Look at Apple today. They were the world's first $3 trillion company. They're still worth over $2 trillion. Is there any doubt Tim Cook wants everything?
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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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Yes, but, I do only buy Macs, and have been doing so since the 90's for desktop publishing, and I've been doing so mostly recently to learn Blender 3D, so I'm used to getting criticisms from PC folks that "Macs suck for anything that needs a strong GPU"!
Not anymore, they don't! And the Blender Foundation sees that, having created a Apple Silicon-native version of Blender. This makes my late 2012 iMac feel even older and slower!
BUT, I also game on the side, and only want to have to own and support one machine for both purposes. I'm one of those freaks who still sees value in the much smaller target that gets put on the Mac market by those creating viruses and malware. That value is immeasurable to me, so I will never choose XBOX, PC, PS4, PS5. When I finally give in to the urge to buy one of the new Mac Minis with the M2 Pro chip (at around $1600 configured the way I want it), that will end up being the least I've ever paid for a new Mac!
And it will end up being just the affordable, gaming Mac I've always wanted. And the new article making the rounds now in this thread about how Apple feels about courting gamers and devs show me that this is not accidental success like they've had on iOS in recent years. This is very intentional.
Now, if I can just talk myself into waiting a year for M3! That'll probably be the smarter move, right?
You can do this,Interesting,Many players insist on staying at MAC and are eager to play a large number of AAA-level games at MAC, but I think it is unlikely to be realized.
Although IOS has a large number of game users, many of the games I see are medium-scale games that belong to "in-game purchases". They just publish to IOS to make more money, and are not intended to give you better games. These games are useless except for low-level plots, endless tasks, and raffle in exchange for fate cards (which costs US dollars). My friend does this kind of work. He tells me about the business.
They are (Refers to games of "in-game purchase" type) not interesting, but they make money.
In the future, there will be a large number of games of this type landing on IOS to extract more players' pocket money.
It depends on how serious Apple is about their current push into AAA gaming.
I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is and continue to support Apple with my money.
Also, my brother-in-law is a network coder at Epic Games. He tells me about the business.
Lastly, despite the friction between Apple and Epic, WE ARE getting back Fortnite on Apple devices (unless someone has hacked Tim Sweeney's Twitter account twice), and we've already gotten back Unreal Engine 5.1 support on the back end, for those who want to develop Lumen and Nanite games for the Mac.
I was reading through the 41 pages of this thread and a lot of replies are based on decades of gaming PC practices.
So any new concept that disrupts how business gets done gets derided as impossible.
Then a year or two later it was proven that it was just a design decision to support a business model.
I look forward to Nov 2023 or better yet 2024-2034 to see what old way of doing this becomes obsolete.
If a video console like the Playstation, Xbox and Switch are permitted to remain raw performance static for half a decade to a full decade before a "Pro" or next gen console comes out without user upgradeable parts then it should work with Apple Silicon to a certain extent.
So any new concept that disrupts how business gets done gets derided as impossible.
Then a year or two later it was proven that it was just a design decision to support a business model.
I look forward to Nov 2023 or better yet 2024-2034 to see what old way of doing this becomes obsolete.
If a video console like the Playstation, Xbox and Switch are permitted to remain raw performance static for half a decade to a full decade before a "Pro" or next gen console comes out without user upgradeable parts then it should work with Apple Silicon to a certain extent.
Using the Vulkan API on mobile phones is very painful, although it is very advanced.
More programmers would rather use the poor gles2.0 - 3.0 because it is very simple.
Programmers or game companies are always pursuing the way to spend the least effort and earn the most money. There are not many vulkan programmers, at least not as many as opengl. Making a game with a vulkan rendering interface will cost more money than the es interface. Not to mention the metal that needs to be relearned. In addition to programmers who often develop under the Apple platform, few programmers will take the initiative to master metal. Most of the APIs that beginners are exposed to are opengl or dx11.
More programmers would rather use the poor gles2.0 - 3.0 because it is very simple.
Programmers or game companies are always pursuing the way to spend the least effort and earn the most money. There are not many vulkan programmers, at least not as many as opengl. Making a game with a vulkan rendering interface will cost more money than the es interface. Not to mention the metal that needs to be relearned. In addition to programmers who often develop under the Apple platform, few programmers will take the initiative to master metal. Most of the APIs that beginners are exposed to are opengl or dx11.
Not surprising since they don't intend to support Apple Silicon.
But they are properly supported for a decade.
If a developer release a game today on MacOS. What are the chances it will still run on a 2033 version of MacOS?
