Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]

[StellarVixen]

If you want games for Mac, you should start writing games for Mac.

Developers won't write games for Mac because Mac is still niche platform, but that might change soon. Introduction of No Man's Sky and Resident Evil is interesting. Still, there is a long way to go.

Also, if Mac wants to be serious gaming platform games for Mac have to be released on the same day as when they are released on Windows. Why would I wait months, even years for game to be released on Mac when I can play it on Windows and consoles today?

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Developers won't write games for Mac because Mac is still niche platform, but that might change soon.

That's really not the case. The Mac has a market share that is ok-ish, it's just that many of these Macs are used in work environments. So let's say we're looking at 15% market share, maybe 20% in the future (let's be optimistic). But out of these 20% only a small fraction would be used for gaming and that's what makes gaming on Macs so unattractive. And while most Windows machines are used for work as well, the share of gamers in this Windows market is much larger than the share of gamers when it comes to Macs.

You can easily see this in support forums, gaming events, conferences, etc. Those who are passionate about games will always stick to a PC with Windows machine, because you can tweak it to hell, you can replace single components (RAM, GPU) and of course you can add that much needed RGB lighting to the case.

 

[orionquest]

Further gaming news, Steam has a Next Fest running this week

Steam Next Fest: October 2023 Edition - Coming Soon

A celebration of upcoming games featuring demos, livestreams and more

store.steampowered.com

Promoting up coming title releases, there are a couple of games for Mac. Not sure if they are AAA titles but there are games committed to a Mac release.

 

[diamond.g]

Further gaming news, Steam has a Next Fest running this week

Steam Next Fest: October 2023 Edition - Coming Soon

A celebration of upcoming games featuring demos, livestreams and more

store.steampowered.com

Promoting up coming title releases, there are a couple of games for Mac. Not sure if they are AAA titles but there are games committed to a Mac release.

Some 200+ upcoming games listed with macOS support.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Further gaming news, Steam has a Next Fest running this week
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nextfest
Promoting up coming title releases, there are a couple of games for Mac. Not sure if they are AAA titles but there are games committed to a Mac release.

Good god, that list seems endless. After a while of scrolling, I stopped hitting “show more”. It’s the usual quickly made junk games to cash in a little from poor and naive souls. The only good title I found was “Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed”. I don’t really know if that’s new or not, but I remember playing the original game (on Xbox?) and it was fun. Wouldn’t mind grabbing that. The rest, nope, hard pass.

While scrolling, looking at images and reading titles, this one resulted in a big “WTF?!?” for me: https://store.steampowered.com/app/...n_Days_in_Countryside_and_Memories_of_Summer/

Looks like they let every crap on Steam these days. 🤷‍♂️

 

[diamond.g]

Good god, that list seems endless. After a while of scrolling, I stopped hitting “show more”. It’s the usual quickly made junk games to cash in a little from poor and naive souls. The only good title I found was “Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed”. I don’t really know if that’s new or not, but I remember playing the original game (on Xbox?) and it was fun. Wouldn’t mind grabbing that. The rest, nope, hard pass.

While scrolling, looking at images and reading titles, this one resulted in a big “WTF?!?” for me: https://store.steampowered.com/app/...n_Days_in_Countryside_and_Memories_of_Summer/

Looks like they let every crap on Steam these days. 🤷‍♂️

That title looks NSFW, lol.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

I found another new title on Steam that looks interesting (but wasn’t in that list?!?): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1202130/Starship_Troopers_Terran_Command/

Old school, looks cheap, but overall it caught my attention. I would like to know more! (See what I did there? 😂)

 

[JMacHack]

Looks like they let every crap on Steam these days. 🤷‍♂️

Valve doesn’t do QC because that would require effort. It’s one of the reasons I fell out of love with the company.

You don’t know the half of the garbage they let on the store.

That title looks NSFW, lol.

Oh boy, go digging through steam sometime.

 

[mi7chy]

Oh boy, go digging through steam sometime.

How is that different from wondering into the adult section when it's clearly marked at a bookstore then complaining about it? Stay out of the adult section if you don't like it while leaving the option there for people who do.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

You don’t know the half of the garbage they let on the store.

No, I really don’t. I guess I really don’t want to.
I look at the Top10, maybe Top20 sometimes and otherwise search for titles specifically. I guess I’ll have to keep doing that.

How is that different from wondering into the adult section when it's clearly marked at a bookstore then complaining about it? Stay out of the adult section if you don't like it while leaving the option there for people who do.

So you’re gonna review it for us then?
I wouldn’t classify it as adult content. It’s one of these Japanese games for 12 year olds that has the typical look and feel. We’ve seen these games for ages, I was just really surprised to see it on Steam. Back in the days (late 80s, early 90s) we had Leisure Suit Larry from Sierra, the difference was the story and puzzles to solve it.

