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Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]
- Thread starter Admiralbison
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I point to the M1 Pro/Max as the sudden surge of Apple Silicon gaming threads on MacRumors because it performed as well as a AMD Ryzen 9 5950X desktop CPU & RTX 3080 GPUs.
If it's all Macs with Apple Silicon then lets peg the number of gamers at a conservative 4.5 million out of 22.5 million by Nov 2021.
Is 4.5 million in year 1 worth any triple A game dev time today? I believe by as early as year 3 when its more than 13.5 million Mac gamers or as late as year 5 when its more than 22.5 million.
"Over 20 million Macs per year" does not equate to 100% of Macs being used to play games. I used a conservative 20% as many buyers do not play any games.
it is estimated that current sales of gaming-capable PC (notebooks + desktops) reach around 45 million units per year. Let's say that 80% of people who buy them actually play games (it's probably a bit lower than that but still). That's 36 million Windows users vs. 4.5 million Mac users, or putting Mac users at roundly 10% of the potential user base.
I believe the number is significant enough. First, games are already being ported to Mac even though the potential user base is much smaller (can't properly play games like Civilization on Intel MBA). Second, macOS takes about 10% of the global PC market but virtually common business software has a Mac version, so it must be worth it supporting this 10%. Third, Mac users in general are more eager to spend money.
I think numbers check out
I think what we cannot agree upon is timeline. I'm thinking triple A native & optimized titles for Apple Silicon will be out by 2023.it is estimated that current sales of gaming-capable PC (notebooks + desktops) reach around 45 million units per year. Let's say that 80% of people who buy them actually play games (it's probably a bit lower than that but still). That's 36 million Windows users vs. 4.5 million Mac users, or putting Mac users at roundly 10% of the potential user base.
I believe the number is significant enough. First, games are already being ported to Mac even though the potential user base is much smaller (can't properly play games like Civilization on Intel MBA). Second, macOS takes about 10% of the global PC market but virtually common business software has a Mac version, so it must be worth it supporting this 10%. Third, Mac users in general are more eager to spend money.
I think numbers check out
As this is a transition period expect the pains of being an early hardware adopter.
That's one reason I delayed my purchase of a 4K TV to 2016 when 4K Blu-ray came out and Netflix/YouTube/Prime Video started offering 4K streams where I lived. We got Apple TV+ here exactly 2 years ago.
Now, to kill off x86 gaming we need Windows 11 on ARM to have a final solution before 2025. The price of PCs will drop from the $630 when Android SoCs will be used by Windows 11 with as good results as Rosetta and Universal Binary equivalents to those of macOS.
Macs can do AAA gaming. The hardware is easily powerful enough. Granted it might not be on the level of a desktop 3080, but you don't need a desktop 3080 to run a AAA game acceptably and have a good experience. You might not be achieving 100fps ultra-high, but 60fps high/very high is certainly attainable on M1 Pro / Max and 30fps low/medium on M1.
The issue is simply the availability of native titles, and that all comes down to risk vs potential reward on the part of the game studios. For better or worse, the Mac uses a different system architecture and graphics API to Windows or most Linux machines. The process of porting a AAA game that has been written using Vulkan/Direct X API calls and compiled for x86-64 to Metal and AArch64 is not trivial, and would represent a significant risk for the studio in terms of man hours needed. Out of all PCs in circulation, Macs represent a relatively small subset and of that relatively small subset an even smaller subset represent those who play games regularly, and an even smaller subset of that are people who might be interested in a particular title. The risk of a game failing to sell well enough to cover the extra labour cost of the Mac version is just too high for the majority of game studios to swallow.
How can this issue be solved? That's a tough one. The issue is self sustaining in that the fewer games there are for Mac, the more PC gamers are likely to choose x86-64 and Windows, so the fewer games there will be for Mac. I would look to the Linux community for the potential solution. The progress made recently in the compatibility layers for Linux has made that a far more viable gaming platform than ever before - look at Proton in Steam. Easy to use, no complex setup, a large number of games are supported and with a minimal performance penalty. I think something like that for the Apple Silicon Mac would be a great help. The problem is that Proton doesn't need to do any emulation so near-native speeds are possible. Anything similar for the Mac would need to emulate, and that will inevitably introduce a performance penalty. Crossover is a thing and is along the right lines, but game support is still too patchy. If the majority of PC titles could be made playable on the Mac, this could attract more potential gamers to the platform and change the value proposition for the game studios in developing for or porting to the Mac.
