In 3 years, 50% of all computers capable of playing AAA games will be Macs

[senttoschool]

What's the progress report on this prediction? Has it even hit a third of the prediction, 16.7%, after one year out of three?

Apple will sell about 27 million Macs in 2021. Assume that 80% are M1/M1Pro/M1Max Macs, then Apple will have sold 21 million Macs capable of playing AAA games.

According to IDC, the number of gaming computers (desktops and laptops) sold in 2021 is projected to be 47 million. Thus, Macs are 44% of computers sold capable of playing AAA titles in 2021.

Feel free to check my math and/or create your own estimates. Whatever you estimate, it wouldn't be too far off and it would seem like Apple is ahead of schedule in terms of the 50% mark as predicted in the original post.

 

[EntropyQ3]

Apple will sell about 27 million Macs in 2021. Assume that 80% are M1/M1Pro/M1Max Macs, then Apple will have sold 21 million Macs capable of playing AAA games.

According to IDC, the number of gaming computers (desktops and laptops) sold in 2021 is projected to be 47 million. Thus, Macs are 44% of computers sold capable of playing AAA titles in 2021.

Feel free to check my math and/or create your own estimates. Whatever you estimate, it wouldn't be too far off and it would seem like Apple is ahead of schedule in terms of the 50% mark as predicted in the original post.

I was tempted to hit the math, because those 47 million do not include the Macs.
However, the problem is still that
a) the definition of ”capable of …” is arbitrary, and
b) it just doesn’t matter unless the AAA publishers start targeting the platform.

But yes, simply growing the installed base is probably the best thing Apple can do for gaming under MacOS.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

a) the definition of ”capable of …” is arbitrary, and

Exactly, and since 8% of the total computer gaming market are playing AAA titles with Intel iGPU, Macs have been capable to play AAA games for many, many years. The whole concept of "let's compare every Mac, including those that are used for work only with gaming PCs only (whatever that is)" is flawed to begin with.

b) it just doesn’t matter unless the AAA publishers start targeting the platform.

Indeed and with DX12 being harder to port to Metal than DX11, we're seeing less and less effort here as well. Chicken and egg problem.

 

[senttoschool]

I was tempted to hit the math, because those 47 million do not include the Macs.
However, the problem is still that
a) the definition of ”capable of …” is arbitrary, and
b) it just doesn’t matter unless the AAA publishers start targeting the platform.

But yes, simply growing the installed base is probably the best thing Apple can do for gaming under MacOS.

a) I defined it in the original post and used it to project the 50%. The original 50% projection and the above 44% projection is using the definition in the original post. If you disagree with my definition, feel free to hit the math and create your own projections.

b) This point was answered by your last sentence.

Exactly, and since 8% of the total computer gaming market are playing AAA titles with Intel iGPU, Macs have been capable to play AAA games for many, many years.

What? No one I know plays any recently developed AAA games with Intel iGPUs on a Mac. Maybe AAA games from 12 years ago. Anyone playing recent AAA games on a Mac surely has a dedicated GPU.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

If you disagree with my definition, feel free to hit the math and create your own projections.

You can project anything you want, it doesn't make it right. I don't have to do projections, I talk to the guys who do the projections and make the decision to port games to other platforms. Game studios have people doing nothing else, all day long.

What? No one I know plays any recently developed AAA games with Intel iGPUs on a Mac. Maybe AAA games from 12 years ago. Anyone playing recent AAA games on a Mac surely has a dedicated GPU.

Guess what, I don't know anyone either who's using iGPUs to play, many people I know use 3080/3090 cards though guess Macs are doomed now because 3080/3090s are faster for gaming. But guess what, it doesn't matter. AAA from 12 years ago... maybe you should tell these guys they're doing something wrong:

Plenty more to find on YouTube.

 

[senttoschool]

You can project anything you want, it doesn't make it right. I don't have to do projections, I talk to the guys who do the projections and make the decision to port games to other platforms. Game studios have people doing nothing else, all day long.

I never said it's right. It's a projection. The word "projection" in itself does not say something is right.

an estimate or forecast of a future situation or trend based on a study of present ones.

You literally posted 3 videos of iGPUs that are significantly more powerful than iGPUs on Intel Macs. None of those iGPUs ever made it to the Mac. And the base M1 GPU already outperforms those significantly.

Tell us which game studios you're talking to. Let's hear it. Let us know what their plans are when 50% - 60% of all computers sold yearly capable of running their games at an acceptable level are Macs.

 

[diamond.g]

I never said it's right. It's a projection. The word "projection" in itself does not say something is right.

an estimate or forecast of a future situation or trend based on a study of present ones.

