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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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The Apple Silicon numbers for 2024 December also reached 111.83% with Intel being down -34.51% for the month for a total marketshare on macOS at -11.83% ...
We all should just disregard 2024 December as a data point on the Steam Hardware Survey.
Comparing the 2024 November to 2025 January numbers make much more sense.
We all should just disregard 2024 December as a data point on the Steam Hardware Survey.
Comparing the 2024 November to 2025 January numbers make much more sense.
| SoC | Marketshare | Change (2024 Nov vs 2025 Jan) |
|---|---|---|
| M1 | 22.32% | -1.27% |
| Intel | 21.09% | -1.59% |
| M2 | 15.29% | -0.26% |
| M3 | 8.78% | +0.94% |
| M1 Pro | 8.61% | -0.80% |
| M3 Pro | 4.68% | -0.42% |
| M4 | 3.94% | +1.73% |
| M2 Pro | 3.92% | -0.12% |
| M1 Max | 3.34% | -0.07% |
| M4 Pro | 3.00% | +0.93% |
| M3 Max | 1.95% | +0.02% |
| M2 Max | 1.93% | +0.55% |
| M4 Max | 0.91% | +0.40% |
| M1 Ultra | 0.13% | -0.01% |
| M2 Ultra | 0.11% | -0.03% |
Even Nintendo isn't interested in mac users https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2...lease-windows-for-major-upcoming-switch-games
Steam OS Survey eight year overview from 2018 to 2025. Windows stagnant at top while Linux overtakes MacOS which loses marketshare year-over-year since x64 to ARM switchover.
Interesting that Windows is gaining ground in the x86 -> ARM transition.
But I guess that follows, I think I've opened up Steam twice on my M4 Macbook, simply because 99% of the games I want to play are PPC games, or use Wine Bottler. I'm certainly not buying AAA games on macOS.
But I guess that follows, I think I've opened up Steam twice on my M4 Macbook, simply because 99% of the games I want to play are PPC games, or use Wine Bottler. I'm certainly not buying AAA games on macOS.
How do you see Windows on ARM gaining ground? WoA gaming is also a hot mess with price trending downwards towards half msrp and its existence is at risk. For iGPU gaming people tend to gravitate towards Ryzen or Lunar Lake with the spotlight on the upcoming Ryzen 395 "Strix Halo". Something like this at around 100W or less when I don't need a full power <300W ITX SFF.
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Surprising to see people still using Steam statistics without fully understanding the mechanisms and data behind it despite all previous discussions and explanations. With different comparison points statistics can show something meaningful and relevant or something misleading and useless. It all depends on the point of view and the purpose. When it comes to Mac gaming it’s no news that some people always tend to pick the worst comparison points for some strange personal reasons.
To start with, the Linux market share on Steam consists of two parts, desktop Linux and Steam Deck OS. Last month the total number was 2.06% but that consists of 34.93% for SteamOS Holo which is Steam Deck’s OS and 65.07% for desktop Linux. It means that Steam Deck had 0.72% market share and Linux had 1.34%. With 1.4% macOS still has a bigger share than Linux. That has been the case since Steam Deck was included in the statistics so Linux has never surpassed macOS and it was only after two years of market growth that Steam Deck and Linux together could have a larger market share in 2024, but each on its own still has smaller market share.
Another important fact is that Steam survey shows a platform’s market share compared to the total number of monthly active users on Steam, based on a small survey with thousands randomly selected users out of probably 175 million monthly users. It can never be considered as an accurate representation of the actual numbers. This has been addressed in tech media before. ExtremeTech says ”We've always warned readers that the SHS might not be accurate, based on problems we've observed in the data set in the past, but it's never been clear what the problems were”.
According to Scott Herkelman, Senior VP & GM Graphics Business Unit at AMD, ”Steam's survey isn't meant to measure hardware market share for companies. It's supposed to tell developers what kind of products are in-market. Valve has never been particularly concerned with making sure its numbers track real-life market share.”