Is this an issue which needs to be solved? That would have to be addressed by the board at Apple. Would the availability of more high quality games for the Mac attract people to the platform who otherwise would have bought or built a Windows gaming PC? Would the potential increase in revenue be significant enough to warrant the costs involved in addressing the problem? Is there any guarantee that any effort made to solve the problem would even be successful? I'd be surprised if this hasn't been discussed before on the Apple campus, and I think the answer was probably no.
The issue is simply the availability of native titles, and that all comes down to risk vs potential reward on the part of the game studios. For better or worse, the Mac uses a different system architecture and graphics API to Windows or most Linux machines. The process of porting a AAA game that has been written using Vulkan/Direct X API calls and compiled for x86-64 to Metal and AArch64 is not trivial, and would represent a significant risk for the studio in terms of man hours needed. Out of all PCs in circulation, Macs represent a relatively small subset and of that relatively small subset an even smaller subset represent those who play games regularly, and an even smaller subset of that are people who might be interested in a particular title. The risk of a game failing to sell well enough to cover the extra labour cost of the Mac version is just too high for the majority of game studios to swallow.
How can this issue be solved? That's a tough one. The issue is self sustaining in that the fewer games there are for Mac, the more PC gamers are likely to choose x86-64 and Windows, so the fewer games there will be for Mac. I would look to the Linux community for the potential solution. The progress made recently in the compatibility layers for Linux has made that a far more viable gaming platform than ever before - look at Proton in Steam. Easy to use, no complex setup, a large number of games are supported and with a minimal performance penalty. I think something like that for the Apple Silicon Mac would be a great help. The problem is that Proton doesn't need to do any emulation so near-native speeds are possible. Anything similar for the Mac would need to emulate, and that will inevitably introduce a performance penalty. Crossover is a thing and is along the right lines, but game support is still too patchy. If the majority of PC titles could be made playable on the Mac, this could attract more potential gamers to the platform and change the value proposition for the game studios in developing for or porting to the Mac.
Is this an issue which needs to be solved? That would have to be addressed by the board at Apple. Would the availability of more high quality games for the Mac attract people to the platform who otherwise would have bought or built a Windows gaming PC? Would the potential increase in revenue be significant enough to warrant the costs involved in addressing the problem? Is there any guarantee that any effort made to solve the problem would even be successful? I'd be surprised if this hasn't been discussed before on the Apple campus, and I think the answer was probably no.
The MacOS remains my favorite OS, yet…
If you look at it from a business standpoint, Apple prides itself on it’s graphics capabilities, I know there are graphic related businesses who used to run Macs, but honestly, I have no clue how big Macs are in the the Graphic design department these days.
As someone who recently became interested in graphic design via the Unreal Engine, it became painfully reinforced, that my $2000 2016 13” MBP as compared to my $1600 PC (first built in 2013 and upgraded since then) with it’s 4k 33” monitor, and 2070 graphic card, the former is not really suited for this endeavor.
So here is the question, should I buy a $6k Mac Pro to do graphic design? Now I realize in the case of a studio where top notch industry leading equipment would be the norm, think Pixar, are they using Macs? Interestingly in game development the market consists of console and PC as the target platform. How about Macs there?
My historical perspective is that Macs give the user less hassles than Windows. This is based on my personal experience with Windows boxes which I have owned for almost 3 decades, along with Macs (purchased my first Mac about 1993).
And VR, Apple is pushing VR on it’s platform, but are there any VR games being created with Mac in mind? As just an average customer, now that I am delving into graphic arts, my relatively inexpensive home built PC is giving me much more bang for the buck, and in a way, that makes me sad.
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Consoles are great. I’ve been a console gamer most of my life and prefer controllers over mouse and keyboard, but PC gaming is far more powerful and versatile if you like modding games. Consoles are tightly controlled, so modding is basically non-existent on them.