 

[mi7chy]

So you’re gonna review it for us then?

I'm in the studio dance scene so don't really care for it but not against it for people who do. Steam does a good job of filtering that so it doesn't pop up by accident.

 

[JMacHack]

How is that different from wondering into the adult section when it's clearly marked at a bookstore then complaining about it? Stay out of the adult section if you don't like it while leaving the option there for people who do.

I’m not sure where you read anything like that in my post but that makes me think of another grievance I have with steam and valve.

They Threaten to remove VNs from the store if the creator or publisher even mentions the availability of uncrnsor patches.

Ok fine whatever, keep things family friendly.

But then allow other games to have uncensored genatalia completely arbitrarily.

In any case, it’s inarguable that Valve doesn’t do any sort of quality control.

No, I really don’t. I guess I really don’t want to.
I look at the Top10, maybe Top20 sometimes and otherwise search for titles specifically. I guess I’ll have to keep doing that.

Save 50% on Hitler Loves Anime on Steam

Adolf Hitler satisfies anime girls with punches and dildo

store.steampowered.com

Save 50% on Hitler Hates Anime on Steam

Take Adolf Hitler under your control and with the power of mighty dildo destroy all naughty anime girls!

store.steampowered.com

Totally actual games that people put effort into and not deliberate trash.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Oops, never replied to this...

Save 50% on Hitler Loves Anime on Steam

Adolf Hitler satisfies anime girls with punches and dildo

store.steampowered.com

Save 50% on Hitler Hates Anime on Steam

Take Adolf Hitler under your control and with the power of mighty dildo destroy all naughty anime girls!

store.steampowered.com

Totally actual games that people put effort into and not deliberate trash.

Well, I won't put anything into it. I do wonder though how much if any money do people make of this stuff...


Back to real games. Starship Troopers is really fun, very old school though as I said before. I'll have to dig deeper eventually.

 

[Nugat Trailers]

In fairness, expecting AAA titles at NextFest for Mac is optimistic, given it's focused on indies.

And while there have been a number of quite solid titles that have received press and coverage, such as Patrick's Parabox from last year... there's also... um...

Theere's quite a few others as well.

 

[JMacHack]

Well, I won't put anything into it. I do wonder though how much if any money do people make of this stuff...

Zero dollar budget I’d bet. My point is that Steam has no QC.

 

[Nugat Trailers]

Mm. For most companies, getting a response is measured in days or weeks.

For Valve, it's months and years, even for things like asset flippers. It's little surprise that most outlets that try to contact Valve usually finish articles with 'We reached out to Valve for comment, but received no response'.

 

[orionquest]

FYI

Steam Store

Steam is the ultimate destination for playing, discussing, and creating games.

store.steampowered.com

Steam sale is now on. Go on grab you mac games.

I'd like to indulge but still working on my backlog.

 

[jeanlain]

I had hopped that Apple GPUs would perform well on the latest Feral game (Total war Warhammer 3, which requires Apple Silicon), but halas, they don't.

In what situations do M1(X) GPUs perform as advertised by Apple? I mean beside GFXBench Aztec high...

 

[leman]

I had hopped that Apple GPUs would perform well on the latest Feral game (Total war Warhammer 3, which requires Apple Silicon), but halas, they don't.

Unfortunately, that port is very disappointing performance-wise. The frame rate should be roughly twice as high. I have refunded the game in the hope that Feral will improve the quality of the software.

In what situations do M1(X) GPUs perform as advertised by Apple? I mean beside GFXBench Aztec high...

Depends on the software quality and whether the GPU is utilised effectively. The base performance characteristics are pretty much as Apple advertised. I had no issues hitting 2.5TFLOPs of compute throughput on the base and around 10TFLOPs on M1 Max. Probably the only game right now that makes the proper use of the GPU capabilities is BG3, but I haven't tried it out in a while so I don't know what the current state of affairs is.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

I had hopped that Apple GPUs would perform well on the latest Feral game (Total war Warhammer 3, which requires Apple Silicon), but halas, they don't.

What did you expect? Feral is known to do quick & dirty ports to cash in. To be fair most non-in-house studios do it this way. The engine itself is pretty bad to begin with, but I wouldn't say it's terrible. The Ultra performance, while still falling short of a 3090 is ok. The bigger question is if someone is willing to buy a almost $6k computer for games vs. a PC less than half the price but double the performance. And before anyone starts crying "but the 3090 isn't available and if I want one now I have to pay a gazillion $ for it!!!11!"... the M1 Ultra isn't available either for another 3 months or so and if I want one off ebay or somewhere else today, then I have to pay a gazillion $ as well.

