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senttoschool

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Nov 2, 2017
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Game Porting tool kit will hopefully yield the games you want by Christmas 2023.
Let's see. I think 2024 will be a far more interesting year for AAA games on Macs.

It seems like the install base, developer tools, and momentum are finally coming together.
 
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Spaceboi Scaphandre

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Jun 8, 2022
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Let's see. I think 2024 will be a far more interesting year for AAA games on Macs.

It seems like the install base, developer tools, and momentum are finally coming together.

Now it'll come down to one question: How many will use the toolkit? If Kojima can't convince developers to come back, no one will.
 
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LeeW

macrumors 601
Feb 5, 2017
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I still don't get how Apple could be 43% of the gaming market

They are not. For May 2023 Steam puts the totals on OS at:

Windows - 96.4%
Mac - 2.39%
Linux - 1.47%

Macs capable of playing AAA games are going up, of course, it will through people buying and upgrading but it still makes no difference to the gaming market itself as there are so few using their Macs for gaming. It's just not what Mac users buy Macs for in the main.

That will improve over time if and when developers embrace porting bigger and better titles. But not significantly. Gamers will never embrace the cost and poor upgradability of Apple devices.
 
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LeeW

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At most it would be ~20%.

To be honest, the only way they could get close to that is by convincing gamers to buy a Mac for gaming. For that to happen they must offer a device that is at a comparable price point as they get today on PC and it needs to be upgradeable at least for SSD/RAM.

Why won't they do that? Because Mac users in general would buy that instead of a Mac Mini, Mac Pro and so on even if not to game on it. And it would last too long which for a device manufacturer is not a positive.
 
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Longplays

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To be honest, the only way they could get close to that is by convincing gamers to buy a Mac for gaming. For that to happen they must offer a device that is at a comparable price point as they get today on PC and it needs to be upgradeable at least for SSD/RAM.

Why won't they do that? Because Mac users in general would buy that instead of a Mac Mini, Mac Pro and so on even if not to game on it. And it would last too long which for a device manufacturer is not a positive.
TBH Mac gaming to the degree & complexity of PC gaming would be a bad use of Apple resources.

Apple makes more money with casual gaming than any other "real gaming" company.

At most Mac gaming would be a slow slog to 20% of STEAM if that is our benchmark for Mac gaming..
 

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,437
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TBH Mac gaming to the degree & complexity of PC gaming would be a bad use of Apple resources.

Apple makes more money with casual gaming than any other "real gaming" company.

At most Mac gaming would be a slow slog to 20% of STEAM if that is our benchmark for Mac gaming..
No one else is releasing numbers for their stores (in terms of actual use) like Steam does. So saying Apple is going to be 50% of the market is misleading because that is counting every Mac where we do not count every PC. Especially considering every mac user may not play games (though the same can be said of pc gaming hardware since folks tend to buy it to do other stuff cause it is cheaper than getting workstations for the same job).
 

Longplays

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No one else is releasing numbers for their stores (in terms of actual use) like Steam does. So saying Apple is going to be 50% of the market is misleading because that is counting every Mac where we do not count every PC. Especially considering every mac user may not play games (though the same can be said of pc gaming hardware since folks tend to buy it to do other stuff cause it is cheaper than getting workstations for the same job).
The 50% figure is either bad English or for the purpose of clickbait to get people reading and replying.

This is MR... who wouldn't click on "M3 chip coming out in Q1 2023?" or "TSMC fails 3nm M3" when obviously 3nm capacity will 1st go with the iPhone chip in Sep then at the earliest M3 by Nov but more likely Q1 2024.
 

Longplays

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Steam says the 1650/1060/3060 are the top GPU's used is the M2 better than those?
I am not updated with the results of those dGPU.

What I do know is that in terms of performance per watt Apple's GPU cores are better than any dGPU.

If I were to be bothered to look up M2 Ultra's GPU core scores it is likely at par with any NVidia flagship.
 

Irishman

macrumors 68040
Nov 2, 2006
3,449
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If the title was

In 3 years, 50% of all Macs capable of playing AAA games will be Apple Silicon​


Then OP would be on point.

I think the op assumes the huge transformational impact of Apple silicon in his thread.

Don’t you think he’s saying that this couldn’t have happened without Apple silicon?
 

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
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The 50% figure is either bad English or for the purpose of clickbait to get people reading and replying.

This is MR... who wouldn't click on "M3 chip coming out in Q1 2023?" or "TSMC fails 3nm M3" when obviously 3nm capacity will 1st go with the iPhone chip in Sep then at the earliest M3 by Nov but more likely Q1 2024.
To be fair, it is specifically worded, 50% of systems capable of playing AAA games (where the baseline is 1050ti, based on Steam). We aren't actually talking about the actual share of systems used to play games though (that number, per Steam has hovered around 2% for pretty much as long as Mac had a Steam client).
 

