlikely (but I am prepared to be pleasantly surprised if they do).

But there should be no doubt whatsoever that gaming — and high-end gaming in particular — is a first class citizen and a high priority use case for all of their platforms. Apple spend a lot of money and effort to develop gaming-grade GPUs and sophisticated APIs and tools for game development.

It is often claimed that Apple only care about compute, and the only strong points of their GPUs is stuff like video encoding, but I suspect that people who believe that never programmed a GPU or looked at modern Metal. Besides, if Apple didn't care about high-performance graphics, they would have sticked with OpenGL, it was doing basic stuff just fine.

 

[diamond.g]

I think I agree with @Fred99 that Apple is not going to get directly involved in the gaming business. All these talks about Apple-branded console, about Apple hiring or paying game devs, I find it fairly unlikely (but I am prepared to be pleasantly surprised if they do).

But there should be no doubt whatsoever that gaming — and high-end gaming in particular — is a first class citizen and a high priority use case for all of their platforms. Apple spend a lot of money and effort to develop gaming-grade GPUs and sophisticated APIs and tools for game development.

It is often claimed that Apple only care about compute, and the only strong points of their GPUs is stuff like video encoding, but I suspect that people who believe that never programmed a GPU or looked at modern Metal. Besides, if Apple didn't care about high-performance graphics, they would have sticked with OpenGL, it was doing basic stuff just fine.

Is there anything on Metal for macOS that Metal for iOS cannot do? Seems like all they did was just bring all the iOS Metal featureset to the Mac because they are using the same hardware (at the most basic level).

 

[leman]

Is there anything on Metal for macOS that Metal for iOS cannot do? Seems like all they did was just bring all the iOS Metal featureset to the Mac because they are using the same hardware (at the most basic level).

Its the same hardware, with the same basic capabilities. Unified programming model, great for devs. The only think that's different is performance.

 

[diamond.g]

Its the same hardware, with the same basic capabilities. Unified programming model, great for devs. The only think that's different is performance.

So really it didn't "cost" them anything to bring this "gaming" performance to the Mac since they already did it for iOS?

 

[leman]

So really it didn't "cost" them anything to bring this "gaming" performance to the Mac since they already did it for iOS?

In a way, yes. Of course, you'll have to discount the R&D costs for advanced scalable technology I mean, you could also say that Macs got high-performance CPUs for free since they already did it for the iPhone/iPad.

But I think it's a wrong way to look at it. It's not like they did it for iOS and then Mac gets it for free. it should be fairly obvious that Mac was the target from the start. Apple didn't spent a decade improving their chip designs just for the iPhone. They aimed at desktop from the very start. And that's what they say themselves.

 

[leman]

By the way, regarding the often mentioned "Apple gaming console": https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2022067344&_cid=P22-L1TA9K-67295-1

Now that makes perfect sense to me. Apple already has a console. All they need is better interfacing.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

It is often claimed that Apple only care about compute, and the only strong points of their GPUs is stuff like video encoding, but I suspect that people who believe that never programmed a GPU or looked at modern Metal. Besides, if Apple didn't care about high-performance graphics, they would have sticked with OpenGL, it was doing basic stuff just fine.

Their GPU is indeed powerful, and those devs that are writing for it (rather than writing for an engine that is just there to make porting easy) are aware of it.

I’ve watched videos about hobbyists awhile back creating graphic demos specifically for the system of their choice that does nothing but push the meager graphics capabilities of those older systems to their native limits. I’d like to see something like that for Apple Silicon. Like, we have a mental “idea” of what it’d be like to have 32 gigs of texture space available (more than any Nvidia or AMD card), I’d like to be able to SEE it

 

[diamond.g]

Their GPU is indeed powerful, and those devs that are writing for it (rather than writing for an engine that is just there to make porting easy) are aware of it.

I’ve watched videos about hobbyists awhile back creating graphic demos specifically for the system of their choice that does nothing but push the meager graphics capabilities of those older systems to their native limits. I’d like to see something like that for Apple Silicon. Like, we have a mental “idea” of what it’d be like to have 32 gigs of texture space available (more than any Nvidia or AMD card), I’d like to be able to SEE it

Presume you meant consumer card (since Apple sells a W6900X that has 32GB of GDDR6 on board).

 

[leman]

Their GPU is indeed powerful, and those devs that are writing for it (rather than writing for an engine that is just there to make porting easy) are aware of it.

I’ve watched videos about hobbyists awhile back creating graphic demos specifically for the system of their choice that does nothing but push the meager graphics capabilities of those older systems to their native limits. I’d like to see something like that for Apple Silicon. Like, we have a mental “idea” of what it’d be like to have 32 gigs of texture space available (more than any Nvidia or AMD card), I’d like to be able to SEE it

I think one can do some really interesting stuff with UMA, combining CPU and GPU work in a way that would not be practical on traditional dGPUs, but that's easier said than done. One of the most interesting features of the Apple GPU for me is the persistent GPU cache (aka tile shaders), which allows many algorithms to be expressed in simpler and more natural manner.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Presume you meant consumer card (since Apple sells a W6900X that has 32GB of GDDR6 on board).

But, that can’t use the entire 32 GB just for textures, right? The 64GB Max could have 32 GB of textures and still have room for game/display logic and the OS.