On the other hand, isn't the question if you're happy with the game performance? I mean if it works for you, then why bother that a Windows version has better performance? As long as it's not unplayable and you're happy, everything is fine. But since we haven't seen a game with super realistic graphics (should we call it photo realistic?) on the Mac yet, the jury is still out on that.

In what situations do M1(X) GPUs perform as advertised by Apple? I mean beside GFXBench Aztec high...

Video work. They're fantastic for Final Cut or similar tasks. The rest, not so much. They perform ok-ish. One can always blame bad ports or bad integration/optimization of frameworks, but in the end, that's real works performance. This is a little shocking: https://sebastianraschka.com/blog/2022/pytorch-m1-gpu.html, where 5 year old Nvidia GPUs still run circles around M1 Ultra, while Apple is proud of the support introduced to the framework. That's why I always recommend to buy the right tool for the job. For the creative people in the video, audio and photo industry, these Macs are fantastic.

 

[jeanlain]

What did you expect? Feral is known to do quick & dirty ports to cash in.

Have you played many Feral games?
I have, and I can confirm that their ports are of outstanding quality. I have measured performance, compared it against Windows versions, and experienced the stability of their games. They come with expansive controller support, and integration with the OS is better than every othe company.

Be careful about your offhand comments here, or I won't take you seriously much longer.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Have you played many Feral games?

Define many. Maybe around 25 give or take to various degrees, I’d have to check. There’s little they do in term of true platform optimization, they usually do simple ports starting from the lowest common denominator which is really an easy thing to do. Going the extra mile is the part that’s difficult. To their advantage, they usually have titles that don’t look too good to begin with, which isn’t their fault, but makes things much easier cashing in.

Be careful about your offhand comments here, or I won't take you seriously much longer.

By all means, be my guest. 🤷‍♂️ I’m not here to win some type of contest and honestly don’t care. If you don’t agree, move along… these are not the droids you’re looking for.

 

[l0stl0rd]

What did you expect? Feral is known to do quick & dirty ports to cash in. To be fair most non-in-house studios do it this way. The engine itself is pretty bad to begin with, but I wouldn't say it's terrible. The Ultra performance, while still falling short of a 3090 is ok. The bigger question is if someone is willing to buy a almost $6k computer for games vs. a PC less than half the price but double the performance. And before anyone starts crying "but the 3090 isn't available and if I want one now I have to pay a gazillion $ for it!!!11!"... the M1 Ultra isn't available either for another 3 months or so and if I want one off ebay or somewhere else today, then I have to pay a gazillion $ as well.

On the other hand, isn't the question if you're happy with the game performance? I mean if it works for you, then why bother that a Windows version has better performance? As long as it's not unplayable and you're happy, everything is fine. But since we haven't seen a game with super realistic graphics (should we call it photo realistic?) on the Mac yet, the jury is still out on that.

Video work. They're fantastic for Final Cut or similar tasks. The rest, not so much. They perform ok-ish. One can always blame bad ports or bad integration/optimization of frameworks, but in the end, that's real works performance. This is a little shocking: https://sebastianraschka.com/blog/2022/pytorch-m1-gpu.html, where 5 year old Nvidia GPUs still run circles around M1 Ultra, while Apple is proud of the support introduced to the framework. That's why I always recommend to buy the right tool for the job. For the creative people in the video, audio and photo industry, these Macs are fantastic.

Actually GPUs did come down in price and are available quite a bit. I ordered a 3080 ti a few days ago at MSRP

 

[leman]

Have you played many Feral games?
I have, and I can confirm that their ports are of outstanding quality. I have measured performance, compared it against Windows versions, and experienced the stability of their games. They come with expansive controller support, and integration with the OS is better than every othe company.

Be careful about your offhand comments here, or I won't take you seriously much longer.

I have nothing against Feral, they do good work and have good customer support, but my experience with their games has been a hit and miss. Not really their fault, they have to work with crappy upstream code and ridiculous time constraints, but the experience for the end customer is not optimal.

Warhammer 3 port in particular is disappointing. I barely got 40fps on high full HD settings with my M1 Max, which is considerably less than Windows configs with comparable GPUs are getting.

 

[diamond.g]

I have nothing against Feral, they do good work and have good customer support, but my experience with their games has been a hit and miss. Not really their fault, they have to work with crappy upstream code and ridiculous time constraints, but the experience for the end customer is not optimal.

Warhammer 3 port in particular is disappointing. I barely got 40fps on high full HD settings with my M1 Max, which is considerably less than Windows configs with comparable GPUs are getting.

To be fair Warhammer 3 doesn't run well on AMD hardware either.