No thanks. No ‘one to rule them all’, please. I prefer the competition and better and more options for consumers.
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In 3 years, 50% of all computers capable of playing AAA games will be Macs
- Thread starter senttoschool
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AAA games are primarly created for consoles. It is not difficult to port games from the Xbox Series X to the PC, microsoft have made sure of that.
Now to port games from the Xbox Series X to Mac, that is a whole different ball game and I can’t see many developers bothering with it, especially since Apple break compatibility all the time.
Now to port games from the Xbox Series X to Mac, that is a whole different ball game and I can’t see many developers bothering with it, especially since Apple break compatibility all the time.
I will boil and eat my socks if you’re right.
You eat socks. I put my money into it. =)
It's so obvious. It's just a numbers game. Everything else will fall in line when the numbers make sense.
I bought Apple stocks so I can use gains to buy an M1 laptop
I was so impressed with the M1 and so excited for the future of Apple Silicon that I decided to buy up Apple stocks. I'm sure that I will be buying many Apple Silicon Macs over the next 10 years. I will use any gains I get from Apple stocks to buy Macs. At the same time, I feel less guilty...
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On Steam stats, the 1060 and 1050ti are still the most used GPUs. Budget setups playing on 1080 still rules.
And once Xbox Series X and PS5 are readily available at normal price, PC gaming will drop down a bit.
I have the Series X and prefer it over my desktop with a 1080ti. It runs 1440 at 120fps or 4K at 60fps with no problem. Sure, I can probably have slightly better graphic settings and fps running 1440 on my desktop. But it's mostly unnoticeable. I don't have a HDMI 2.1 TV or monitor nor does my 1080ti run 4K at 120fps flawlessly. So I'm (like most) are not concerned about it at the moment.
IMO, Apple will have to make a standalone console first, if it ever wants to compete in the gaming market.
And once Xbox Series X and PS5 are readily available at normal price, PC gaming will drop down a bit.
I have the Series X and prefer it over my desktop with a 1080ti. It runs 1440 at 120fps or 4K at 60fps with no problem. Sure, I can probably have slightly better graphic settings and fps running 1440 on my desktop. But it's mostly unnoticeable. I don't have a HDMI 2.1 TV or monitor nor does my 1080ti run 4K at 120fps flawlessly. So I'm (like most) are not concerned about it at the moment.
IMO, Apple will have to make a standalone console first, if it ever wants to compete in the gaming market.
Not really. According to the numbers you reference, 2020 sales were 55m, 2021 sales were 65 million, with a projected sales of 73m in 2025. At that rate, there will be about 200m PC gaming machines in 2023 vs at best less than 100m Macs; so at best it's 1/3; and only a fraction of those users are interested in games.
Those are iOS driven sales where the market is very different than PCs. How many studios will gladly release a game that will either have to be fremium or selling for a few dollars?
Mobile gaming is a different market so while developers go there it doesn't follow they will also make Mac games.
But it won't be anywhere near 50%.
Revenue is not profit. 30% more revenue is not worth it if your costs are close to or greater than the revenue generated.
Except.... all iPhone games(and all apps too) will now run natively on the M1’s. Its a very simple step from there to something a lot more complex.
Too many barriers.
- MacOS doesn't support industry standard Vulkan and DirectX APIs so porting is expensive and time consuming
- There are few AAA gaming developers with Metal experience
- Tiny MacOS marketshare doesn't pay the bills
- Gaming houses are already stretched out thin developing for PC, Xbox/Sony/Nintendo consoles
- Gaming houses considering MacOS development will have to compete with game streaming services for scraps
- Apple devices cost double or more of PCs and consoles
- Apple management are accountants and not gamers so they'd rather push Apple Arcade profit over AAA gaming quality
Best compromise for MacOS is game streaming. End of story.
- MacOS doesn't support industry standard Vulkan and DirectX APIs so porting is expensive and time consuming
- There are few AAA gaming developers with Metal experience
- Tiny MacOS marketshare doesn't pay the bills
- Gaming houses are already stretched out thin developing for PC, Xbox/Sony/Nintendo consoles
- Gaming houses considering MacOS development will have to compete with game streaming services for scraps
- Apple devices cost double or more of PCs and consoles
- Apple management are accountants and not gamers so they'd rather push Apple Arcade profit over AAA gaming quality
Best compromise for MacOS is game streaming. End of story.
Simple? I think you underestimate the effort it would take to turn an iPhone gam into a Mac game that can compete with the PC games.
Apple is not a gaming company. Who do you compare them to? The companies that design games? Then Apple share is 0%.
2020 global shipments of Macs was ~22.5 million.
Starting price of top 20% of laptops & desktops start at $999, the starting price of base model MBA & Mac mini when you include quality display/keyboard/mouse.
