The Game Developer Conference is upon us, and I saw this graph of this years poll results (there were a bunch). It is a reality check the discussions regarding the prospects of gaming on the mac that regularly take place on these forums.
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.
Interesting graph in GDC game developer poll.
- Thread starter EntropyQ3
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That the Mac rates as highly as the Switch is a surprise. Maybe the M1’s total computing power is enough to motivate a more decent selection of titles for the Mac platform.
Agreed I’d consider myself somewhat optimistic about future/long term prospects of gaming but even I’d say that result is surprisingly good! I was kinda expecting lower. How does this compare to the previous X years I wonder?
I'm more surprised the Nintendo Switch is at only 20%. I guess this has more to do with the developer's ability to make a game cross-platform than the success of the console.
It's also possible that Apple's unification of APIs among iPhone, iPad, and Mac is slowly resonating. Also could just be that Apple is paying for more than usual work to be done to prop up Apple Arcade ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think we'd need year over year numbers to tell a story here.The Game Developer Conference is upon us, and I saw this graph of this years poll results (there were a bunch). It is a reality check the discussions regarding the prospects of gaming on the mac that regularly take place on these forums.
I think Apple Silicon is helpful in some other respects as well. The M1 is a standardised hardware platform across a range of devices, it’s a larger market for one set of hardware that covers both laptops and desktops which has a lot of architectural similarities to a console. Thats more convenient to code for, and so cheaper to port to, than covering a range of Intel chips and low-quality GPUs.
It remains to be seen how many leading projects will make it to Mac. Games with a high minimum spec such as Cyberpunk and titles that lead on PC will still face significant hurdles in the porting process, but I think this is a very positive sign.
It remains to be seen how many leading projects will make it to Mac. Games with a high minimum spec such as Cyberpunk and titles that lead on PC will still face significant hurdles in the porting process, but I think this is a very positive sign.
Makes sense as a developer to me its all about marketshare. I am developing a game Windows only and in other threads I have said the hardware is not an issue. My game runs great on a VERY CHEAP Windows laptop from 2013 - think of Factorio and Stardew Valley and Terraria for requirements. Any and all macs can run it like butter but I just don't want to devote my testing time for such a low marketshare environment. Even though I am using cross platform frameworks, I still need to make sure it runs well on Macs and do some testing.
Exactly but that is what makes M1 interesting as a platform to target. It is very uniform, you have the exact same specs in desktops, laptops and all-in-one machines, so it is easy to code, optimise and test for.
Can game devs for iOS make more money than game devs for macOS?
Can game devs for PC make more money than game devs for macOS?
How long do game devs for PC need to learn to code for macOS?
Well with things like Unity and mono, you can code in C# and it be cross platform. Problem is, its not 100% all the time and some performance adjustments are needed and you should still go through very detailed QA testing on the separate platform. Which is why you still see some poor PC ports from console games.
And in terms of standard applications, things will get better with .NET MAUI with cross-platform development.
Last edited:
It is also quite significant that the numbers are quite similar to the 2021 results, giving them even more credit.
Unfortunately we haven't such many games come out of it the last year..
I assume most of these respondents are indie developers?
Unfortunately that's probably the smart business decision to make.
Could you however see a Mac port being likely after the release of the PC version and it settling down some with initial patches and whatever? If there's little extra effort in getting it running and the effort "just" being in testing and QA at that point and slight tweaks here and there, it could open up a larger market, even if the market increase is small, for less effort than developing another game from scratch, at a time where the PC version is more or less done and doesn't need much maintenance any more. - Whether it'd really translate much into additional sales, **** knows, but worth a shot I would think
If that becomes the eventuality, write me a PM; I'm a co-host of the MacGameCast so we'd take you on as a guest and talk about it if you want
While the performance of Apple Silicon is generally good in regards to graphics (not insanely good, but good enough), and while I think it will motivate developers to develop more games for it, this post is exactly the reason why the Mac market will not explode overnight. It will be progressive.