Just to give some perspective, my ****** $500 gaming laptop from 2017 with a GTX 940MX is the only gaming PC I’ve had, and it easily outperformed my PS3 in playing PS3-era games (ex. Dragon Age 2 with 70+ mods.) It easily outperformed my 2017 iMac playing Stardew Valley and modded Minecraft—both of which can run on a potato, yet struggled on the iMac.
My M1 MBA seems to be able to match that of my PS4 or gaming laptop playing SV or Minecraft, but what’s the point if there’s so few compatible games?
Tbh, I barely even play on my gaming laptop because it’s a hassle, and I want an actual good gaming PC before I dive back into it. It’s gonna take a while before I can afford to shell out for a PC with at least an RTX 3060Ti or better. I’d like a PS5 as well, but it’s still very difficult to find them at retail price.
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This is what intrigues me. Apple has such a lackluster history with gaming and supporting developers. This needs to radically change before the launch of the VR headset, lest it becomes an expensive paperweight. It's very ambitious to skip past traditional on-screen games while simultaneously trying to build support for VR. Ultimately, Apple needs to start cutting checks and buying up game studios.
The problem with solutions like Proton however is that they diminish the incentive to develop native games. Why bother investing resources into making a game better on Linux/Mac if you can just develop for Windows and push the responsibly for game compatibility onto the maintainer of the system emulation layer?
By the way, Proton already exists for Mac, it's called Crossover. It can run quite a lot of games, including 32-bit titles. There are videos on YouTube of people playing Crysis and GTA V on M1 Macs.
Yeah on the Mac Proton invoke a double translation (DX->VK -> Metal) and that cannot be good for performance.
Yeah, the purpose of the thread got pretty obvious after only a few posts:
"repeat after me and make it a mantra.
……because Apple can‘t do AAA gaming."
A lot of valid points but here's some other things to think about:
- When most people think 'Mac' they think MacBooks and even in the Windows world gaming laptops are niche products being expensive, loud, and terrible battery life. So in the true sense of a laptop you can rule out almost 90-95% of the market from gaming.
- That said if Apple does explore AAA gaming it would come from one of their desktop machines and most likely in the form of a Pro model. However, I would bet that consumers owning a desktop Mac/iMac are less than those owning a MacBook. If that's true then the majority of Mac users have laptops which take me back to point 1.
- Apple is trying with Apple Arcade but I would bet the AppleTV will be their 'console' before they go after AAA games via MacOS. I wouldn't be surprised to see exclusive games coming soon such as the Castlevania one. There's even some games you can't play on MacOS in the Apple Acrade that can be played on all their other platforms.
That said, think of Apple as Nintendo. A walled garden who doesn't feel they need to prove anything to anyone and while they make up the smaller end of the market they are content with pumping out similar software/hardware year after year that's hopefully optimized. Lastly, I would argue that the gamer market may not be as lucrative with money. When talking PC it's often times younger folks who are on budgets and if you are someone who can afford a $5K Mac you probably have another platform to game on. Apple simply doesn't give a damn about a teenage kid trying to play Call of Duty at 120fps with a $100 budget.
- When most people think 'Mac' they think MacBooks and even in the Windows world gaming laptops are niche products being expensive, loud, and terrible battery life. So in the true sense of a laptop you can rule out almost 90-95% of the market from gaming.
- That said if Apple does explore AAA gaming it would come from one of their desktop machines and most likely in the form of a Pro model. However, I would bet that consumers owning a desktop Mac/iMac are less than those owning a MacBook. If that's true then the majority of Mac users have laptops which take me back to point 1.
- Apple is trying with Apple Arcade but I would bet the AppleTV will be their 'console' before they go after AAA games via MacOS. I wouldn't be surprised to see exclusive games coming soon such as the Castlevania one. There's even some games you can't play on MacOS in the Apple Acrade that can be played on all their other platforms.
That said, think of Apple as Nintendo. A walled garden who doesn't feel they need to prove anything to anyone and while they make up the smaller end of the market they are content with pumping out similar software/hardware year after year that's hopefully optimized. Lastly, I would argue that the gamer market may not be as lucrative with money. When talking PC it's often times younger folks who are on budgets and if you are someone who can afford a $5K Mac you probably have another platform to game on. Apple simply doesn't give a damn about a teenage kid trying to play Call of Duty at 120fps with a $100 budget.
