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Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]

M

Mikael H

macrumors 6502a
Sep 3, 2014
864
539
Yskas said:
So I bought a Mac mini M1, lovely hardware, extremely power efficient etc, but my God, the overall gaming support on this platform is depressing. It's like being in the stone age compared to platforms like Windows and Linux.

The closest you can get to actual proper gaming support is some random janky third party paid-for Lutris clone.

Has gaming been completely dumped as a priority by Apple or something?

Sorry for the rant, just wanted to get it out of my system, what the hell, man...
Click to expand...
Unfortunately true. If you want to play games on the Mx series of Macs (and really anything running macOS Catalina or later) your selection of non-Apple Arcade games is extremely thin.
There seems to be a flicker of light in the end of the tunnel: Games on the Mac was a major talking point during this year's WWDC, and we're seeing some movement on the game engine front, so hopefully that means we'll see major studios porting some stuff to Apple Silicon within the next few years - but until then your best bet for gaming is to have a game console or a separate computer running Linux or Windows on regular x86-64 gear.
 
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AxiomaticRubric

AxiomaticRubric

macrumors 6502a
Sep 24, 2010
945
1,154
On Mars, Praising the Omnissiah
Yskas said:
Has gaming been completely dumped as a priority by Apple or something?
Click to expand...

Gaming has never been a priority for Apple. It's steadily improving but Mac users are such a niche market, it doesn't make much sense for AAA studios to invest much effort into the platform.

The games you will find on the Mac are mostly from smaller developers like Supergiant. It has always been like this, even in the 80's and 90's.

The last Apple Keynote had a guest from Capcom showing off the latest Resident Evil game running on a Mac. He was praising the raw power of the Mac Studio and how well the game scales between devices (iPad, MacBook Pro, iMac, etc.). So it's somewhat encouraging that at least one major developer is taking the Apple ecosystem and Metal 2 seriously.
 
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Colstan

Colstan

macrumors 6502
Jul 30, 2020
330
711
MisterSavage said:
As a gamer it's really frustrating. Everyone once in a while when the Epic Games Store has their weekly freebie the Mac will be a supported platform for that game but it doesn't feel often.
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If you like RPGs, simulation, or strategy titles, then those are plentiful on the Mac. 90% of the games that I play are RPGs, and every single one that I am interested in has a Mac version. I have a backlog of them because I don't have time to play them all. In that specific genre, the Mac and PC are essentially at parity.

That being said, most of the folks who are unhappy with games on the Mac want to play FPS titles, survival horror, etc. According to former Opteron architect, Cliff Maier, who knows many folks at Apple, the company is working to improve the situation, but developers are resistant. So, he says that if they aren't successful, they might "do it themselves". Make of that what you will.
 
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Unami

Unami

macrumors 65816
Jul 27, 2010
1,446
1,725
Austria
There's always cloud-gaming like google stadia, xbox live or you can stream from a playstation. That's the future anyways.

Nowadays, it's probably also possible to play some iOS games on Macs with apple CPUs. Apart from that, most developers won't care about an OS with <6% market share. Can't blame them for that.
 
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M

MauiPa

macrumors 68040
Apr 18, 2018
3,438
5,084
totally mindblowing that anyone would not know that no one has bought a Mac for gaming in like forever. But it still makes a good thread to complain about something. Personally, gaming is a terrible time waster, life is short, go out and live it!
 
Colstan

Colstan

macrumors 6502
Jul 30, 2020
330
711
Unami said:
There's always cloud-gaming like google stadia, xbox live or you can stream from a playstation. That's the future anyways.
Click to expand...
That would be a decent solution, if you don't have to deal with data caps, or don't mind paying the extra for unlimited data with your ISP. GeForce Now eats up a lot of bandwidth, and I'm not giving Comcast another piece of eight.
 
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Shirasaki

Shirasaki

macrumors P6
May 16, 2015
16,263
11,764
I see you first time notice how horrible Mac gaming experience is. Maybe this M1 Mac is your first one?

I thought everyone on this forum know Mac can’t game, and one thing interesting is Steve Jobs back then hated Mac playing games, despite many popular games being released on Apple ][.
 
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Mr. Dee

Mr. Dee

macrumors 603
Dec 4, 2003
5,990
12,840
Jamaica
For a platform such as the Mac that is way more successful on the desktop than Linux and still lacks the gaming support available on Windows, but still maintains popularity; it only proves how overrated games are to begin with.
 
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samwa3

samwa3

macrumors regular
Dec 5, 2018
170
133
Have 3k hours in CSGO and 1k in FF14 (xivmac.com for decent performance). Don't even care about other games because these two games together are better than anything that'll ever come out. It's all downhill anyway with the games industry.
 
