Interesting graph in GDC game developer poll.

[ahurst]

Microsoft, and Windows PC are the future. Measly 18 percent for Mac.

Maybe even less when everything switched over to ultra closed APPLE silicon.

In many ways ARM is a much more open architecture than x86, the license for which is restricted to Intel, AMD, and *kind of* VIA and not open to anyone else. By contrast, any company that can pay to license the ARM instruction set can make their own ARM chips.

Anyways, Microsoft and big PC manufacturers seem to be taking a much stronger interest in Windows on ARM since the M1, so if the future is Microsoft it’s probably a future of custom ARM silicon regardless of how things shake out.

 

[crazy dave]

In many ways ARM is a much more open architecture than x86, the license for which is restricted to Intel, AMD, and *kind of* VIA and not open to anyone else. By contrast, any company that can pay to license the ARM instruction set can make their own ARM chips.

Anyways, Microsoft and big PC manufacturers seem to be taking a much stronger interest in Windows on ARM since the M1, so if the future is Microsoft it’s probably a future of custom ARM silicon regardless of how things shake out.

Yeah it gets even weirder with VIA since they sort of sold off their x86 stuff to Intel though they may still have the licenses.

VIA To Offload Parts of x86 Subsidiary Centaur to Intel For $125 Million

www.anandtech.com

Deal is odd and not entirely clear what VIA will be doing with x86 if anything going forward.

 

[crazy dave]

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.

Some fraction of it to be sure though actually that’s something Apple needs to grow as many iOS devs actually are aren’t porting - it should be noted that the percentage of Mac development has been fairly stable for years according to @Xiao_Xi ‘s post and other things I’ve read since then. 18% is a small increase and that’s good to see. Maybe from iOS devs as you say but that’s still good.

Mac ports already cut across indie-mid tier-AAA divide with each able to port for different reasons depending on engine, assets, and for AAA higher if a dedicated company like Feral or, if they’re doing the bare minimum, Crossweaver. Obviously at the moment it’s still less common than not for all of them.

 

[apparatchik]

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.

I don't think Apple TV+ is profitable as a business unit, the AAA games ported or developed would go through the App Store, there would be a return on investment through there, as an idea, they would add to the ecosystem, the same way Apple TV+ or Fitness+ work today.

 

[MayaUser]

the one company that made games also for macOS ...was bought by Microsoft...probably for gamepass ?!
But i think the discussion will remain the same as now, 5 years from now.
iOS platform will remain one of the most profitable platform for games...macOS, not likely
Maybe if all the gaming studios adopts arm architecture for their AAA, if the next PS6 and next gen xbox console will be arm as well...maybe ..for now apple silicon made a step back for gaming since for now, you dont have bootcamp anymore...so if Intel macs could played and had access to 10 games lets say...now its down to 6
Unfortunately i dont see Apple doing something towards to mac other than providing the hardware
Lets hope developers will port their AAA games from iPadOS to the macOS...first one, a big signal will be if Immortal that was developed for iOS and android, will be allowed now , by Microsoft, to have a mac client as well

 

[Malus120]

Probably already mentioned but I'd imagine there are a couple of factors at play here re Mac being only 2% lower than Switch.

1. While still Nintendo's latest platform, the PS5 & Xbox Series X/S along with recent advances in PC hardware, have laid bare the limitations of the Switch's aging mobile hardware. Miracle ports to Switch like Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal used to be fascinating, whereas today the gulf in performance is so much larger that for many games a Switch port just isn't feasible (or at the very least it wouldn't be very desirable vs other platforms) That said, I imagine a good number of developers may be working on Switch 2/Pro games and are just still under NDA so... these figures may not be as accurate as they look regarding Nintendo HW.

2. The roll out of Apple Silicon has finally given even lower end Macs the grunt to run new AAA games, while the M1 Pro & Max provide mid range desktop GPU performance and thus a platform (and roadmap) for AAA games to really shine. Over time this will expand the total addressable market (TAM) for AAA games to almost the entire Mac lineup.

3. Along with higher average Mac performance/a larger TAM, Apple Silicon also provides developers with their first/only real chance to work on a high end ARM64 desktop platform without the limitations imposed by a phone/tablet enclosure.