That’s the reason AMD has always been underrepresented in the survey. "They did change their algorithm a little bit, but they really aren't motivated to go in and change this, because the purpose of their data is not for market share. The purpose of their data is to show general trends to game developers. It definitely doesn't track our real share. You can see the same thing actually happen in our CPU share. It's still under-represented”.
Tom’s HW says ”I've followed the Steam Hardware Survey for a long time, wondering at the statistics behind the data. The past few months give me (even more) reason to suspect it isn't a proper random sampling of users, which means no one should attempt to draw any meaningful conclusions. Valve has never revealed any details of how the survey gets conducted, but I suspect (based on being sampled on three different PCs all within a day or two of each other, all of which were using a 3080 card for testing) there's a higher chance for it to ask for someone's hardware details if it doesn't recognize the graphics card".
"This means new cards like the RTX 30-series are much more likely to get included. However, that's just a guess, and it's possible Valve is actually doing a proper random sampling and simply hasn't made that fact public. Still, without a clear explanation of the methodology, we shouldn't take these figures as any true indication of the distribution of various GPU models or other hardware, even among Steam users”.
”Let me close by once again calling on Valve to do the right thing and provide a clear statement on the statistics behind the survey. If it's a random sampling, tell us so we (and more importantly, game developers) know we can put more confidence in the numbers, and tell us (approximately) how many PCs were surveyed. And if it's not a proper statistical analysis, then fix it. Thousands of undergrad statistics students could explain what needs to be changed. It would also be great to allow numbers nerds like me to get the full list of GPUs, even for those with only a 0.01% share”.
ExtremeTech says ”The one thing that makes no sense in all this is why Valve doesn't care about inaccuracies in its own data set. The purpose of the SHS may not be to present accurate market share data, but presenting developers with inaccurate data is scarcely better. The only conclusion we can draw is that Valve doesn't feel whatever inaccuracy remains is enough to impact what developers do. AMD obviously felt strongly enough about the topic to publicly state the problems with using the SHS for market share estimates”.
That is perhaps the most important point here. Even Valve itself didn’t start the survey to know market shares but what system specifications to target before releasing Half-Life 2. We’ve heard all kinds of arguments here about declining Mac market share, Mac gaming being ”doomed” and developers having no reasons to make Mac games but I’ve always said that Mac game developers know their market best. Otherwise we wouldn’t get all kinds of games for decades.
What’s most important for the developers is actual numbers, not numbers in relation to other numbers. What matters is how many potential Mac gamers would play a certain game, how many copies the game would sell and if those numbers are large enough for doing a Mac port. So even with Steam’s own numbers there are more than 2.5 million Mac gamers and that’s enough for big and small developers to bring AAA/AA/indie games to Mac.
Another reason for the supposedly declining Mac market share on Steam can be simple math. If the number of Mac users stays the same or grows slower than the other platforms the declining share doesn’t mean the number has decreased, but that the other numbers have grown. The accurate way would be to compare the actual Mac numbers with each other over the years. Only then we would know if the number of Mac gamers is increasing or decreasing.
Another more accurate way of measurement is the number of released Mac games. Steamdb shows that on the contrary more Mac games have been released each year since 2019 with a record-breaking of 6238 games last year, only on Steam. So why are developers releasing more and more AAA/AA/indie Mac games in different stores if Mac market share is shrinking according to some PC gamers? Because as explained above Steam stats don’t show the important truth and developers rely on their experience and other metrics, not Steam survey. In 2023 16% of the devs at GDC were working on a Mac project. Last year the number increased to 23%, surpassing Switch projects.
To start with, the Linux market share on Steam consists of two parts, desktop Linux and Steam Deck OS. Last month the total number was 2.06% but that consists of 34.93% for SteamOS Holo which is Steam Deck’s OS and 65.07% for desktop Linux. It means that Steam Deck had 0.72% market share and Linux had 1.34%. With 1.4% macOS still has a bigger share than Linux. That has been the case since Steam Deck was included in the statistics so Linux has never surpassed macOS and it was only after two years of market growth that Steam Deck and Linux together could have a larger market share in 2024, but each on its own still has smaller market share.
