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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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I guess apple isn't interested in spending the money, hiring developers and building out staffing to support games. They seem to be more interested in providing the tools for game developers to roll out mac games.
Just look at the most popular multi-player game on steam - CS2. There was mac support for Counter Strike, but Valve decided to drop Macs for the new version. I don't know why it was dropped, but I can assume they chose not to underwrite the cost of having a Mac version of that game.
They claimed not enough players to make maintaining the port worthwhile.
Yes because the issue is addressable market as I stated. Not diss or 5090 class gpus. If more Mac gamers buy games, more studios will make them. It’s very simple.
Probably not, but I don’t think that strategy is working for them.
It would certainly get them access to a small, focused team that actually cares about making a good experience.
The AAA industry at the moment is a freaking shambles.
Additionally, that type of game would have zero issues running on anything from an iPhone to a Mac.
And as above, nobody else is going to really solve this content problem outside of Apple or a collection of developers paid by Apple to do it. They simply do not have the critical mass required.
I wonder if they are able to execute on a second game. Especially since "all eyes" are now on them for Exp33 being so good.
I think they will, but it won't be quick.
They have talented people, clearly motived by making a good product and not just the almighty dollar.
And yes, topping Expedition 33 will be a big ask, but if its even 75% as good it will still be a thousand times better and more engaging than crappy mobile gaming stuff that is about all apple has right now.
I'm sure plenty of people have seen it but hey its the apple forum... they clearly took this sort of thing to heart, like Swen Vincke from Larian with BG3... they did with Expedition 33..
Here’s a controversial idea that I think could actually work:
Partner with Xbox.
Hear me out, Xbox is clearly hurting right now, and with the recent announcement that the next Xbox is basically going to be a gaming PC, and their clear shift towards “Xbox” being more of a platform (publisher? service? It’s muddy.)
It’s not like Apple and Microsoft are really polar opposites anymore, and they have a history of working together in the past.
The shift away from having exclusives for their brand signals to me that Xbox and maybe even Microsoft might even be open to the idea themselves.
And even if say they want to funnel people to Gamepass, they could work out a deal where Mac titles get ports after a certain amount of time.
Just a thought at least, it’s certainly more likely than Apple and Nintendo ever partnering.
Partner with Xbox.
Hear me out, Xbox is clearly hurting right now, and with the recent announcement that the next Xbox is basically going to be a gaming PC, and their clear shift towards “Xbox” being more of a platform (publisher? service? It’s muddy.)
It’s not like Apple and Microsoft are really polar opposites anymore, and they have a history of working together in the past.
The shift away from having exclusives for their brand signals to me that Xbox and maybe even Microsoft might even be open to the idea themselves.
And even if say they want to funnel people to Gamepass, they could work out a deal where Mac titles get ports after a certain amount of time.
Just a thought at least, it’s certainly more likely than Apple and Nintendo ever partnering.
XBox isn't going anywhere. While the new ROG Ally was just announced on the same day as the WWDC keynote, the next XBox console is slated to drop in 2027. Microsoft is already taking advantage of their gaming acquisitions by putting both Avowed and Doom Dark Age in the Battle.net launcher, and GamePass now also carries over to Battle.net. If anything, Microsoft will leverage this consolidation to build up both XBox and PC gaming instead of focusing on one over the other.
We’ve already moved past that point, unless you’re looking for that one game by that developer before you consider that to be supported?
New to the Mac? Because I am struggling to understand what’s informing your perspective. Help a brother out?
Nvidia charges outrageous premiums because they want to, not because the performance has improved that much. Unfortunately the Nvidia fanboys are dumb enough to pay 80% more for a 5090 that only has a 12% performance improvement over the 4090. Most of Nvidia's claims regarding 50xx performance factor in multi-frame generation, which is a misleading stat at best and why most independent reviewers refuse to even turn that feature on when testing and comparing GPUs.
Why would microsoft further dilute their ecosystem?
The Mac has totally different APIs, different architecture, etc. What's in it for Microsoft?
It’s pretty much plug and play. The interfaces are the same as with FSR, so if you already have these things in your game, patching in MetalFX support is trivial.
Big benefit of Apple’s solution is very low power cost. Since MetalFX can leverage the NPU, the GPU remains free to pursue more interesting work.
From what I understand, added latency is significant, but no idea how this compares to other solutions. In general, synchronizing work across Apple Silicon IP blocks carries a high latency cost.
It’s hard to find data for this but the latency must be reasonable for Apple to consider its use.
Here is a post from Philip Turner estimating a latency of ~1ms for MetalFX and the ANE on an M2.
This article on Apple’s machine learning blog states a latency of ~3.5ms for the A13.
Deploying Transformers on the Apple Neural Engine
An increasing number of the machine learning (ML) models we build at Apple each year are either partly or fully adopting the Transformer…
It seems reasonable that latency would have improved since then. In any case, more than fast enough to be useful within games at up to high frame rates.
3.5ms is a lot of latency if you are trying to hit 120fps. At 30fps it doesn't seem that bad.It’s hard to find data for this but the latency must be reasonable for Apple to consider its use.
Here is a post from Philip Turner estimating a latency of ~1ms for MetalFX and the ANE on an M2.
This article on Apple’s machine learning blog states a latency of ~3.5ms for the A13.
Deploying Transformers on the Apple Neural Engine
An increasing number of the machine learning (ML) models we build at Apple each year are either partly or fully adopting the Transformer…machinelearning.apple.com
It seems reasonable that latency would have improved since then. In any case, more than fast enough to be useful within games at up to high frame rates.
3.5ms to create an upscaled frame? 120fps is 8.333 ms per frame. How is 3.5 a lot?
In any case 3.5 was for the iPhone 13. Philip Turner esitimated it at 1 ms for the M2 as per the link above.
Dilution isn't even a consideration in this scenario. What would be "in it" for Microsoft is additional paid subscriptions for GamePass up front, and potentially both One Drive and Office subscriptions down the line. Microsoft already makes Office, One Drive, and Minecraft available on Mac OS, and none of those products have become diluted as a result.
For as successful as Minecraft is on Apple platforms does no one else think it strange none of the spinoff/variant games are available?
1ms is quite a bit better. I also wonder how much additional latency frame interpolation adds to the mix.