Maybe this is pointed at some high end design architectural or engineering visualization, I just don’t know how big Macs are in high end graphic design these days and I’m too lazy to look it up.
It never is, I come for giggles mostly and reading the rants...
No one actually breaks down:
- Cost of servicing a gaming customer
- Size of market and revenue
- Marketing to the gaming industry
- Affects on the Apple brand to get into AAA
- Are AAA games even worth it $ vs. Arcade/family friendly stuff
I agree games only yes, but graphic design no. That is a huge market ranging from games to architecture, to engineering. Now maybe things have changed in the last 5 years with these super expensive video cards, and maybe they will become more reasonable once again, but for the $1100 I spent in 2013 for my home built PC, I have much more capabilities than any consol, more game options, more mod choices, graphic design, and more freedom, along with a keyboard and mouse which I prefer over a console controller.
M1 Macs do appear to be selling well, but it could be that they were fated to be released during an unexpectedly large demand for mobile systems. We may be continuing to see a little of that and I’m expecting it to settle down back to the 15-20 million units a year over the long term. Given that, it would very likely take longer than three years… the AS Macs will ABSOLUTELY be the lions share of Macs purchased (because non-AS ones won’t be sold) but it’s still going to be the smaller part of the entire macOS userbase for awhile longer.
I remember a time in my early Mac days where I fought the good fight and wanted such a stellar OS and hardware, to kick the **** out of windows, an abomination.
At one point I had a MacPro (or what it was called in the mid 90s), an engineering marvel, loved it, but was forced to acknowledge that my very cheap PC generated twice the frame rates in Unreal Tournament with identical GPUs. ? Yes, blame the game development environment, but the reality was based on the reality, Macs were not the best for gaming.- What do you mean by servicing
- Would Apple have the numbers for the size of the gaming market on the Mac?
- Money talks
- Positive knock on effect
- Well that depends on the game, no?
- Every customer has a cost value, gamers tend to be fairly more expensive than others ROI wise.
- Yes and possibly why they were not interested to get into it, my hypothesis.
- see above.
- Possible or maybe it's a direction they don't want to go even if positive.
- True but generally the good stuff requires the most work which Apple hasn't been willing to do for whatever reason.
The right tool for the right job. High-end graphics requires some serious hardware... hardware funneled to a specific use. People can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that a gaming PC is built with the sole end use of gaming in mind. It's not the fact that you put X graphics card in it, it's the fact that every little nuance of the setup is optimized purely for gaming. A gaming rig is not optimized for high-end graphics, so again, right tool for the right job.
Think about it people. Why do consoles even exist? If any old computer is capable of doing the same thing (or so you would like to think), why is there even a market for such a niche piece of hardware? Right tool for the right job.
You've smacked this dead horse so many times that even the ASPCA no longer pays attention. It hasn't been a horse for quite some time now. Time to "get woke" and buy yourself a gaming PC, and never have this discussion again... because it is the literal definition of insanity.
Not speaking directly to Huntn, he just sparked my response. The OP is the one who needs to get a grip. The M1 chip is not the magically little device you have all been waiting for... for gaming. It's not what it was designed for. Not that you can't try an force it to do it... happy accidents and all... but the reality is, without anyone actually making games for the Mac platform, there is no market whatsoever to speak of. None. So instead of shouting at the top of your lungs that Apple has failed you... it's not Apple you should be yelling at... it's the game developers. You want the next Diablo game on the Mac? Well good luck with that. You're lucky if they continue to support what few titles they have left on the Mac.
I'm not sure you can make the judgement that they "can't do it" when there's absolutely no evidence that they have tried to do it, or that they even want to do it.
Pretty much. Without developers WANTING to make the effort, there’s really no way Apple ends up with a growing and thriving gaming market on the Mac. Buying a game company to produce an exclusive game for the smallest platform of all is a money losing situation right from the outset.
The gaming-capable number likely is much larger than 45 million unless we exclude the current number 1 game in sales, Minecraft. What people are referring to as AAA gaming WISHES they could sell in the numbers that Minecraft does.
They should really change the laptop’s name to MacMovies… because people love movies way more than books anyway.