In the last two weeks, I've gotten the Steam survey invite on my Mac, my gaming PC, and even the copy of Steam I installed under Crossover to run Cyberpunk...
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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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In the last two weeks, I've gotten the Steam survey invite on my Mac, my gaming PC, and even the copy of Steam I installed under Crossover to run Cyberpunk...
Interesting... I had the same, Crossover, Parallels, a Windows laptop but never on the Mac
It came out almost four years ago and since then Apple is basically in the same spot with gaming. There are like two big games that got brought to Apple Silicon and put behind the Mac App Store at full price, and besides that nothing has changed. It is the same old chicken and egg problem. There are not enough people gaming on Macs so developers won't build a Mac version of their game. And since there are not enough games on Mac, there are not more people wanting to use Mac as a gaming platform. It also doesn't help that Apple refuses to use things like Vulkan or Proton to bridge the gap, and instead just keep going their Metal route. Valve has made tremendous strides making gaming viable on Linux and if only Apple would start to really care about gaming, they could work with Valve or use their tools to help more games come over to macOS. I see that the GPT helped a lot and it is really impressive what the M chips can do through so many translation layers. It would be amazing to see what these chips could REALLY do if all these games were running native on Apple Silicon.
That's simply not true.
Vulkan is also very overrated and something hardcore Linux fans often use as an argument. Vulkan has very little native support among Windows games. Of currently 167,665 Windows games only 212 are made with Vulkan. That's 0.12%. Even Khronos Group itself recommends other APIs for the sole purpose of game development due to Vulkan being a more difficult API to learn and use. Metal is one of the easier APIs but still has very advanced features for those who like. We also do have Proton on Mac. It's called Crossover and is made by the same team who helped to make Proton, Codeweavers. Crossover also uses Apple's GPTK.
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Ok, it’s 3 instead of two. Baldurs Gate 3, No Man’s Sky, and RE Village.
Still far from truth. Sounds as if it was a long time ago you followed Mac gaming news. There are 4 games only in Resident Evil series that have been ported to Mac, with the fourth RE 2 Remake coming in Dec. All the RE games are also on sale with 40-60% discount right now on Mac App Store and it's not the first time they go on sale.
Actually, the claim is that "50% of all computers capable of playing AAA games will be Macs", not that Macs will have 50% of AAA games ported/running natively in macOS.
My M1 Mac Mini is capable of running many AAA games, even with Crossover, albeit rather slowly, as compared to doesn't run at all.
Just saying.
My M1 Mac Mini is capable of running many AAA games, even with Crossover, albeit rather slowly, as compared to doesn't run at all.
Just saying.
Are there games that won't run at all on Intel/AMD iGPUs?
That's good news... for Linux gaming so I'm not sure what it has to do with Mac unless you're willing to run Linux on your Mac. DXVK already exists in Proton and Crossover. I'm talking about native support, i.e. games made with Vulkan. The other facts I mentioned remains. Vulkan wasn't made primarily for game development but for computer graphics.
Khronos Vulkan® Tutorial :: Vulkan Documentation Project
docs.vulkan.org
"It is targeted at programmers who are enthusiastic about high performance computer graphics, and are willing to put some work in. If you are more interested in game development, rather than computer graphics, then you may wish to stick to OpenGL or Direct3D, which will not be deprecated in favor of Vulkan anytime soon. Another alternative is to use an engine like Unreal Engine or Unity, which will be able to use Vulkan while exposing a much higher level API to you. Vulkan puts more work and responsibility into the application. Not every developer will want to make that extra investment, but those that do so correctly can find power and performance improvements.”
BG3, No Man's Sky, RE:Village, RE7: Biohazard, GRID Legends, Valheim, RE4, Asphalt 8, Civ VI, Asphalt Legends, Frostpunk 2, Death Stranding Director's Cut, Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Divinity: Original Sin 2, and the list goes on. That's just some of the titles available on the App Store. I could start going through my Steam library also if you need even more examples...
From time to time I try out a few games on my mac and it's still the same stuttery unresponsive mess even with the least demanding ones (Balatro for example which is a 2D card game or Factorio which runs natively on Apple Sillicon). I can't imagine mac being at the same level to compete with Windows as a desktop gaming platform ever. Of course the few listed last-gen games above me might run somewhat smooth at the lowest settings possible AND upscaled from like 900p at 30-60fps on your $3000 machine but as soon as you try to play something more demanding it's immediately apparent how weak macs still are for gaming.
Checking on other message boards and reddit, Factorio runs well on their AS machines. In fact, I run much more graphically heavy game than yours(Tropico 6 at Med to High settings late game) and it is on the upper 50 to 60 fps on my M2 Air. Civ 6(High settings) at a very playable framerate at late game. I don't know what you are doing to get such bad results.
And also, some have reportedly detailed that M3 Max can run at Death Stranding at 4K 60fps at MetalFX off. Some have M1 Max running at 4K 30fps at MetalFX off. And the RE:Village at 4K have a good upscaling at the Balanced and Quality preset.
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Framerate is not all that matters. Frametime and response time do too. Apple has a tendency to not use LCDs with low response times which can feel unresponsive, bad frametimes can feel stuttery.
But the poster specifically talks about fps. Plus, he mentioned Factorio, it isn’t really a fast paced game.
He said:
Having a very high response time doesn't come in play when talking about slow paced games like Factorio and a card game.
And his last sentence talks not about the screen but the hardware itself. You can use an external monitor with a high response time with a Mac so saying so his last sentence should be a moot point but he already included it.
M4 is about 12.7% faster than M3 in gaming. Unfortunately, that doesn't move the needle much for base model gaming.
"Testing conducted by Apple August through October 2024 using preproduction 14-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 32GB of RAM, production 14-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M3, 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 24GB of RAM, production 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, and 16GB of RAM, and production 1.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645 and 16GB of RAM, all configured with 2TB SSD. Prerelease World of Warcraft: The War Within v11.0.5.56695 tested at 2217x1440 resolution on 14-inch systems, and 2048x1280 resolution on 13-inch systems, with graphics slider set to 4. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro."
"Testing conducted by Apple August through October 2024 using preproduction 14-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M4, 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 32GB of RAM, production 14-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M3, 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 24GB of RAM, production 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, and 16GB of RAM, and production 1.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645 and 16GB of RAM, all configured with 2TB SSD. Prerelease World of Warcraft: The War Within v11.0.5.56695 tested at 2217x1440 resolution on 14-inch systems, and 2048x1280 resolution on 13-inch systems, with graphics slider set to 4. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro."
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I agree. We all also play games differently:
-Resolution
-Graphical settings
-AI features on or off
Furthermore performance between different hardware can be big or small depending on the type of game e.g rpg, fps or simulation.
It has always been frustrated I can only play very few quality beat em up games on Mac. So I have gathered a small team last year and tried to build game on Mac. We got good progress and is almost ready release next year. These are some screenshots. We are pushing the graphic quality more, but it would be less fluid than a usual game on M1. Now any M chip machine would run smoothly.
Attachments
It's definitely getting a bit better, with games like Civ 7 coming to Mac at launch
I see the mac more as a good platform for those who are only casual gamers, where gaming is a secondary thing
If you're a hardcore gamer, the mac is still a no go
I see the mac more as a good platform for those who are only casual gamers, where gaming is a secondary thing
If you're a hardcore gamer, the mac is still a no go