Even then, developers and publishers could make the modifications to run their iPhone/iPad games on Mac but few do that.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
In 3 years, 50% of all computers capable of playing AAA games will be Macs
- Thread starter senttoschool
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Depends on your definition of "many".
Only a very tiny fraction of AAA console games capable of running on recent smartphones and tablet are ported. I'd say less than 1%.
Is it only because these devices aren't powerful enough? I doubt it. Notable AAA games have been ported to the Switch, which is less powerful than a phone from years ago. Yet, there's games aren't ported to smartphones or tablets.
Why is that?
I have two explanations:
- Publishers are missing opportunities for not having properly analyzed the market.
- Publishers have analyzed the marker and have concluded too few people want to play these games on smartphones. Those who do already have a PC/console. I don't think it's only because smartphones don't come with a game pad. I argue that smartphones are still perceived as devices for casual gaming only (partly because they lack AAA games, which is a chicken-egg problem). My point is that Macs will have the same problem. I really don't see publishers porting their games just because Macs are capable of running them. Mac users will have to buy these games, which is not a given. Macs aren't perceived as gaming machines, just like smartphones aren't (excluding casual gaming). And it's not a question of GPU power.
Which goes back to my original argument. Apple is foolish to believe that many AAA games will be ported just because games studios become aware of the GPU performance of recent Macs. Some games will be ported, but not many. Apple needs to change the mindset if they really want AAA gaming to flourish on their platform. They at least need to release some dedicated hardware (game controller, truly gaming-oriented Apple TV…) or purchase some game studios. They have shown no intention of doing either, so they should stop pretending that they are serious about AAA games.
Are you smoking something strange? Facts? I'm not a gamer, but i know dozens, because it's like THE most common use for a PC out of the office environment, by a huge margin. Literally NONE of the serious gamers I know are using anything but custom-built PCs. Not a single one. Zero. The thought of building their gaming-rig from Mac hardware wouldn't even nearly cross their mind. And if you think my 'sample' is a-typical, I invite you to have a look at the gaming community, and you will find it is very very representative.
The thread-title was that by 2023, 1/3rd of computers capable of playing triple-A games would be Macs. Which OBVIOUSLY was bull**** then and is still bull**** now based on the fact that the number of Windows PCs 'out there' in the wild outnumber Macs by literally thousands-to-one. If you don't agree, then you're living in some kind of weird Apple-centric unrepresentative bubble.
Last edited:
Don't know where you get "literally 1000 to 1". That is not based on facts. In fact there are "only" 3.4 times more desktop PCs than Macs and OS-wise there are 4.45 times more Windows devices than Macs, not 1000.
The term porting makes it sound easy. More often than not it isn't.
For some platforms like mac, a gaming studio would need a seperate team to build and maintain the mac version.
That is not worth a $20-200m investment if the projected profit let alone revenue is less.
You are better of developing an android or ios port that will take in hundreds of million or even a few billion in micro transaction.
The future of mac gaming is the iphone, not the mac.
Unity and Unreal support iOS, iPad, and macOS out of the box. These are the 2 most popular engines.
It doesn't cost $20-200m to support a macOS version. AAA titles cost $60-80m TOTAL to make on average according to some sources. Why would a macOS port cost more than double the actual game?
I'm going to guess that it costs $1-2m for a macOS port. 2-3 full-time Metal developers to port the game over, 2-3 customer support/marketing.
To the OP's point I do feel like Apple has been more proactive with this and Apple's share of the market is increasing quite a bit. If you look at their share in United States for example, they hover around 25-30% of the total market and it's possible that within the next 10 years that could be a lot closer to 35-40%. I also think that the industry as a whole will go towards ARM SoC, something Apple is well ahead of the curve on which could really be giving them an edge. There is a lot more going ons, but I haven't seen Mac gaming as vibrant as I am seeing it nowadays in forever.
If Apple reaches 40% in the US, the share of AAA-capable computers would skew heavily towards Macs since even the base M has a significantly more powerful GPU than the average PC sold.
