Ah, got it. We'll see what happens, maybe they think the current version is good enough or they'll do it at some point in the future. Could be they don't want to give 30% to Apple for the macOS version though.
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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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Don't the developers/publisher already pay game stores for macOS game distribution? macOS executables can be installed without going thru the Mac App Store.
Doesn't seem to be a problem for them given that the game is already on the Mac App Store. Besides, Steam also takes a 30% cut, so it's not like you get a better deal there.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1197213/market-value-of-the-largest-gaming-companies-worldwide/
https://www.alltopeverything.com/top-10-biggest-video-game-companies/
I haven't seen Apple in any lists.
Edit: Found one:
https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-25-companies-game-revenues/ , but Tencent is first. I haven't even heard about this company.
It may be a semantics argument. Apple isn’t a game company (developer or publisher).
Alien Isolation [iOS, Android]
I wish I could spill the beans on what's happening on the rendering side, it's pretty great (I worked on the iOS GPU optimisations) :smile:
forum.beyond3d.com
Looks like they specifically optimized for TDBR. If it only needs a flip of the switch for macOS Apple Silicon support, it is really weird that they are choosing to not flip the switch. There must be a technical reason.
Yes, I was more thinking along the line of bring the iOS version to AS Macs. But since it's been pointed out the macOS version is on the store already that would indeed not make any difference.
Well, that's not developing games, they offer a platform to distribute games and take a cut. I wonder where companies/websites that sell keys and gift cards for games (cdkeys, etc.) would end up in the list if they'd count. In the end, they do something similar, except binding a game to a specific account and not offering the option to download a game, but they sell you the "ability to use a game".
Hm, not sure. I was assuming the engine used is Cathode, but I'm not so sure anymore. Cathode has support for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The macOS/OS X, Linux, Switch and mobile iOS/Android versions are apparently "ported", whatever that means. So maybe (pure speculation) they brought in another engine or tools for the original macOS/OS X, Linux and Switch port and again something new for the iOS/Android port and the latter doesn't support macOS as a target, while the older macOS/OS X port doesn't support M1. All speculation of course.
It I'd like to grab some quick cash with a game in the mobile market, there are some Chinese engines available offering iOS and Android support with a flip of a button. That would mean mobile only and no macOS version though (hello Blizzard).
Alien Isolation have been released on iOS and boy is it optimised for Apple's GPU. It's an entirely different beast than the macOS port which still runs on OpenGL.
One of the developers who helped optimise it for TBDR GPUs with In-Tile Gbuffer / Lighting, shaders for hair/skin/shadow filtering, properly handling load/store ops etc. says it basically runs on the same engine as the PC and console versions.
It runs on the iPhone 13 Pro at 2532x1170 with TAA and the AMD sharpening (CAS) enabled at 30 fps.
One of the developers who helped optimise it for TBDR GPUs with In-Tile Gbuffer / Lighting, shaders for hair/skin/shadow filtering, properly handling load/store ops etc. says it basically runs on the same engine as the PC and console versions.
It runs on the iPhone 13 Pro at 2532x1170 with TAA and the AMD sharpening (CAS) enabled at 30 fps.
Toxic, elitist, and hypocritical. Frankly the whining in this thread exemplifies my argument that the “core gaming audience” are like addicts. Why insist that MacOS be a major gaming platform anyway, unless you absolutely cannot live without gaming. And not just gaming, bug the latest and most cutting-edge intensive titles? As if smaller games are somehow beneath you?
I know there’s a certain subset of gamers hoping that Apple will somehow be their savior, offering gaming machines that will rescue them from the insane prices and shortages of gpus, but they’re not looking at reality.
Personally, I got out of that toxic mess when I saw people excusing predatory practices and defending ****** companies all because their favorite game was made by them. And seeing this thread reinforces my decision.