Another important fact is that Steam survey shows a platform’s market share compared to the total number of monthly active users on Steam, based on a small survey with thousands randomly selected users out of probably 175 million monthly users. It can never be considered as an accurate representation of the actual numbers. This has been addressed in tech media before. ExtremeTech says ”We've always warned readers that the SHS might not be accurate, based on problems we've observed in the data set in the past, but it's never been clear what the problems were”.
According to Scott Herkelman, Senior VP & GM Graphics Business Unit at AMD, ”Steam's survey isn't meant to measure hardware market share for companies. It's supposed to tell developers what kind of products are in-market. Valve has never been particularly concerned with making sure its numbers track real-life market share.”
That’s the reason AMD has always been underrepresented in the survey. "They did change their algorithm a little bit, but they really aren't motivated to go in and change this, because the purpose of their data is not for market share. The purpose of their data is to show general trends to game developers. It definitely doesn't track our real share. You can see the same thing actually happen in our CPU share. It's still under-represented”.
Tom’s HW says ”I've followed the Steam Hardware Survey for a long time, wondering at the statistics behind the data. The past few months give me (even more) reason to suspect it isn't a proper random sampling of users, which means no one should attempt to draw any meaningful conclusions. Valve has never revealed any details of how the survey gets conducted, but I suspect (based on being sampled on three different PCs all within a day or two of each other, all of which were using a 3080 card for testing) there's a higher chance for it to ask for someone's hardware details if it doesn't recognize the graphics card".
"This means new cards like the RTX 30-series are much more likely to get included. However, that's just a guess, and it's possible Valve is actually doing a proper random sampling and simply hasn't made that fact public. Still, without a clear explanation of the methodology, we shouldn't take these figures as any true indication of the distribution of various GPU models or other hardware, even among Steam users”.
”Let me close by once again calling on Valve to do the right thing and provide a clear statement on the statistics behind the survey. If it's a random sampling, tell us so we (and more importantly, game developers) know we can put more confidence in the numbers, and tell us (approximately) how many PCs were surveyed. And if it's not a proper statistical analysis, then fix it. Thousands of undergrad statistics students could explain what needs to be changed. It would also be great to allow numbers nerds like me to get the full list of GPUs, even for those with only a 0.01% share”.
ExtremeTech says ”The one thing that makes no sense in all this is why Valve doesn't care about inaccuracies in its own data set. The purpose of the SHS may not be to present accurate market share data, but presenting developers with inaccurate data is scarcely better. The only conclusion we can draw is that Valve doesn't feel whatever inaccuracy remains is enough to impact what developers do. AMD obviously felt strongly enough about the topic to publicly state the problems with using the SHS for market share estimates”.
That is perhaps the most important point here. Even Valve itself didn’t start the survey to know market shares but what system specifications to target before releasing Half-Life 2. We’ve heard all kinds of arguments here about declining Mac market share, Mac gaming being ”doomed” and developers having no reasons to make Mac games but I’ve always said that Mac game developers know their market best. Otherwise we wouldn’t get all kinds of games for decades.
What’s most important for the developers is actual numbers, not numbers in relation to other numbers. What matters is how many potential Mac gamers would play a certain game, how many copies the game would sell and if those numbers are large enough for doing a Mac port. So even with Steam’s own numbers there are more than 2.5 million Mac gamers and that’s enough for big and small developers to bring AAA/AA/indie games to Mac.
Another reason for the supposedly declining Mac market share on Steam can be simple math. If the number of Mac users stays the same or grows slower than the other platforms the declining share doesn’t mean the number has decreased, but that the other numbers have grown. The accurate way would be to compare the actual Mac numbers with each other over the years. Only then we would know if the number of Mac gamers is increasing or decreasing.