You literally posted 3 videos of iGPUs that are significantly more powerful than iGPUs on Intel Macs. None of those iGPUs ever made it to the Mac. And the base M1 GPU already outperforms those significantly.

Tell us which game studios you're talking to. Let's hear it. Let us know what their plans are when 50% - 60% of all computers sold yearly capable of running their games at an acceptable level are Macs.

If looking at Steam Stats they are not going to believe the 50-60% assertion.

 

[quarkysg]

If looking at Steam Stats they are not going to believe the 50-60% assertion.

I'm sure any game studio looking out for opportunities would be relying on many different stats, not just based on Steam.

 

[diamond.g]

I'm sure any game studio looking out for opportunities would be relying on many different stats, not just based on Steam.

So we throw out Steam stats, that is fine. The game awards were this past week and as far as I could tell only 1 new game shown to have a Mac version (Tunic). With an estimated 21 million Macs that has hardware to play the other games shown it seems odd that there was only 1 game announced when there are more Macs than PS5's or Xbox Series X/S's.

 

[quarkysg]

So we throw out Steam stats, that is fine. The game awards were this past week and as far as I could tell only 1 new game shown to have a Mac version (Tunic). With an estimated 21 million Macs that has hardware to play the other games shown it seems odd that there was only 1 game announced when there are more Macs than PS5's or Xbox Series X/S's.

Seems like you're very defensive. I'm just saying that any business will always looks out for opportunities to grow. Gaming is no different.

 

[diamond.g]

Seems like you're very defensive. I'm just saying that any business will always looks out for opportunities to grow. Gaming is no different.

I don't mean to sound (read) defensive. I actually wish that Apple would spend silly amounts of money to get AAA exclusives on macOS/iOS. Spend a few hundred million making GTA6 a macOS/iOS exclusive.

 

[senttoschool]

I don't mean to sound (read) defensive. I actually wish that Apple would spend silly amounts of money to get AAA exclusives on macOS/iOS. Spend a few hundred million making GTA6 a macOS/iOS exclusive.

They're not spending money to get AAA games. I don't see it.

They might help a developer port a proper AAA game to the Mac, then promote that game for free at WWDC or the next Mac event or something.

I think any AAA title on the Mac will be organic.

It will help a lot when soon, half or more of future computers sold yearly capable of playing AAA games are Macs.

 

[diamond.g]

They're not spending money to get AAA games. I don't see it.

They might help a developer port a proper AAA game to the Mac, then promote that game for free at WWDC or the next Mac event or something.

I think any AAA title on the Mac will be organic.

It will help a lot when soon, half or more of future computers sold yearly capable of playing AAA games are Macs.

They could spend money to speed the process along. I think it would be cool to be able to play this on macOS versus having to have a PS5 or a PC.

 

[senttoschool]

They could spend money to speed the process along. I think it would be cool to be able to play this on macOS versus having to have a PS5 or a PC.

Maybe one day. Square Enix already has a lot of Metal games for iOS and iPad. Perhaps their experience will make it easier to port games to the Mac.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

I never said it's right. It's a projection. The word "projection" in itself does not say something is right.

No it doesn't, but your baseline which they projection is based on is flawed to begin with.

You literally posted 3 videos of iGPUs that are significantly more powerful than iGPUs on Intel Macs.

Then look up the tons of other videos on YouTube using different iGPUs. Heck, I've played games on Macs with dGPU and with iGPU and it's fine for many titles. Is it my preferred way to play a game? Of course not, because I've always had more powerful cards on PCs that allowed me to crank up settings and that's what I'd prefer whenever I have the choice. I very much prefer to play games with my dGPUs that run circles around iGPUs and a M1 Max. Doesn't mean I couldn't play it with iGPU if I wanted.

Tell us which game studios you're talking to. Let's hear it. Let us know what their plans are when 50% - 60% of all computers sold yearly capable of running their games at an acceptable level are Macs.

EA, Ubi, Blizzard, MS, Capcom and Nintendo are the ones I'm most in touch with, because many of my students go there.

Again, your assumption is flawed, you need to get a proper baseline.

Even if 50% to 60% of computers sold capable of playing their games were Macs, how many of those are actually not for business and will actually be used to play games? A fraction. There simply is no money in it for studios, costs of porting anything except the most simple games (technically) is not feasible, that's why they don't care. You could just as well ask the question what they'd do when Apple gives a $50k Mac Pro away for free to every gamer in the world. It's not going to happen. Apple will gain business in the creative world (YouTube and Musicians) and lose business elsewhere. Many Macs are running Windows, those times are over now. And no, the cloud is not a solution for most business software due to data protection laws of many, many countries. Macs taking over the market is nothing but wishful thinking. The best Apple can do right now is massively push Macs while everyone else is suffering massive chip shortage.