In my opinion, the pieces are there, iOS/iPadOS/tvOS/macOS now all share the same architecture, the chips have industry-leading graphic performance on their respective form factors (Android phones / tablets & Windows PC's don't even come close when matched vis a vis), what's needed to jump start the platform as a first class target for gaming its for Apple to make a push similar to what it has done with Apple TV+, that is: start a gaming division, buy a handful of AAA studios to develop exclusives and to develop first-party IP, and, above all, start a fund to finance the port and maintenance of AAA titles so it's not an added cost to the studios, they get it for free.
With a fraction of what they have invested in Apple TV+ productions they could ensure all the multi-platform AAA games come out for Mac as well, fully optimized for Metal. They have the money to both buy some of the best studios in the world and to sponsor and finance the port of the latest releases. Sustain this for enough time and gamers will start picking Macs as their gaming rigs.
You can already see how MBP are more performant than similar priced Windows gaming laptops, and with the continued graphic card shortages and pricing, a rumored iMac Pro / Mac Pro with dual or quad M1 / M2 Max might match the performance of high-end rigs for similar or less money.
With a fraction of what they have invested in Apple TV+ productions they could ensure all the multi-platform AAA games come out for Mac as well, fully optimized for Metal. They have the money to both buy some of the best studios in the world and to sponsor and finance the port of the latest releases. Sustain this for enough time and gamers will start picking Macs as their gaming rigs.
You can already see how MBP are more performant than similar priced Windows gaming laptops, and with the continued graphic card shortages and pricing, a rumored iMac Pro / Mac Pro with dual or quad M1 / M2 Max might match the performance of high-end rigs for similar or less money.
Microsoft, and Windows PC are the future. Measly 18 percent for Mac.
Maybe even less when everything switched over to ultra closed APPLE silicon.
Maybe even less when everything switched over to ultra closed APPLE silicon.
Maybe someday they will in some form but right now it wouldn't be profitable. How much would they get back if they would spent $7.5 billion on a new Bethesda or $70 billion on a new Activision Blizzard like Microsoft did? and then would have to spend another $300 million and 3-5 years on a new Cyberpunk 2077? Would there be enough Mac gamers to justify such costs? I don't think so if they would only want to develop for Mac. They rather help other studios develop for Mac than take all the risks themselves because they are already a trillion dollar company without focusing on gaming, especially when they're already making most money on mobile gaming, $8.5 billion from App store games, more than Sony, Activision, Nintendo, and Microsoft combined. If they only bought a smaller developer like Feral they wouldn't be able to develop or port so many games either.
They sold 22.6 million Macs in 2020. How many of those are used for gaming and how many more would they sell with Mac exclusive games? For Apple it's about profit. They have to answer to the shareholders if they lose big money. Again we may think they have lots of money but it's their money and they decide what's worth investing in and gaming is apparently not one them.
You have no idea what you are talking about. You can still disable SIP on macOS with M1.
The boot loader is open on Apple Sillicon Macs. Thus Linux on M1 is being worked on.
So stop with the FUD that you spew all over these threads.
How much of this is just iOS developers porting games over though? Since the architecture is the same now, pretty much low risk. I still can’t see AAA games from PC/console porting over. And indie PC developers don’t have the funds to do a Mac port. But who knows? Maybe indie developers would do Mac first. Easier to get noticed over the super crowded PC marketplace.
Its definitely something I have on my list, but it is a bit down on the list though. I will certainly let you know though! I am hoping to have an Alpha build ready by the end of the year.Unfortunately that's probably the smart business decision to make.
Could you however see a Mac port being likely after the release of the PC version and it settling down some with initial patches and whatever? If there's little extra effort in getting it running and the effort "just" being in testing and QA at that point and slight tweaks here and there, it could open up a larger market, even if the market increase is small, for less effort than developing another game from scratch, at a time where the PC version is more or less done and doesn't need much maintenance any more. - Whether it'd really translate much into additional sales, **** knows, but worth a shot I would think
If that becomes the eventuality, write me a PM; I'm a co-host of the MacGameCast so we'd take you on as a guest and talk about it if you want