Hmmm, I don’t think I’d waste time on Nintendo or Sony. Those games produced are exclusives for their own platforms. And, ZeniMax Media is now effectively Microsoft.
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Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]
- Thread starter Admiralbison
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Yeah, this and Minecraft would be an absolute “gimmie” for the respective publishers. That THEY are not even making the effort? Telling.
Yeah, even if a publisher says, “The market isn’t large enough, there’s not enough money in it for us,” there would still be folks here posting “BUT THE CURRENT MACS ARE SO POWERFUL, THO!” or “It’s probably REALLY because Apple told them not to as Apple looks down on games.”
and it’s same as it ever was
well that would be the whole point of getting macrumours to try and get interviews with the game publishers so they can ask the hard questions in the hope of getting a more open response from them because it is always due to the lack of responses from the game publishers as to why the debate about mac gaming rumbles on and on.Yeah, even if a publisher says, “The market isn’t large enough, there’s not enough money in it for us,” there would still be folks here posting “BUT THE CURRENT MACS ARE SO POWERFUL, THO!” or “It’s probably REALLY because Apple told them not to as Apple looks down on games.”
and it’s same as it ever was
If the games publisher does not think it's worthwhile producing games for mac computers because their data analysis says gaming on mac computers is not popular amongst it's owners then get them to say so. If they are worried they will not sell enough games to break even or even make a profit because the mac community for the whole does not show a large interest in playing games on their mac computer, then get them to say so. In the past they may have got away with using the excuse that mac computer hardware was not upto the task for running AAA games but that is not true for today. The hardware in today's mac computer is well upto the task of handling AAA games, it just needs someone to write them for the computer.
If the reporter asks the questions and the games publisher cops out of giving a proper and direct answer, at least macrumours could say 'hey, we asked the hard questions but the publishers were not prepared to give us a straight answer' and when macrumours publishes the article, how bad do you think it's going to look when people read that the game publishers avoided answering questions that were very specific to understanding why they wont produce their AAA games for the mac computers.
I'm betting we'll get a lot of this:
I'm holding out any hope for at least 2-3 years from the reveal of m1. By then, we'll be at m2(3?), and Apple will have delivered an enormous number of gaming-capable machines.
What's more, with Apple's license of Imagination Technologies IP, we might even see some dedicated ray tracing hardware coming up in future M-series SoCs (I just received an email from Imagination re: their new mobile RT accelerated mobile GPU IP this morning, see here: https://www.imaginationtech.com/graphics-processors/architecture/powervr-photon-architecture/).
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Looks like they are going the same route nvidia went. AMD is looking like the odd man out here (again).
I wouldn’t consider it a hard question, though. Any one of their first level media folks already have the answer canned and ready to go because this ‘kind’ of question (in general, “Why do you do that thing I don’t like”) from the public are the ones that are handled best by non-answers. You could tweet this at the companies and get the same answers, no MacRumors required.
In the past, because the Mac has NEVER been a significant portion of the computing market, they would have said the same as they’d say today… -The money isn’t in it ‘for us’.-
How bad do I think it’s going to look when game publishers, who already don’t publish games for the mac, don’t directly and specifically answer questions about why they don’t publish games for the Mac? Not bad at all. What’s the worst that could happen? Some folks, that they don’t make games for, vow to not buy the games… that the publishers are not publishing?
Your persistant break down of point by point of my posts gives me the impression that you are anti-gaming for the mac because all your posts in my opinion are in defence of publishers not producing AAA games for the mac and as such your posts gives the impression that you do not want to hold game publishers to account for their part in lack of gaming for mac computers. Why is that? Do you have some indirect/direct connection to gaming publishers? and thus will not hold them to account?
There was a story on the front page on Wednesday about how Apple had sold 6 million laptops in Q3. That sounds pretty good, but then you see HP sold 14.3 million.
If you were a publisher, would you really care about "Less than half of all HP laptops" if they suddenly became a separate platform that needed months of special work to port and a bunch of extra hoops and testing and customer support from a manufacturer not known for gaming, or would you say "Well, I guess if you want to play our games, buy a Lenovo / MSI / Alienware / ASUS machine"
Compare that to the 1.65 billion total active Apple devices out there in the world, and you'll see why the best hope for AAA gaming on the Mac is via a united Apple platform.
If you were a publisher, would you really care about "Less than half of all HP laptops" if they suddenly became a separate platform that needed months of special work to port and a bunch of extra hoops and testing and customer support from a manufacturer not known for gaming, or would you say "Well, I guess if you want to play our games, buy a Lenovo / MSI / Alienware / ASUS machine"
Compare that to the 1.65 billion total active Apple devices out there in the world, and you'll see why the best hope for AAA gaming on the Mac is via a united Apple platform.
It's more that when you understand that gaming publishers are entities that only care about money, not gaming, gamers or even game developers, you learn that holding them to account isn't possible.
I say that as someone who had an indirect/direct connection to gaming publishers.
Publishers will only come to Mac when there is money to be made.
And there is the sticking point, many in the mac community believe there is money to be made from developing AAA games for mac computers thus there being no reason for game publishers not publish AAA games for mac computers.