I'm sure any game studio looking out for opportunities would be relying on many different stats, not just based on Steam.

They do, but surprisingly no matter where you look, they're all very similar. When looking at statistics at Path of Exile for example, the Steam number pretty much mirror those that GGG collect internally. The same can be said for many other platforms and games/studios.

Spend a few hundred million making GTA6 a macOS/iOS exclusive.

Not enough. Expect GTA6 to be more expensive than GTA5 in the making. Realistically we're looking at anything between $300M and $500M. Revenue for this will be through the roof, GTA5 is about $6B already. If this would be an all-time exclusive, they'd be more in the range of $10B. And then... what would it get them? People would buy it for macOS/iOS and since that's pretty much the only thing that's exclusive buy all the rest for PC/consoles again.

The way Macs will get AAA games is simple... streaming services.

 

[senttoschool]

Even if 50% to 60% of computers sold capable of playing their games were Macs, how many of those are actually not for business and will actually be used to play games?

How many iPhones are bought yearly for gaming only? I'd say an extremely small fraction? Yet, iOS is the largest gaming platform in the world by a significant margin in terms of revenue and profits.

Not saying that MacOS will have the same success. But the install base does wonders. The case to port AAA titles to Macs will be extremely compelling soon.

No it doesn't, but your baseline which they projection is based on is flawed to begin with.

Um, get it out of your head that Intel iGPUs on the Mac are used for AAA gaming. They're not.

Then look up the tons of other videos on YouTube using different iGPUs. Heck, I've played games on Macs with dGPU and with iGPU and it's fine for many titles. Is it my preferred way to play a game? Of course not, because I've always had more powerful cards on PCs that allowed me to crank up settings and that's what I'd prefer whenever I have the choice. I very much prefer to play games with my dGPUs that run circles around iGPUs and a M1 Max. Doesn't mean I couldn't play it with iGPU if I wanted.

It's not getting through your head. No one is stupid enough to make a $50 purchase of a recent AAA game just to play on Intel iGPU Macs.

 

[senttoschool]

EA, Ubi, Blizzard, MS, Capcom and Nintendo are the ones I'm most in touch with, because many of my students go there.

Oh that's funny. I'm a consultant for EA, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, MS, Sony, Capcom, Nintendo. They all tell me they will consider porting games to the Mac because of the install base soon.

Show us evidence that EA, Ubi, Blizzard, MS, Capcom and Nintendo are revealing their future gaming plans to you.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

They might help a developer port a proper AAA game to the Mac, then promote that game for free at WWDC or the next Mac event or something.

Those times are long gone. Apple is only doing these things for good press if it suits their needs. Back in the day I worked a lot with Apple, received a lot of help via phone/mail, went to Cupertino with the caps to work things out or Apple coming over to help. No such things these days, Apple changed. Still works forNvidia however.

How many iPhones are bought yearly for gaming only? I'd say an extremely small fraction? Yet, iOS is the largest gaming platform in the world by a significant margin in terms of revenue and profits.

None of these are AAA titles, completely different market. Did you look up recent numbers of revenue and profits? Would you like to share these?

Um, get it out of your head that Intel iGPUs on the Mac are used for AAA gaming. They're not.

And yet, here we are with about 8% of the computer gaming market using iGPU to play games and on top of that comes AMD counterparts and very old Nvidia GPUs with similar performance. Look it up.

Oh that's funny. I'm a consultant for EA, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, MS, Sony, Capcom, Nintendo. They all tell me they will consider porting games to the Mac because of the install base soon.

Oh, and there I thought you're a butt hurt Apple fanboy who never worked in the graphics or game industry just crying for games and rejecting reality to keep the hope alive to get games one day. Oh well... ?‍♂️

Lets see what the future brings, we're one year into the three-year claim and so far, Mac support is going down. But I'm sure that's just because they need to ramp things up and it will magically explode next month, no next year, no the year after... maybe 2030??

 

[diamond.g]

No it doesn't, but your baseline which they projection is based on is flawed to begin with.

Then look up the tons of other videos on YouTube using different iGPUs. Heck, I've played games on Macs with dGPU and with iGPU and it's fine for many titles. Is it my preferred way to play a game? Of course not, because I've always had more powerful cards on PCs that allowed me to crank up settings and that's what I'd prefer whenever I have the choice. I very much prefer to play games with my dGPUs that run circles around iGPUs and a M1 Max. Doesn't mean I couldn't play it with iGPU if I wanted.

