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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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Been trying to do up some comparison graphs using October's Steam stats, but I'm struggling a bit with the layout.
As compared to those numbers above, though, November 2020 was like this.
Windows - 95.73%
Windows 10: 88.59%
Windows 7: 5.24%
Mac - 3.37%
10.15.7 64 bit: 1.28%
10.14.6 64 bit: 0.46%
10.13.6 64 bit: 0.38%
Linux - 0.90%
Ubuntu 20.4.1 LTS 64 bit: 0.20%
Manjaro Linux: 0.11%
Arch Linux: 0.10%
In short, Windows use is higher, I'm assuming because of all the AMD Ryzen rigs being bought (Valve broke their active accounts record like 4 times), pushing down Mac and Linux use. In the latter part of 2021, Linux use started to climb again, passing the 1% mark.
Mac use fell to 2.49%, but has started rising again.
As for how the Mac did?
In November 2020, 8 cores made up 5.02% of Macs using Steam, and 10 cores made up 0.14%
8 cores are now 32.87% and 10 cores are 2.79%.
But 2021 has shown the opposite trend. Most aaa games are ported to macOS by feral interactive, and with the convergence between Apple devices, feral seems to have moved to iOS ports. There is more money to be made there.
Are there any other examples? All other studios that do Mac versions develop relatively minor games.
Do you have any data on this? I am looking at https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&os=win&filter=popularnew and currently out of 652 popular newly released games 217 are marked as having a macOS version. That's roughly one third, which is as many as we ever had.
I have no idea what counts as a "minor" or as a "major" game. Some "major" studios with good Mac support I am aware of include Paradox, OwlCat Studios and Amplitude (even though Humankind has some issues on M1 Macs as it seems).
I’m talking about big budget games which we commonly refer to as « aaa ». The games that make great success and are among the best games of the year. Such games have been pretty rare on the Mac lately.
I was looking at the 20 best games of the year according to ars technica and I don’t think any has a Mac version, which is a shame.
That’s what I’m referring to when I say « major studios ». I have never heard of the studios you mentioned.
Btw, frictional games have dropped the Mac.
Ah, sorry for misunderstanding, I was not referring to big budget games specifically, just, well, games. Anyway, since you say "lately"... was it ever the case that big-budget mainstream games were available for Mac? That's mostly Windows + consoles industry.
What constitutes a "best game" is definitely a matter of perspective. You say that you never heard about studios I mentioned, but they are all very popular and successful. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has sold 250k copies in the first week and is widely regarded as the best RPG of 2021 for example.
I looked at the art technica list of 20 best games you mention and I never heard about any of them, except the Hitman series... so yeah
What does that mean?
It means no more of the Amnesia series, SOMA, or any of the like games (at least ported by Frictional themselves).
Personally I think they peaked with The Dark Descent anyway.
I don’t play RPGs hence why I don’t know about that game.
I prefer FPSs, which are missing from the Mac catalogue.
Ah yes, FPS is practically completely missing from macOS — except the latest Metro port which actually works surprisingly well.
Welp...
Looks like Microsoft decided to buy up all the important gaming companies. That's one way to ensure your platform will never lose to Apple/Sony/Google on gaming.
Sucks for the industry. Good for Microsoft. I think Microsoft got a bargain too due to the sexual harassment drama.
Looks like Microsoft decided to buy up all the important gaming companies. That's one way to ensure your platform will never lose to Apple/Sony/Google on gaming.
Sucks for the industry. Good for Microsoft. I think Microsoft got a bargain too due to the sexual harassment drama.
I can't see Apple ever becoming huge in the gaming world. Performance aside, Apple is incredibly closed off both in hardware and in the OS. Benefits to both, but part of the gaming aspect of computers is building your own PC, putting the whole thing together from hand, fighting with BIOS settings and drivers and everything else. I would be curious to know how many "gaming" pc's are store bought compared to put together by the user. I have a gaming PC I built, runs great, decent specs, i7 - can't remember the specifics, 2070 gpu, 16 gigs ram, nvme, etc. When I want to upgrade I don't need a whole new computer, I can put a 3070 in there or add more ram, another hard drive, new CPU, all these things to greatly improve my computer without buying a whole brand new computer.
As for AAA gaming I think the simplest thing is to use a cloud gaming service, there are a few out there and you get great titles if you really want to play on your Mac. A friend used that for his son and it worked great for them.
As for AAA gaming I think the simplest thing is to use a cloud gaming service, there are a few out there and you get great titles if you really want to play on your Mac. A friend used that for his son and it worked great for them.
+0.07% increase from last. Going to screen shot for historical reference. Will be interesting to see if Linux surpasses with Steam Deck release. Linux is already up 0.03% from developer Steam Deck units which is probably like single digit % vs consumer units.
What is really depressing about these stats? There are more people using Windows 7 than there are using macOS and Linux combined.+0.07% increase from last. Going to screen shot for historical reference. Will be interesting to see if Linux surpasses with Steam Deck release. Linux is already up 0.03% from developer Steam Deck units which is probably like single digit % vs consumer units.
View attachment 1956684
Yes, the G13G (Apple M1) is at 0.92%, and I estimate the G13X (Pro and Max) is at 0.04%, so a total of 0.96% use for ASi Macs.
On the actual Mac side... Valve puts the ASi at 32.83% use. My estimate's slightly higher, at a bit over 34%.
The RAM's been updated to merge the Under 1 GB, 2 GB and 3 GB categories, and in return, we've had Over 16 GB split into 20/24/32/64 and Over 64 GB.
There's not a great deal from that, though, just that 32 GB makes up 5.64% of Macs, 64 GB makes up 1.63%.
I haven't had my coffee yet, so I've forgotten how I got the 0.04% estimate for the G13X.
In October, Valve tried to correct the M1 GPU showing up as the AMD Radeon 8800 by... simply removing it from the GPU list. That's the only one that's been removed in such a way though, so you just have to work out what the rest of the GPUs add up to, to get the result.
Currently, for January's numbers, the listed Mac GPUs add up to 98.17%, so 1.83% from the removed GPU entry. From there, just add 32.83 and 1.83 for 34.66%. It's not scientific, but it's a reasonable guess and matches the CPU core amounts. (Approximately 4% of Macs had 8 cores before the M1, and... 0.23% had 10 core before the M1P/M1M. Some math off the top of the head puts the total increases of both the 8 and 10 core CPUs at... 34-35%.)
What? Sony owns more studios than Microsoft. Microsoft is simply trying to catch up to Sony.
And unlike Sony, the studios of Microsoft release their games on every platform (even on the Playstation).
There will be plenty of exclusives in upcoming years from those newly bought studios.
And even on multiplatform games, GamePass will offer day one access for most (if not all) of them.
Also, MS does not release all their games on every platform.
What do you mean?
Microsoft is buying all those gaming studios mainly for the xCloud. And xCloud will literally be on every device available, from smartphones, tablets and even on TV’s.
I believe it is even announced that WoW (Blizzard main title) is going to smartphones (and tablets?), and thereby expanding the platform.
Microsoft is not like Sony who only makes Playstation exclusives.
And btw, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming has already said he wants to see more people playing WoW and Call of Duty in 5 years than now. So he is obviously not going to restrict those games only to PC and Xbox.
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