Apple is using games as advertisements and missing the point

[CloudChief]

Edit/tldr: Apple are showing off years old AAA games to show how powerful their chips are. But gaming is far bigger and varied than AAA games. They need to help cultivate development- AAA and indie. I don’t feel like they are doing that.

Hey guys.

I want to preface this by saying that I love my Mac and want to see more games made available for the platform.

However, I must admit that I laughed when they said a ‘gaming mode’ was being introduced before showing a slide of about 8 old games.

If you keep up to date with video games news and releases, MacOS is still the worst platform (aside from ChromeOS) to use.

We need new game releases. It’s nice that they brought Kojima out but Death Stranding was released years ago on the PS4, then PS5, and finally PC. The ‘hardcore’ crowd have already moved on. Where was RE4 Remake? Diablo IV? Even a high profile indie game like Dredge or Pizza Tower would have been nice. But, then again, those games don’t ‘showcase the power of the Mac.’

I think a big problem is Apple’s approach to third party store fronts like Steam. The recently released RE Village is only available on the Mac App Store. One of the benefits of PC gaming is that your game library works on different hardware, OSs, and is always available. I’m not going to buy anything on the Mac App Store. I might as well buy it on one of my consoles.

However, I do think they could release on both the Mac App Store and Steam. No Man’s Sky was released on Steam (but not the App Store), Psychonauts 2 is available on both, and so is Disco Elysium. I would happily buy those on Steam.

Though, the porting tool they showed off sounds incredibly promising. I think that was the most exciting announcement made during that segment.

Overall, I’m not sold on Apple’s commitment to gaming on the Mac. I’d like to see games released on both Steam and the Mac App Store. But the type of game released is also important. So far, they have trotted out three or four AAA games that mostly seem to serve as advertisements. Are Apple truly committed to building a platform for gaming or are they just using them to show off how impressive Apple Silicon is? They can definitely do both (PlayStation certainly do) but it feels like they are just using them more for advertising at the moment. The industry is more than just AAA. Where is the love for indies?

Interested to hear everyone’s thoughts!

 

[CPmav]

Agree completely, we need some heavy hitters. Diablo 4 would have been perfect!

 

[Slartibart]

you might have missed this…

 

[nathansz]

I only play two “modern” games and play them both in macos: the long dark and cities skylines

The long dark still works in macos but struggles compared to windows (on the same computer)

Cities skylines 2 is being released this year and there will be no macos version

That alone is enough for me to keep my hackintosh running as long as I can instead of buying a studio. I might even upgrade it

 

[dmccloud]

I've already seen posts and video of people using the new DX12 translation stuff to get both Diablo IV and Cyberpunk 2077 running on Macs, and that was less than 48 hours after the new translation layer was announced. As far as Diablo IV getting Mac support from ABK itself, that's not likely to happen as long as Bobby Kotick is still in charge of that side of things. Blizzard has been forced to rush development of new titles to market, which by default means the resources have to be focused on the platforms with the most potential players.

 

[CloudChief]

you might have missed this…

I actually saw this before I made this thread. Sounds promising! I just hope it’s not an all roads lead to the Mac App Store situation.

 

[CloudChief]

I've already seen posts and video of people using the new DX12 translation stuff to get both Diablo IV and Cyberpunk 2077 running on Macs, and that was less than 48 hours after the new translation layer was announced. As far as Diablo IV getting Mac support from ABK itself, that's not likely to happen as long as Bobby Kotick is still in charge of that side of things. Blizzard has been forced to rush development of new titles to market, which by default means the resources have to be focused on the platforms with the most potential players.

That’s awesome and sounds really promising. But, you’re right; I don’t think Diablo IV will be ported. So it still won’t be available to the masses if emulation is the only option. Also might run into issues with anti-cheat like on the Steam Deck did.