EA, Ubi, Blizzard, MS, Capcom and Nintendo are the ones I'm most in touch with, because many of my students go there.

Again, your assumption is flawed, you need to get a proper baseline.

Even if 50% to 60% of computers sold capable of playing their games were Macs, how many of those are actually not for business and will actually be used to play games? A fraction. There simply is no money in it for studios, costs of porting anything except the most simple games (technically) is not feasible, that's why they don't care. You could just as well ask the question what they'd do when Apple gives a $50k Mac Pro away for free to every gamer in the world. It's not going to happen. Apple will gain business in the creative world (YouTube and Musicians) and lose business elsewhere. Many Macs are running Windows, those times are over now. And no, the cloud is not a solution for most business software due to data protection laws of many, many countries. Macs taking over the market is nothing but wishful thinking. The best Apple can do right now is massively push Macs while everyone else is suffering massive chip shortage.

They do, but surprisingly no matter where you look, they're all very similar. When looking at statistics at Path of Exile for example, the Steam number pretty much mirror those that GGG collect internally. The same can be said for many other platforms and games/studios.


Not enough. Expect GTA6 to be more expensive than GTA5 in the making. Realistically we're looking at anything between $300M and $500M. Revenue for this will be through the roof, GTA5 is about $6B already. If this would be an all-time exclusive, they'd be more in the range of $10B. And then... what would it get them? People would buy it for macOS/iOS and since that's pretty much the only thing that's exclusive buy all the rest for PC/consoles again.

The way Macs will get AAA games is simple... streaming services.

Timed exclusive, like 1 to 2 years (like how Forspoken is PS exclusive for I think 2 years). Especially if they plan on keeping the game alive for over a decade like they did 5.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Timed exclusive, like 1 to 2 years (like how Forspoken is PS exclusive for I think 2 years). Especially if they plan on keeping the game alive for over a decade like they did 5.

GTA5 isn't that old yet. I think Apple could buy a time exclusive title for some time. A smaller one though, not GTA. Sony bought into Square already, Apple could have done it. But how many copies would they have sold? Probably not anywhere close to PS5 sales. In the end, they would have sold "a few" copies but in the long run hurt the studio. Now if we're talking about the entire EA or Ubi catalogue... they could get somewhere, but that's not going to happen.

Exclusive deals usually only work with more on the table than a single game for a limited time and they're two way streets. Apple has nothing to offer for Rockstar/T2. On the other hand, if whispers are true Rockstar is facing their Half Life 3 or Duke Nukem Forever with GTA6 and who knows, maybe one day Apple is there to collect whatever is left. (Hopefully that's not the case, but who knows).

 

[Digital_Sousaphone]

Oh that's funny. I'm a consultant for EA, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, MS, Sony, Capcom, Nintendo. They all tell me they will consider porting games to the Mac because of the install base soon.

Show us evidence that EA, Ubi, Blizzard, MS, Capcom and Nintendo are revealing their future gaming plans to you.

Oh. I'm, uh, the king of the world. I decree that you're full of cattle excrement. /thread

 

[mi7chy]

Apple will sell about 27 million Macs in 2021. Assume that 80% are M1/M1Pro/M1Max Macs, then Apple will have sold 21 million Macs capable of playing AAA games.

Pretty sure more MBA M1 are sold than M1 Pro and Max models but MBA M1 isn't adequate for AAA gaming. I know since I own one. For example, Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs at hair pulling low 20'ish fps. 60fps is ideal minimum so only the M1 Max is capable but who's going to spend $3K+ when they can get a $500 console, $1200 PC gaming laptop or desktop?

 

[senttoschool]

Those times are long gone. Apple is only doing these things for good press if it suits their needs. Back in the day I worked a lot with Apple, received a lot of help via phone/mail, went to Cupertino with the caps to work things out or Apple coming over to help. No such things these days, Apple changed. Still works forNvidia however.

You can say you work with "x" all day long but until you reveal your true identity, no one cares. Anyone can claim anything. Show us facts. Show us the evidence.

None of these are AAA titles, completely different market. Did you look up recent numbers of revenue and profits? Would you like to share these?

Simply Google gaming revenue by platform. Easy. Do it yourself.

And yet, here we are with about 8% of the computer gaming market using iGPU to play games and on top of that comes AMD counterparts and very old Nvidia GPUs with similar performance. Look it up.

What?

Oh, and there I thought you're a butt hurt Apple fanboy who never worked in the graphics or game industry just crying for games and rejecting reality to keep the hope alive to get games one day. Oh well... ?‍♂️

Lets see what the future brings, we're one year into the three-year claim and so far, Mac support is going down. But I'm sure that's just because they need to ramp things up and it will magically explode next month, no next year, no the year after... maybe 2030??