That was the premise of my original post.
Unreal and unity are just graphical engines. There is more to a game than that including plugins and a software stack, both of which mac doesn't always have 1:1 feature parity.
Understanding the limitations of macs and developing work arounds cost time and money.
If the differences between mac and Pc versions are big, the mac port will add 50-100% of the pc version to build. Triple a titles take years to develop.
A skeleton staff of programmers, unity developers, designers, technical support staff, project manager and QA staff for a mac port will cost more than $1m/year.
That's in beta. Developers are risk averse and build on tech that has been battle tested. Hence why properly optimised 3rd party ps5 and series x games have only materialised three years after launch.
5.3 isn't beta anymore. So Nanite should be enabled for macOS M2 and newer systems (cries in M1).
It's silly to think that a macOS port would double the cost. I mean, that's just idiotic.
Unreal and Unity are more than graphical engines. They're engines for gameplay too.
An Unreal game made for PC should automatically work for macOS in theory with minimal changes. The understanding is that Unreal will get even better macOS support over time. Unity will for sure as it's the official recommended engine for VisionOS which surprise, uses Metal and Apple Silicon chips.
You have to test that's its actually working on Mac like it is like PC. This takes time and money because you have to test the entire game, on multiple Mac models. It's no good if the game crashes 50% of the way through on Mac where it doesn't on Windows. Then you need developers that understand MacOS so you can understand WTF it's crashing where the PC version isn't. You need all this even if there is no issues, because there might be. Then you have problem where some plugin or feature isn't supported on MacOS, so potentially you have to work around that or find an alternative. Maybe not double the cost, but non-zero and may not be recouped by Mac sales.
It could increase the development time (maybe not double) which isn't free.
I think that the bigger issue is the maintenance on any code that is developed.
How often do games get multi-year patch support (and don't include micro transactions or seasons [live service games])?
The OS share is still too low for most developers to give making a macOS version a try. Apple would need to be at least 50% of the OS share.
I never said it’s free. The person I’m responding to said it would cost as much as $200m. That’s more money to develop an entire average AAA game.
Makes you wonder how they can release on multiple platforms. XBox, Switch, PS4, PS5, Mac, PC.
If each of those is $200 mil each, that's $1.2 billion alone.
That puts it at more expensive than Cyberpunk 2077, Spiderman 2, and CoD:MW2 from 2009. Combined, and including marketing.
If each of those is $200 mil each, that's $1.2 billion alone.
That puts it at more expensive than Cyberpunk 2077, Spiderman 2, and CoD:MW2 from 2009. Combined, and including marketing.
It doesn't cost $200m each. That's why I said the post is idiotic.
Most money spent on a modern AAA game has always been on marketing & promotion. Technically developing on as many platform as possible, while launching all at the same time should have shared the same promotional cost, this is how most publishers operate. A post-launch release on other unreleased platforms, regardless of the difficult of porting / development, should have a dramatically less footprint in cost, assuming the game is already known and thus wanted by players in the first place, so not as much of a need to "promo".
2024 January Steam Survey puts Apple Silicon at 70.17% (+0.03%) market share on macOS.
Basically a flat month but the M3 series gain in popularity across the board.
| SoC | Market share | Change |
| M1 | 28.04 % | +0.06 % |
| M2 | 15.15 % | +0.52 % |
| M1 Pro | 11.61 % | -0.66 % |
| M1 Max | 4.60 % | -0.48 % |
| M2 Pro | 4.59 % | -0.15 % |
| M2 Max | 2.22 % | -0.11 % |
| M3 Pro | 1.90 % | +0.49 % |
| M3 Max | 1.09 % | +0.17 % |
| M3 | 0.67 % | +0.24 % |
| M1 Ultra | 0.21 % | -0.03 % |
| M2 Ultra | 0.09 % | -0.02 % |
| Intel | 29.83 % | -0.03 % |
Basically a flat month but the M3 series gain in popularity across the board.