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,437
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OBX
I am not updated with the results of those dGPU.

What I do know is that in terms of performance per watt Apple's GPU cores are better than any dGPU.

If I were to be bothered to look up M2 Ultra's GPU core scores it is likely at par with any NVidia flagship.
Performance per watt? Yeah it is good. Sadly nvidia has more or less moved the goal post these days so folks aren't really talking much about straight raster any more, everyone is on the RT + DLSS 3 bandwagon. So the actual performance improvement going from say a 3080 Laptop to a 4080 Laptop isn't that great when looking at raster and 1080p (where these newer high end GPUs are CPU limited at lower resolutions).
 

senttoschool

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Original poster
Nov 2, 2017
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Apple built a D12 translation layer for Game Porting Toolkit. And they open sourced it. This means, we may have emulators built around it soon.

There were a lot of people in this thread, over the last 2 years, who said Apple doesn't care or want AAA games. I argued that Apple does, but they never had the capability. Now they do.

Can we put this argument to rest now? Apple does want AAA games. Otherwise, they wouldn't have put in a huge effort to create a translation layer between Metal and D12.
 
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Spaceboi Scaphandre

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Jun 8, 2022
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Apple built a D12 translation layer for Game Porting Toolkit. And they open sourced it. This means, we may have emulators built around it soon.

There were a lot of people in this thread, over the last 2 years, who said Apple doesn't care of want AAA games. I argued that Apple does, but they never had the capability. Now they do.

Can we put this argument to rest now? Apple does want AAA games. Otherwise, they wouldn't have put in a huge effort to create a translation layer between Metal and D12.

I'll stop saying it, if we can get release parity between PC and Mac. If the porting toolkit does that and my PC games are on Mac, then you win. But it's gonna come down to now actually getting people to use it, which good luck because a lot of game devs are still stanchly anti-Mac and anti-Apple due to Apple's business practices and how they expect everyone to move at the beat of their drum
 
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senttoschool

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Nov 2, 2017
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I'll stop saying it, if we can get release parity between PC and Mac. If the porting toolkit does that and my PC games are on Mac, then you win. But it's gonna come down to now actually getting people to use it, which good luck because a lot of game devs are still stanchly anti-Mac.
Let's not move the goal post. It's going to be a long time until there's AAA parity between PC and Mac. It may never because Microsoft is buying up studios left and right.
 

Spaceboi Scaphandre

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Jun 8, 2022
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Let's not move the goal post. It's going to be a long time until there's AAA parity between PC and Mac. It may never because Microsoft is buying up studios left and right.

Goalpost hasn't moved at all. The big problem with gaming on Mac has always been a lack of games. You got the toolkit, so now get the games. Get the game quantity near the level of Windows, then we'll talk.
 

senttoschool

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 2, 2017
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Goalpost hasn't moved at all. The big problem with gaming on Mac has always been a lack of games. You got the toolkit, so now get the games. Get the game quantity near the level of Windows, then we'll talk.
We're talking now without game quantity near the level of Windows.
 
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diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,437
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OBX

Apple built a D12 translation layer for Game Porting Toolkit. And they open sourced it. This means, we may have emulators built around it soon.

There were a lot of people in this thread, over the last 2 years, who said Apple doesn't care or want AAA games. I argued that Apple does, but they never had the capability. Now they do.

Can we put this argument to rest now? Apple does want AAA games. Otherwise, they wouldn't have put in a huge effort to create a translation layer between Metal and D12.
I wonder which feature level of DX12 this supports. If it supports all the way to 12_2 that should be seen as a huge deal.
 

Longplays

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To be fair, it is specifically worded, 50% of systems capable of playing AAA games (where the baseline is 1050ti, based on Steam). We aren't actually talking about the actual share of systems used to play games though (that number, per Steam has hovered around 2% for pretty much as long as Mac had a Steam client).
The title lends itself to controversy. Why else are we "mincing" words?
 

Ethosik

Contributor
Oct 21, 2009
8,142
7,120
I'll stop saying it, if we can get release parity between PC and Mac. If the porting toolkit does that and my PC games are on Mac, then you win. But it's gonna come down to now actually getting people to use it, which good luck because a lot of game devs are still stanchly anti-Mac and anti-Apple due to Apple's business practices and how they expect everyone to move at the beat of their drum
That will never happen. We don’t even have release parity between consoles and PC at times. Not unless mac has overall more than 50% marketshare.

As a dev, there is NOTHING apple can do to make me release my game on both platforms. As long as Windows is more popular, that’s my focus.
 
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