This is why it is often difficult to engage in this topic, to say the least. A certain subset of gamers expect Apple to not only best high-end PC hardware, but to fund every "AAA" studio in porting to the Mac. Instead of discussing what is realistic, they get worked up over what they will never have. While there are likely many reasons that the Mac doesn't have wider game support, market share is and will remain the biggest challenge. I dutifully add my Mac to the Steam survey, which stubbornly stays around 2.7%, but I have no control over that overall number. Getting upset about it won't change anything. Plus, the definition of a "AAA" game is entirely subjective, and is often simply code for "game not available for the Mac", which makes for an easy cudgel to use on an internet forum.
If I want to continue to be a Mac gamer, I look at the current landscape. I enjoy turn-based isometric RPGs, such as the Pathfinder, ATOM and Baldur's Gate series, among many others, which are plentiful on the Mac. There are more of these types of titles than I have time to play. Other than BG3, none of these are performance intensive, but that doesn't make them any less enjoyable. I can easily spend a hundred or more hours just on a single play through, which you aren't going to get with many of the supposed "AAA" games. I'm a gamer, but it isn't beneath me to play games that don't require an RTX 3090.
On the other side of the coin, there are some games that do fit the performance narrative. During the current winter sale, the Epic Games store is having an excellent sale on many titles, and I'm going to pick up Metro Exodus Gold, Borderlands 3, and Hades for an absolute bargain. Metro and BL3 are both quite demanding and will tax my RX 580 eGPU to the max.
I'm sure in the future, studios that are friendly toward the Mac will port their games to support Apple Silicon, with varying degrees of optimization, and those games will be quite performant and impressive. However, the Mac will never be what the hardcore gaming lot wants it to be.
Aren't Apple already doing well with PC only games? It's just that the high spec GPU machines tend to be PC historically.
If you are talking about console to pc ports, those mostly make a loss on PC despite their visibility. Which probably affects the likelihood of a Mac port.
If you are talking about console to pc ports, those mostly make a loss on PC despite their visibility. Which probably affects the likelihood of a Mac port.
Which is basically where we are now with ports.
In every thread where gaming on the Mac comes up it’s the same whining.
The stuff that makes me pull my hair out is the goalpost shifting though.
You point to plenty of quality games available for Mac, the goalposts shift to AAA titles. Point to Macs being capable of playing many titles, it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t outperform the best from the competition.
And the cherry on top of that is that going by the Steam charts, the top played games aren’t even AAA most of the time. Half of which have a Mac port (albeit not on Apple Silicon).
Even the core gaming crowd doesn’t seem to care much for the AAA flavor of the month, and yet when it comes to “Mac gaming” it’s all that matters.
Aren’t the Steam charts skewed towards multiplayer games instead of single player ones?
It's not goalpost shifting. There are just many issues that are related but separate.
People are not interested in playing "games", just as they are not interested in watching "movies" or reading "books". They are interested in specific genres and specific titles. While hardware and operating systems are interchangeable, content is not. A platform without the specific content you are interested in is useless, unless it's cheap enough that paying for it doesn't matter.
Typical consumers are very rare. Everyone has their own weird interests, mixing some of the most popular titles, some popular and demanding AAA games, and some obscure indie titles. It doesn't matter how many popular games are available on a platform, if almost everyone sees that many of the titles they want to play are missing.
Apple has some obsessions that make its hardware less suited for gaming that it could be. The most important is bundling all kinds of hardware upgrades together. The M1 Max GPU would be a pretty good midrange gaming option, but because it's bundled with all kinds of unnecessary features, you have to pay high-end prices for it. Just like many people would be interested in buying a 16" MBA without having to pay for useless performance, an M1 Mac with an M1 Max GPU would be an attractive option for gaming.
The thing is, those people exist on mobile games too. There are now a ton of offline tournaments for mobile games that give millions out in prizes. The percentage of mobile gamers who are toxic are lower, mostly because it's harder to communicate than using a keyboard, but they're there.
Fornite, PUBG, Roblox, WoW. All these games have toxic players and thrive(d) on Apple's platforms. Fornite was making hundreds of millions before the ban.