I would not be surprised that Apple gains 50% of the top 20% desktop/laptop market by 2023. I'd be happy when they replicate the iPad's success by taking over ~80% of the top 20% desktop/laptop market by 2025.
Mac desktop/laptop taking 50% of the whole global desktop/laptop market regardless of price point is fanciful.
Apple's only interested in the top 20% for resource & legal reasons.
Starting price of top 20% of laptops & desktops start at $999, the starting price of base model MBA & Mac mini when you include quality display/keyboard/mouse.
I would not be surprised that Apple gains 50% of the top 20% desktop/laptop market by 2023. I'd be happy when they replicate the iPad's success by taking over ~80% of the top 20% desktop/laptop market by 2025.
Mac desktop/laptop taking 50% of the whole global desktop/laptop market regardless of price point is fanciful.
Apple's only interested in the top 20% for resource & legal reasons.
Exactly, Apple is only interested in the premium market space, and they already do fairly well there. If the software situation improves, I wouldn't be surprised if they can take virtually all of that market, delegating x86 to cheap budget machines and dedicated gaming rigs. The game here is much more subtle that most people who argument with "but brush 9% marketshare" will be able to understand.
I think a combination of Android, Apple, AMD & Intel SoC will clobber modularized parts on the PC.
Before 2030 I expect 80% of laptops/desktops will be SoC. This will raise the price of modularized parts to almost double of today's prices.
SoC-based devices may be more expensive/difficult to repair but its cheaper to make/sell.
Whats lacking for SoC to take over is the lackluster Windows 11 on ARM support.
Not quite sure what you mean here? The vast majority of PCs have been using SoCs for years. Anything not using a dGPU is a SoC. Intel chips have been SoCs since 2008 if I remember correctly and AMD didn't take long after that either.
SoC comparable to Apple Silicon implementation.
Apple's M1 had the fastest iGPU ever made as of 2 months ago. It was dethroned by the M1 Pro & M1 Max.
A reason why so many PC people were skeptical about Apple Silicon's actual raw performance as no company ever considered sticking a GTX 1050 or RTX 3080 as an iGPU.
Even when they were walked through by how many transistors and core counts few had the imagination to believe it.
I am hoping that Intel & AMD will mirror Apple's move to offer less SKUs that will improve with economies of scale.
Like do we need a Atom, Celeron, Pentium, i3, i5, i7, i9, i9 Extreme, etc? Can't these all be simplified? I get that there a binned parts but still...
Ah, you mean larger SoCs with integrated fast GPUs? To be honest, I am not sure this will happen in the PC market any time soon. Sure, these chips will continuing getting faster (current Intel is not too bad), but they are targeting low-power laptops and HTPC desktops, so I don't expect them going too crazy on the GPU part.
The practical issue is that PC component makers specialize and modularity allows them to reach a larger customer base. In the end, it is a lower risk for AMD to sell CPUs and GPUs separately, because the customer is still free to choose a matching component from another brand in case they don't want the entire package. But yes, we might see some experiments of Intel and AMD trying to bundle more integrated systems, who knows. Nvidia in more of a tight spot since they don't have CPU IP... and there are no fast ARM CPUs for laptop they can buy.
And of course, there is a matter of cost and feasibility. Apple can afford to make all these crazy chips because their product lineup is minimal and focused. Intel/AMD need to cover a wide range of potential customers.
So yeah, I don't really see others follow suit on a large scale any time soon.
We definitely don't need them but having all these products helps chip makers sell more stuff. The more options you offer, the more likely it is that someone will buy something, especially in this kind of market. Apple again is in a very different position as they don't sell chips.
I am confident that provided the cost/simplicity incentive of a SoC-based laptop/desktop that OEMs will gear their future product line towards that end.
Modularized PCs may be bought out of habit rather than actual use case. Once the volume customers are amendable to more Mac-like construction we will see a snowball effect where in all laptops/desktops will have no or very sparing modularized aspect.
I am speaking of the majority that never upgrade and just replace everything after 5-6 years.
We shall see how things will pan out. Apple Silicon demonstrated two things. SoC & ARM are legitimate in the high-end laptop/desktop space. For it to be accessible to the bottom 80% of the market Windows 11 on ARM needs to be nearly as equivalent as macOS on Apple Silicon and Windows 11 on Intel/AMD.
I really think large business/organzations will go with SoC seeming they rarely bother with the labor of mass upgrading as its more expensive labor-wise.
Apple needs to peel off a few billion or so for a six month exclusive release of GTA VI (macOS native & Metal optimized) on Apple silicon...
Plus they don’t want to ruin their brand reputation of being a luxury lifestyle brand than a brand that offers utility, service and hardware. However, apple is trying to cover lower end iPhone market with iPhone SE so maybe things can change in mac soon?