Another more accurate way of measurement is the number of released Mac games. Steamdb shows that on the contrary more Mac games have been released each year since 2019 with a record-breaking of 6238 games last year, only on Steam. So why are developers releasing more and more AAA/AA/indie Mac games in different stores if Mac market share is shrinking according to some PC gamers? Because as explained above Steam stats don’t show the important truth and developers rely on their experience and other metrics, not Steam survey. In 2023 16% of the devs at GDC were working on a Mac project. Last year the number increased to 23%, surpassing Switch projects.
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As the saying goes, "There are lies, damn lies, and there are statistics."
The Steam Deck runs Linux. It's just Linux. Literally everything I can do on my desktop PC with Linux can be done on the Steam Deck, hardware permitting. You don't get to pretend it doesn't count and therefore it's never surpassed MacOS. It has.
And while there's clearly some issues with the Steam hardware survey, you can get very accurate survey results on a population in the millions with a sample size of a few thousand. That's not a problem. Yes, to have better confidence in the data Valve really should explain somewhere WTF they are doing exactly but the problem is not randomly sampling thousands out of millions.
Finally, for the trillionth time, number of games releasing on platform is also misleading. More and more games release on Steam each year. You need to look at the proportion of games releasing on each platform. It's not hard to see that the proportion of Steam games that release on Mac has fallen from ~47% in 2014 to ~25% in 2022/2023/2024. That's not a good sign.
Another element on Steam, I check a daily queue of highlighted games, 90% of them without fail go on my ignore list, most are not Mac compatible, which is neither here or there as far as this discussion, just that the majority of games I see are crap, or if you prefer, they don’t suit me.
Yeah guess in 2014 not as many games were released as now and most games released now are just simply crap games so the comparison is not really that great. But hey Mac will not surpass Windows anytime soon and most likely never. But more and more games are getting released on Mac and even on the same launch day so that is great for people like me.
Nobody will argue that if your a true gamer to buy a Mac, ofc not buy your Windows machine and go.
I am happy with the games I can play and it's getting better while enjoying MacOS and the hardware, things look bright and getting better.
The topic title will never happen, unless we get like a Mac Mini with a GPU like a 4080 for that price.
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I'm ready to dump Windows for SteamOS or some other Linux distribution. With every update Windows 11 Pro becomes more laggy. I'm just concerned that my RTX 3050 Ti won't be as usable as it is now. Supposedly, drivers are being integrated into a new kernel but it still feels like a free-for-all trying to find the right parts.From 2023-
Mac vs. PC: Which Is Better for Gaming? - IGN
Gaming on Macs is possible, but is it on par with PCs yet?www.ign.com
Mac vs. PC Gaming: Verdict
The battle between Mac and PC gaming remains simple to summarize. PC gaming is better, period.
PC gamers can enjoy a wider variety of hardware and games, and can purchase them at lower prices. There’s entire genres of games, like VR games and flight simulators, that have little or no community on the Mac. The hardware and software support just isn’t there.
Mac gaming is rapidly improving, however, and now presents a viable alternative to the PC for some gamers. There’s fewer games, and fewer peripherals, but some popular titles are now officially supported on the Mac, and high-end Mac hardware can play compatible games at smooth, fluid framerates.
PC gaming is the clear victor and the preferred platform for most gamers—but if you’re happy to stick with a more limited library, or simply prefer the look and feel or MacOS, you’ll find plenty to keep you entertained.
The proprietary Nvidia Linux drivers are generally OK on a distro like Ubuntu or Linux Mint. AMD is arguably a better choice still especially if you want to use SteamOS (or the unofficial versions anyways). I haven't tested it in a bit but DX12 games were a no go on Intel Arc on Linux. Not sure if they've added support for sparse residency yet. Intel is fine for other stuff though.
Supposedly, someone has been working to include better support for Intel graphics hardware. The trouble is finding all the pieces in one place. In the old days, I might have created my own operating system, but I'm past wanting such a task.