I never advocate for Apple to push for AAA gaming. I think it will happen organically as the hardware capabilities drastically increase. Apple can't stop AAA gaming from coming to macOS.
And eventually, what's going to sell Apple VR devices are going to be highly immersive worlds (games). So Apple needs to be serious about high-fidelity gaming sooner or later.
I don't remember the exact specifics, but I recall a sudden drop in Mac market share on the Steam survey once Valve started giving equality in counting internet cafés. They aren't typically popular in western markets, but are very popular in Asian. It accounts for the high percentage of 1050/1060 usage on the GPU charts, because those were commonly installed in these businesses, which skew the numbers toward rented GPUs and software. I would hope that computer game developers use multiple metrics in deciding a Mac port, particularly those that concentrate on a single-player experience, and not just what shows up on the Steam survey.
However, from listening to individual developers that are friendly to the Mac, sometimes it simply boils down to whether the devs like the Mac and use it personally. A personal stake in a platform's success is often times more important than cold, hard statistics.
The topic often brought up is “gaming”, so I lumped in PC gaming as a whole because that’s the pertinent topic.
If you want to argue over specific titles, that’s on the producers of said titles to port. And as has been stated over multiple threads, multiple arguments, multiple times, over multitudes of years, Mac have been quite capable machines. It’s not the Mac that’s the problem here.
Maybe I’m not communicating well, I’m more rambling about the constant Mac gaming question that gets brought up, rather than the situation at hand. And I’m irritated at the flawed and idiotic goalpost shifting that pops up in every thread involving Macs and games.
And as I’ve said before, if gaming on the cutting edge is something that you cannot live without, then you’ll never be satisfied with the Mac, and there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of that changing.
Begging Apple to somehow make the Mac a “gaming PC” would fundamentally change the Mac, and I don’t see that as a good thing. And fwiw, Apple isn’t blocking anybody from porting any of their games to the Mac.
This is contradictory to your above assertion that “if the content you want isn’t there, it’s useless.” And this thread specifically is complaining about the lack of MacOS ports for many titles.
And this argument is also flawed, you may as well complain about not having AMD cpu options in Dell XPS machines. The reason that nobody complains about that is that you can go to another PC manufacturer.
The ethos of the Mac is that hardware and software should work together. That’s why the Mac is the Mac. For the scenario you describe to be plausible, Apple would have to make many more SKUs for every permutation to satisfy your needs, or to have many different companies making Macs (which was tried, and didn’t work well).
The Mac is the “whole package” so to speak. That’s where the extra cost comes from. If that means that it’s unappealing to gamers, then I’d say that’s a fair trade.
I think this is the core issue. From delving into the comment sections of many websites, I’d say the “core” gaming demographic is hostile towards Apple. Anecdotally I’ve seen games have Linux ports but no Mac port.
Yep fully agree here. Not to mention it’s going to take a LONG LONG time for macOS to compete with Windows. Heck I can still play Direct X 8 games on Windows 11. Games that were released in 2001. Without emulation. On Windows 11.
New games these days are not very good IMO. It’s the old games that keep me being a gamer. We have companies too focused on NFTs and loot boxes to make AAA gaming good these days. Even Halo Infinite was underwhelming.
Games like Satisfactory make me continue to appreciate the gaming industry. But that’s not AAA. Factorio, Stardew Valley, Terraria, Minecraft. These are pretty much the bulk of the “new games” I play. And they are on macOS already.
Sadly mutliplayer games with loot box mechanics is what pays the bills these days. It is going to get harder and harder to get games that don't include them when folks (read kids) are paying out the wazoo for a character skin.
I am also a bit sad that Gearbox Games isn't making Homeworld 3 for macOS, since the prior games were.
I’m sure they would if Apple pitches privacy benefits to Randy Pitchford. No more people finding your “magic trick” folder!
Agreed on the last point. I bought Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PC and WOW is it a horrible port.