As others have pointed out, in the past the responses from gaming publishers have been too vague as to why they will not produce AAA games for mac computers and because of this vagueness I believe the issue of gaming on mac computers will continue to roll on.
The problem is and i know many will point it out is that gaming publishers will not be totally up front and honest as to why they will not make their AAA games available for mac computers because they are affaid of damaging any furture partnerships/relationships with Apple.
Notice that publishers may ask developers for porting game to a popular platform, even if the developer don’t want that or it’s very hard to do so.
Arkane Studios, one of the best Immersive Sims developers, were asked to port their “The Crossing” project to PS3 as a part of the publishing contract, despite the Engine (Source Engine) was not optimized for PS3 at all. In the end the project was canceled.
Apple treats even the largest game publishers like garbage, while Sony and Microsoft treat them like royalty.
I don't think publishers care too much about offending Apple, they just don't want to offend Apple users.
I haven’t upgraded to a new M1 Mac myself, so maybe I’m a hypocrite, but I am very excited by the potential compatibility between the iOS and macOS App Stores. Has anyone here who has both an iPhone and an M1 Mac been able to report how many iOS games are available on the macOS App Store? I’m particularly curious about RIP, a really fun Doom play-alike shooter game. Are you able to double-click launch it and play it on M1?
There is already Windows 11 on ARM, as Microsoft is pipelining it for their own Surface devices, but they’re not licensing it yet to any third parties.
iOS apps on mac are usually a train wreck from the few I’ve installed. I don’t bother anymore.
I’m no expert, but my impression is that games are developed with target platforms in mind. All of the optimizations go towards the target platform and at best Macs are an afterthought.
If Macs are considered, some sort of work around is employed to get the gaming running on the MacOS, with limitations, either bottlenecks in performance or lacking some features that are not compatible with the MacOS for whatever the reason is.
But this is just it, there should be no limitations or bottlenecks with regards to todays mac computers. Across the board you've got supporters of Apple saying just how good Apple silicon (AS) is. There are loads of review sites doing benchmark tests coming back saying how good AS is against it's rivals Intel and AMD. You now got the same supporters and review sites singing the same tune about the new M1 Max pro. You've even got Apple gleaming at how good it's GPU is.
Theres is tons and tons of antidotal evidence that AS is blowing away the competition so why is it that we are not hearing of any AAA games publisher anouncing a raft of games to be ported to macOS? The hardware is supposedly capable of handling AAA games (depends on who you believe) so it can't be a hardware constraint issue that's stopping them. As shown with PC gaming, people are prepared to spend out thousands of $$$ on gaming machines, therefore pricey computers is not an issue either. Games have been written for macOS in the past so it's very diffcuilt to claim that is macOS coding issues stopping them.
This why in one of my posts I suggested that macrumours speak to the main players in the gaming world to find out why gaming publishers are so reluctant to code their AAA games for mac computers when supposedly with AS, everything is in place for them to do so and if it's for the reasons that many have suggested then for macrumours to get them to admit it, if possible.
No, I’m not anti-gaming for the mac (which would be a VERY specific thing to be anti-), I’m pro-reality. Yes, the processors in the new Apple Silicon Macs are impressive, but no one should be under the impression that JUST being more powerful is all that’s needed. Publishers have DEFINITELY noticed and I wouldn’t doubt that there are folks in those companies that would even like to see the Mac supported. However, the folks who deal with the money have the final say and once they’ve counted their beans and come up with an answer, that’s the end of it.
Publishers are held to account NOW, it’s QUITE public who is and who isn’t supporting the Mac. It’s not something they can hide. The problem is, “holding them accountable” is not going to force the companies to do anything they don’t see as financially viable. No company is going to be “embarrassed” into supporting the Mac, they already don’t and everyone knows it, and they’re not embarrassed to the point of creating games now.
This isn’t directed JUST at you, but at anyone that might be reading news about Apple Silicon going, “Yeah, soon I’ll be able to brag to my PC gaming friends that my LAPTOP can outdo their gaming rigs running the same game AND while on battery!” It won’t be soon, heck, it might not be for awhile (one of the games Apple exhibits as “look at gaming on the Mac” is running under Rosetta… even THAT developer, that has decided to support the Mac has made the financial decision to NOT do so natively for Apple Silicon). But, because there’s no one actively working to make sure it DOESN’T happen, once it becomes financially beneficial, it’ll happen.
(Remember, financial beneficial includes that, if they can make a sale to a Mac user without doing anything because users have figured out a way to run Windows code on Mac well enough to enjoy the game, they won’t make a native version. So, it could be said that these efforts to get non-Mac code running on a Mac actually undermines the goal of eventually seeing fully supported Apple Silicon native games on the Mac.)
From the legal proceedings, Apple appears to have bent over backwards providing support to Epic, and I doubt they were the only ones.
They’re ALREADY offending Apple users… by NOT releasing their game. And what’s their downside for offending Apple users currently? Are all the PC and Console users standing behind Apple users, never buying another game until the company makes a game for the Mac? No. There’s no downside to offending Apple users.
Simultaneously, there are folks that are working hard to do the work of the publisher for free, making patches and install instructions for how to get the game running well on a Mac. So, for currently offending Apple users… the publisher’s still able to sell games to Mac users because someone else has figured out how to make them work.