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H

Homy

macrumors 68030
Jan 14, 2006
2,509
2,460
Sweden
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TheSynchronizer

TheSynchronizer

macrumors 6502
Dec 2, 2014
443
729
Although the PC gaming on mac situation is nothing new and has been this way ever since my first mac, it's still disappointing to see iOS game developers purposefully opt their apps out of the mac app store, even when they'd work perfectly well with a controller hooked up. For example, regular PC Apex Legends is unavailable on mac, but the iOS version would work perfectly fine on mac with a controller (it's already been proven with sideloading workarounds).
 
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James_C

James_C

macrumors 68030
Sep 13, 2002
2,847
1,897
Bristol, UK
Yskas said:
Yes the jank is unacceptable for a commercial product, I'm going to Google for ARM based Pop OS or Ubuntu, I'll switch in a heartbeat.

(EXTREMELY WELL PAID) Apple OS team dropping the ball on M1, my God.
Click to expand...

Apple Macs since Mac OS have never been a good option for gamers, even in the days of Intel CPU's. The fact that many AAA Games are not written for Mac OS is primarily down to the game developers, nothing really to do with Apples OS team dropping the ball. Blizzard is one of the few companies that do develop AAA games for the Mac.

Contrary to Apple dropping the ball, I think they have done an incredible job with Rosetta 2 to allow Intel Apps to run at near native speed on an Arm processor.

With the new Apple Silicon Macs, and the metal framework, Apple is providing decent API's and Hardware that could be used for Games. It's up to the developers not Apple to write for the platform. As the majority of gamers have either Consoles or PC's, these are platforms that they tend to write games for.

There are alternative OS that can run on Apple Silicon, but many of them are still missing support for critical drivers. limited GPU, WiFi and audio support.
 
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TheSynchronizer

TheSynchronizer

macrumors 6502
Dec 2, 2014
443
729
Also for what it's worth, Steam lists around 9.4k macOS supported titles (with some of them 32bit only and not working past Catalina), and Epic has 7 pages of mac compatible games. Couple that with some popular esports titles, some staples like Minecraft, and the amazing Apple Arcade, and you can definitely get 'some' gaming done on a mac.

Granted, game availability right now is very limited in the grand scheme of things, but it can only get better as time goes on, right? ..Right?
 
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MisterSavage

MisterSavage

macrumors 601
Nov 10, 2018
4,853
5,751
AxiomaticRubric said:
The last Apple Keynote had a guest from Capcom showing off the latest Resident Evil game running on a Mac. He was praisimg the raw power of the Mac Studio and how well the game scales between devices (iPad, MacBook Pro, iMac, etc.). So it's somewhat encouraging that at least one major developer is taking the Apple ecosystem and Metal 2 seriously.
Click to expand...
That was a pleasant surprise to see them devote that much time in the presentation to an RE game.
 
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H

Homy

macrumors 68030
Jan 14, 2006
2,509
2,460
Sweden
TheSynchronizer said:
Also for what it's worth, Steam lists around 9.4k macOS supported titles (with some of them 32bit only and not working past Catalina), and Epic has 7 pages of mac compatible games. Couple that with some popular esports titles, some staples like Minecraft, and the amazing Apple Arcade, and you can definitely get 'some' gaming done on a mac.

Granted, game availability right now is very limited in the grand scheme of things, but it can only get better as time goes on, right? ..Right?
Click to expand...

More like a total of 35,825 and 1,500 upcoming!
 
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T

teh_hunterer

macrumors 65816
Jul 1, 2021
1,231
1,672
I think we may slowly be entering a new era for gaming on the Mac and non-Windows platforms. We've got a shift in the industry towards ARM, which means games are eventually going to support ARM as well as x86. And we know Microsoft is hopeless, and will drop the ball with Windows on ARM, meaning we're eventually going to hit a point where if games are going to run on ARM, they're going to have to support non-Windows platforms.

If games are going to support non-Windows platforms, that means the dominance of DirectX and Windows in general is going to fade.

* Apple and Nintendo pushing the shift towards ARM
* It's only a matter of time until NVIDIA starts making ARM SoCs for gaming PCs
* Valve continuing to push to get PC games to run on non-Windows platforms and APIs

If Apple pushes gaming harder for the Mac (they seem to be doing this, but never, ever make a purchase that relies on Apple doing anything gaming related with the Mac), the combination of every single new Mac shipping with a competent CPU/GPU, and the end of Windows dominance may just be a brave new era for gaming.

But for now, and the foreseeable future, gaming on the Mac absolutely sucks. Unless you play Minecraft or WoW.
 
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