Let's say that you do work in the game industry and you do have connections directly to Apple. I highly doubt this. If you did, you wouldn't be spending so much time here arguing on the internet. It still doesn't matter. Numbers are numbers. At some point in the future, it'd be stupid for developers not to make a version of their AAA game for MacOS just like how it'd be stupid for a developer to make a mobile game for Android and not iOS.

 

[senttoschool]

Pretty sure more MBA M1 are sold than M1 Pro and Max models but MBA M1 isn't adequate for AAA gaming. I know since I own one. For example, Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs at hair pulling low 20'ish fps. 60fps is ideal minimum so only the M1 Max is capable but who's going to spend $3K+ when they can get a $500 console, $1200 PC gaming laptop or desktop?

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs via Rosetta and I'm pretty it was a fairly lazy port.

Baldur's Gate 3 is an upcoming AAA game that runs 1080p Medium on an 8GB Macbook Air M1 with 7 GPU cores. It uses Metal and ARM64 natively.

WoW Shadowlands, ARM64 & Metal, runs at 1200p smoothly.

It all depends on game optimizations and how much effort developers put into it.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

You can say you work with "x" all day long but until you reveal your true identity, no one cares. Anyone can claim anything. Show us facts. Show us the evidence.

It's what studios stated at various conferences. This isn't a secret, this isn't a "studio and I know it, no one else". It was stated at Q&A sessions and panels at the last two GTCs, it was stated at the last few Siggraphs (feel free to contact Carlos Gonzalez Ochoa who is responsible for game related content) and it was stated at GDC to name three conferences where this topic is discussed on a regular basis. These are technology conferences, so you won't find much about specific games and content / IPs there, this is all about technology.

Simply Google gaming revenue by platform. Easy. Do it yourself.

So you have nothing except the old "iOS users spend more than others". Got it. Maybe do the math again not focusing on a single instance as the Apple store, which creates the large chunk of the money with non-AAA games and mostly in-app purchases. When you count other platforms, sum them up per platform, not distribution instance.

What?

Yup, I get it. It's flying over your head. It's ok.

Let's say that you do work in the game industry and you do have connections directly to Apple. I highly doubt this. If you did, you wouldn't be spending so much time here arguing on the internet. It still doesn't matter. Numbers are numbers. At some point in the future, it'd be stupid for developers not to make a version of their AAA game for MacOS just like how it'd be stupid for a developer to make a mobile game for Android and not iOS.

I don't work in the game industry. After selling my graphics related company, which allowed me to retire early on, I felt bored sitting around and I returned to university life to teach there and do research. One of my fields there is computer graphics and vision, the other is Deep Learning for AI applications. The rest is up to requirements, such as embedded or distributed systems, high performance computing and so on. In the field of games, we have contacts to the gaming industry, because I as well colleagues supervise research and thesis' that are done at game studios in cooperation with our research groups. Some of our students join the gaming industry later on. We have former students working all over the world in game studios (as well as many other areas).

I can take all the time in the world to argue on the internet, that's the benefit of hard work in the beginning and know when to jump the ship by selling things, which gives the freedom to do whatever one wants.

And indeed you're right, numbers are numbers. When it costs a developer more money to port something for a specific platform than what the can make with it, then the numbers show it's a bad idea. And that is the case for complex AAA games. Porting to Mac costs more than sales will get you.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs via Rosetta and I'm pretty it was a fairly lazy port.

What is a "lazy" port? Of course they didn't remake the whole game, because there's virtually no market. SotTR is a DX12 game with a fallback layer to DX11. The latter is the one that "sucks". How are they supposed to port DX12 resource bindings tier 3 to Metal? Neither hardware nor software are capable of it (intentionally by Apple). Sure they can start from scratch and that costs them what? $40M? $50M? More? And how many copies do they sell for macOS? Not enough to make up for the initial costs of a full port from scratch + future costs for support.

Baldur's Gate 3 is an upcoming AAA game that runs 1080p Medium on an 8GB Macbook Air M1 with 7 GPU cores. It uses Metal and ARM64 natively.

Of course it does, but it looks like crap! It doesn't even have proper lighting and shadow system. When you walk around it's a short stop away from static systems. BG3 is an easy to port game, because from a technical point it's trivial. How long have you played it do you really consider the visuals of it as state of the art? Hint, the money they pushed into this for development didn't go into visuals. There's another thread on this forum where I posted one or multiple (can't remember) screenshots of BG3 pointing out the issues with lights and shadows.