I wish my Ryzen 7 5800H had decent graphics hardware but I tried running Unreal Tournament 2004 and it was worse than it ran in 2004. I want to be certain whatever I do that I'm using the RTX 3050 Ti. Since it's a laptop computer, I cannot easily modify anything.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the M4 Ultra Mac Studio brings. I know it’ll cost more than building a PC and won’t match a high end nvidia card, nor will the availability of games get better on Mac BUT it may just be the first Mac to get me to completely ditch my gaming PC and just live with the shortcomings. I like what I am seeing with games running through emulation on the new Mac’s and porting toolkit. Native games will never reach the same level on Mac but as long as the emulation layer improves it doesn’t matter. It’s what the Steam Deck does and it’s fantastic (apart from some multiplayer games with anti cheat).
I've been using Linux and Proton exclusively on my gaming desktop for about 6 months, and have no complaints. Now that said, I game at 1440p on a 60Hz display, so my 4070 isn't being pushed - CP2077 is the most modern title I play. Therefore I'm not feeling any performance difference between Windows and Linux. One of these days I'll buy a monitor with a higher refresh rate and perhaps my attitude will change, but right now it's been nice to give Windows the finger.
It’s like keep up or be left behind, an age old tech dilemma. Not said to be snarky. I’m not having issues with my window hardware, but I updated just about everything last year. See my signature.
I'm glad that you aren't having a problem.
ASUS put together a good machine but Microsoft generally doesn't care whether a machine runs well past its warranty expiration date. The M1 MacBook Air generally runs things well with Sonoma, but most of the games I want to play probably won't run through Proton or WINE.
It’s not about pretending but again statistics. The point here was that Steam’s Linux statistics consist of desktop PCs and handheld gaming devices and it was only when Valve brought Steam Deck into the game the Linux market share could surpass macOS. So if people want to say Linux PCs and Steam Decks together have larger market share than Mac on Steam they could but then we should also bring in other handheld gaming devices that run macOS variants like iPhone and iPad. Just as SteamOS is a Linux variant iOS and iPadOS are macOS (OS X) variants. macOS is getting more like iOS and iPhone/iPad can run more and more Mac games and even other Mac apps. It only would be fair. You don’t get to pretend that Apple gamers outside the Steam platform don’t count either. People talk as if Steam is the only gaming platform/store.
And so what if Linux has ”overtaken” macOS for two years? What’s the purpose of posting 8 screenshots just to say that like the other user? What benefit do PC gamers have of that information by randomly pointing it out in a Mac forum? Do Mac developers care about that? No, because that doesn’t show the actual numbers I talked about before. We see that they release more games each year, the number of projects in development has increased by 7% at GDC and more major developers have joined the Apple Silicon party every year.
The problem is that nobody knows the details about the Steam survey. It’s not just about sample size but also confidence level and margin of error. It becomes more problematic when we’re talking about such small market shares like 1.4% and 2.06% where the difference is only 0.54%. Then you can’t have 3-5% margin of error and 95% confidence level. AMD and others apparently don’t think the survey is ”very accurate”. Again if the number of Mac users stays the same or grows slower than the other platforms the declining share doesn’t mean the number has decreased, but that the other numbers have grown faster. The accurate way would be to compare the actual Mac numbers with each other over the years. Only then we would know if the number of Mac gamers is increasing or decreasing.
You are also a very good example of why Steam statistics are unreliable. You have a Linux PC and a Steam Deck. You are one and the same user but are reported as two thanks to two different devices. The situation is reversed for Mac gamers. All those 200K gamers on Reddit who use Crossover, Parallels, VMware Fusion, GPTK, Whisky and more are reported as Windows users. With Crossover and similar solutions we’re cutting down the Mac numbers and boosting the Windows numbers. As it was said in the previous articles Steam survey also seems to choose users with new systems more often. I got the survey when I got my new Mac and two times when I started to use Crossover on different macOS volumes. Since we Mac users don’t change our computers or its parts as often as PC gamers we also get the survey more rarely.
