You misunderstood me. I listed reasons that make each of PC / console / mobile / Switch the best platform for some kind of gaming.
Oh, I see, I am sorry.
As for the hardware, even if we ignore the GPU, the typical Mac sold today has less RAM and less SSD than the typical console. A 8 GB Mac probably can't run games designed for current-generation consoles, and the lack of storage space means people can't install the games they might want to buy. Once you go above $2k, things will get better, but the most popular models are insufficient for gaming in many ways.
That is probably not going to be too much of a hurdle. Latest generation consoles target high resolutions and most of this memory is taken by high-res assets. A Mac port of a console game will obviously use lower-resolution assets and let's also not forget that Apple Silicon supports advanced texture compression which might help to get the storage requirements even lower.
What are the strengths of Mac that make it more than simply a more expensive but not as good alternative to other platforms? What is the niche where Mac is the best platform?
I don't think that a Mac will make a better gaming platform than a dedicated, supported gaming device. So to answer your question from my perspective: there is none, if you look at gaming at main supported use case.
However, I don't see it as a fundamental problem. It's not about viability of a Mac as a dedicated gaming platform but about viability of Apple Silicon Macs as platforms that support gaming. In different words, the niche is "it's a Mac, but now you can play games on it". To put this into perspective, if you are looking to purchase, say, a laptop for a given $$$, you can usually buy either a productivity-oriented device or a gaming device. Apple's message is that with a new Mac, you don't have to choose. An M1 machine is an excellent productivity device, but it also offers gaming potential of an entry-level gaming laptop, which is sufficient for a large user base. You can't really have that with a Dell XPS or a Lenovo laptop at the same price range.
Will the Mac market share rise among gamers or only among non-gamers? PC gamers are such a small minority among all PC users (there are only about 120 million active Steam accounts) that the overall market share matters little.
I think it's going to be a little of both. There are plenty of Mac users (or users contemplating to get a Mac) who use a PC for gaming (in fact, I probably count as a PC user on steam because I often use bootcamp for games). And then, there are Mac users who don't really play games as their computer can't handle it, but would do so if more games were available.
Developers rarely target platforms without a significant player base, and people rarely choose a platform where their favorite games are not available. Neither party is willing to take the risk and choose Mac if they don't believe Mac is going to be the best platform in some niche.
That's why I think that the process will be gradual. More popular games will be released on the Mac (which is really happening) and more people will realize that they can use their Macs as a primary gaming device, which will in turn lead to more supported games etc. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there will be much fanfare or hype around it, an high-end gaming PCs will always be more "exiting" to the hardcore gamer group and a certain class of high-impact games will always target that high-end hardware.
As you say, fundamentally it's about economics. In the past, the customers on the Mac side with potential interest to game developers were owners of the more expensive MacBook Pros, iMacs 27" and Mac Pros, which is are a very small group. Now, with how well M1 machines are selling, that group is growing rapidly. People like to vote quote that Macs are only <10% of the PC market share, but they often forget that gaming-capable PCs are equally <20% of the market share. Looking at estimates I found on the
net, there were approximately 24 million gaming laptops and 16 million gaming desktops shipped in 2020 (I don't know what their definition of "gaming" PC is, but usually it's something that has a 1050 GTX or better). Apple sold over 20 million Macs the same year, and they will sell more this year. And each one of these Macs will be basically as capable as an entry-level gaming PC. So suddenly the market share of Macs among new gaming-capable PCs goes from negligible to at least 20-30%. This is certainly more interesting to the developers, especially given the fact that supporting macOS does not have to be expensive or complicated — if you plan ahead and don't hire morons.
Second, yesterday rumors spread about the apple gaming console with RDNA 2 (same, as used in PS5 and Xbox), and this was mixed with
Gabe Newell give some strange message.
Why would Apple use RDNA2 if their own GPUs deliver 2x more performance per watt?
Which is for the new Mac Pro GPUs or maybe an updated iMac 27". Don't read too much into it. Supporting Navi2 is a low-hanging fruit and likely required only minimal patches to the previously existing AMD drivers. And of course, no AMD driver exists for the Apple Silicon platform.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...gpus-based-on-the-amd-navi-rdna2-architecture
Rumors about the apple console
spread from China yesterday.
Rumors are rumors. I can also post random stuff, that won't me it more credible. I can see something like Apple TV gaming edition being a thing though. But it definitely won't use AMD graphics. Also, bleh, Ubisoft...