Don't need to go that far to come to conclusion that if app goes unsupported it most likely will not run on newer iterations of OS. It's been like that for decades and it what gives Apple performance edge over Windows.
But equally it’s what gives consoles and windows an edge over Apple too.
It’s not necessarily “better” but a different model.
But the comparison of Apple to a decade long gaming platform isn’t relevant when arguing in favour of mac platforms.
Actually, how does it benefit the game developer if they have to support their game when there's no longer any revenue coming in?
I don't think game developer cares. They only care about making money now. They don't care if their games don't run 10 years from now in the latest OS.
Old games maintain interest for sequels. For example, there is still an active Dragon Age fan community, even though the last game was released in 2014 and the last DLC in 2015. And now it looks like the next game might be released in about a year.
As a member of the PC Master Race AND Mac owner, I completely disagree with this post. The number of sold gaming PCs that is quoted ignores the huge number of hand built gaming rigs. It also forgets that gamers like being able to upgrade their components at will. Macs do NOT let users upgrade much if anything. PC gamers also like high refresh rate monitors and Apple doesn’t seem interested in that market. I hate Windows as much as the next Mac user, but it’s a necessary evil to play games at acceptable high frame rates or with ray tracing.
Apple supports high refresh monitors (sorta), not as easily as Windows but there is support.
I don't think there is a sizable percentage of people that build their own PC's. It is a pretty niche group.
I don’t get this. I would think many who may play the sequel may never have played the first.
IMHO, game developer just consider market share of a target platform. They don’t really care about how long their game can be played by future OS releases.
Edit: And I would add that only consumers care about longevity as nobody would be happy to keep paying for games, but that is exactly what game developer wants.
That may be the case for AAA games, where they need to hit release sales then they can just leave it.
But plenty of game studios live on continued sales, and even in the past couple of years there’s been numerous (now popular) titles that went viral years after release.
For Apple to offer a “gaming platform” it needs to be more than AAA game friendly. They may grab the headlines but isn’t the be all end all of gaming.
So you don't think Apple game developers should update old games for Apple Silicon support?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but many (most?) apple game developers never updated their games from 32bit to 64bit, never mind a shift to a new platform
Yeah there's a big difference between capable of playing AAA games, and actually playing AAA games.
Yes the hardware and userbase is there, there's no doubt about the power of Apple Silicon (after all it got me to switch after a lifetime of being a hardcore Mac hater.) But will it actually have AAA games to run? Very doubtful, and it's for one reason and one reason only: Apple
Apple has made game development on macOS an absolute nightmare. OpenGL divested, refusing to adopt Vulkan, killing 32 bit app support, breaking any and all legacy games, and just an absolute out of touch mindset with the game industry has caused a mass developer exodus and the majority of game developers to just ignore the platform. Doesn't matter how good Apple Silicon is and how big Mac has become, for they don't wanna go through the effort of learning an API only usable on one platform, a platform who's platform holder actively hates them, when it's just miles easier to develop for just PS5 and PC. (And no, MoltenVK is not a viable option as it has it's limitations as you're still at the mercy of Metal.)
Yes the hardware and userbase is there, there's no doubt about the power of Apple Silicon (after all it got me to switch after a lifetime of being a hardcore Mac hater.) But will it actually have AAA games to run? Very doubtful, and it's for one reason and one reason only: Apple
Apple has made game development on macOS an absolute nightmare. OpenGL divested, refusing to adopt Vulkan, killing 32 bit app support, breaking any and all legacy games, and just an absolute out of touch mindset with the game industry has caused a mass developer exodus and the majority of game developers to just ignore the platform. Doesn't matter how good Apple Silicon is and how big Mac has become, for they don't wanna go through the effort of learning an API only usable on one platform, a platform who's platform holder actively hates them, when it's just miles easier to develop for just PS5 and PC. (And no, MoltenVK is not a viable option as it has it's limitations as you're still at the mercy of Metal.)
The only macOS games I had on Steam can no longer be played because Apple won't let you play 32-bit games anymore.
Not true. SimCity 2013 is still for sale on the Mac App Store and it's unplayable, doesn't work right.
Guild Wars 2 shut down their Mac version with the release of macOS Mojave as with Apple removing OpenGL support they did not want to work on it anymore. Same with the Mac version of Rocket League.
Metal Gear Rising Revengance had a Mac port at one point (which is also unplayable but that's because it had a bizarre DRM and now the Mac version is lost to time)
And what if Rosetta 2 is removed from macOS later on down the road? Then we'll have another wave of games no longer playable just like what happened with Rosetta 1.
Apple doesn't support anything which is why game devs don't want to deal with them anymore.