Yes, we’ve had this discussion before and no, it’s still not misleading…for the trillionth time. You’re making the same mistake about the usage of the statistics because you only look at the percentage and don’t take other facts into consideration. You are choosing a comparison point that supports your negative point of view on Mac gaming as usual. Each year far more games are released for Windows than Mac. 2024 the Windows releases increased by 33.8%, 2023 16.5%. Mac releases increased by 12.2% and 9.1%. Since the big money is in PC gaming and that market grows faster it’s natural that developers release more and more games for Windows. Since Mac gaming market grows much slower or is stagnant it’s also natural that fewer but more popular quality games are released for Mac. As others here already have stated too (even avid PC gamers) there are far more ”crappy” games on the PC side released each year. So when you take all this into consideration it’s no wonder it appears that less and less games are ported to Mac, but again if you compare the number of Mac releases with each other annually more games are released.
Since 2014 we’ve also had major factors like switch from OpenGL to Metal, from 32-bit to 64-bit and from Intel to Apple Silicon, all which affected Mac game development. So you can’t compare 2014 with 2024 like that. You can’t either possibly expect all or the majority of PC games be ported to Mac or the number of Mac ports keep up with the flood of PC releases with such a relatively small market share and with faster growing PC releases each year. If too many titles get released on a small Mac market it can also easily get saturated and the competition can kill the sales. Just look at all the releases coming at the same time in Feb-March. People are having trouble to make up their minds about which game to buy first. Then when some games sell badly in the beginning PC news media make reports of ”failed” releases.
You’re missing my main point too. Mac game developers obviously don’t care about your bad signs because they keep porting more new AAA/AA/indie games every year. It’s not about quantity but quality. It’s not about getting the latest flops like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Unknown 9: Awakening, Skull and Bones, Starfield, Cities: Skylines 2 and Alone in the Dark but quality games like Cyberpunk 2077, Control, Death Stranding, Resident Evil series, Stray, Hades 2, Baldur’s Gate 3 and hopefully AC Shadows. Here is another comparison point. In 2014 1,507 Mac games were released. Ten years later the number is 6,237, over 4x more. That’s a good sign.
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With respect to Capcom, isn’t it weird that they spent time getting RE:Engine working yet still haven’t said anything about any of their other games (like Monster Hunter Wilds).
Not bashing Control being released soon, but Alan Wake 2 would have had more impact (like how CP2077 with PT Overdrive is going to make an impact).
iOS and iPadOS can't run Steam games, so no they don't count in the Steam usage survey. I never said anything about gaming as a whole, but in terms of Steam usage Linux has surpassed macOS usage in the reported surveys. There's been PC handhelds even before the Steam Deck, Aya Neo and others have been making them for years, they just typically ran Windows out of the box and I imagine some have appeared in the Steam survey previously. If Apple made a gaming handheld that ran macOS and was eligible for the Steam usage survey those should count too. Or if somebody makes one a hackintosh.
Lots of people have multiple PCs/Macs. I don't even personally play games on my Linux PC either typically. Steam isn't even installed right now on it. With the Steam survey they sample a computer, not all computers owned by a user and they don't sample that high a fraction of users. So it probably doesn't skew things too much even if they don't control for multiple computers/installs. Speaking of Whiskey, what hardware does Steam report as under system information? Apple? Virtual CPU? It's totally possible Valve could correct for that, depending on what system information reports because there's no such thing as a PC with an M4 GPU.
You can have a 3-5% margin of error and a 95% confidence level. That's not a problem at all. At larger margins of error your 95% confidence level will be wider and be less informative but you can have it. If you read up on the two concepts and do a few examples that should become obvious.
And I don't think I'm being misleading by correcting for the number of games released each year. I'm accounting for the growth in number of games released which makes comparisons more applicable across years. Ridiculous to point out that number of Mac games released has grown by 414% as a good sign while ignoring that it grew by 850% on Windows? And percent change is not Y2/Y1, it's (Y2-Y1)/Y1, so it's actually 314%, not 414%. Talk about misleading!
Is it about quality or quantity? Which is it? Mac has missed a ton quality games too, where's Doom Eternal, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Age of Empires 4, Diablo IV, Marvel Rivals, Alan Wake II, Kingdom Come Deliverance II, Marvel's Spider-man, God of War, Helldivers II, etc.?
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