4. The convergence of all of Apple's products (iPhone/iPad/AppleTV/Mac) around a single, high performance architecture/Software stack could mean that a lot more developers are looking at a release across the entire Apple ecosystem, including Mac.

5. Given that this graph includes iOS/Android/Web Browsers/etc it'd should be clear that this survey wasn't targeting only traditional AAA game developers. While still a good sign (and the PC and iOS numbers are both good for Mac) it should be taken in stride.

 

[mi7chy]

Was surprised to see a recent mobile game, Bloons TD Battles 2, on iOS app store but the Mac port which shows as working with Rosetta 2 is only on Steam but not on Mac app store for M1. After some digging, seems like developers are shunning the Mac app store. Wonder if anti-developer hurdles like 30% cut, Epic lawsuit, etc. are taking a toll and scaring away developers to 3rd party app stores? One way Apple can force developers back, though, is with closed M1 without boot camp then announcing malware is an issue with 3rd party app stores and forcing only Mac app store like on iOS/iPadOS.

https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/31/rese...ecoming-less-interested-in-the-mac-app-store/

 

[EntropyQ3]

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.

It’s GDC. It’s a conference for game studios and to some extent publishers. What you can see from the graph and also from the session topics (GDC website) is that, in spite of mobile gaming taking the lions share of revenue, the conference is still rather light on mobile oriented topics.
So yes, there is a certain ”traditional” bias, and many of the of the presenters are from very large entities in the industry.
The event doesn’t target hobby, or very small scale developers.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Wonder if anti-developer hurdles like 30% cut, Epic lawsuit, etc. are taking a toll and scaring away developers to 3rd party app stores?

2022

2021

2020

 

[the8thark]

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.

This makes sense as a fairly representative of the developers that attend GDC.
I would think the overall developer landscape is quite different to this. Just proves that the GDC crowd is not representative of the overall developer industry (based on % of developers why develop on each platform).

This is still good information but we need to understand what it is and what is not.

 

[leman]

Was surprised to see a recent mobile game, Bloons TD Battles 2, on iOS app store but the Mac port which shows as working with Rosetta 2 is only on Steam but not on Mac app store for M1. After some digging, seems like developers are shunning the Mac app store. Wonder if anti-developer hurdles like 30% cut, Epic lawsuit, etc. are taking a toll and scaring away developers to 3rd party app stores?

Mac App Store takes the same 30% cut as Steam, so that is clearly nonsense. Anyway, if they prefer to release on Steam, nothing prevents them from releasing an M1 native version. The likely reason for this split is development planning — the Steam Mac version is probably the generic desktop version while the iOS version is a separate fork with touch controls.

One way Apple can force developers back, though, is with closed M1 without boot camp then announcing malware is an issue with 3rd party app stores and forcing only Mac app store like on iOS/iPadOS.

https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/31/rese...ecoming-less-interested-in-the-mac-app-store/

The day Apple does anything like that, Mac will die as a platform. Apple are not stupid. They have no intention of locking down the Mac.

 

[mi7chy]

2020
View attachment 1948170

Isn't Steam cut tiered 70/30, 80/20, etc. so the more the developer sells the lower the fee they have to pay?

 

[Xiao_Xi]

I would think the overall developer landscape is quite different to this. Just proves that the GDC crowd is not representative of the overall developer industry (based on % of developers why develop on each platform).

What does the current developer landscape look like?

2021

This survey in 2013 portrayed a completely different picture.

"The survey found that more of the respondents are developing for smartphones and tablets than for any other platform. 38% of the survey's developers released their last game for smartphones and tablets collectively, but 55% are making their current games there. Even more impressive, a whopping 58% plan to release their next games on these platforms.​

PCs and Macs are the next strongest platforms, with 34.6% of developers releasing their last games for PCs/Macs, 48% developing their current games for the platform, and 49% planning their next games on PCs/Macs."​

https://www.gdconf.com/news/gdc_state_of_the_industry_rese/

If Apple were serious about gaming and a little more open, it would sponsor the event and give sessions.

 

[diamond.g]

Has Apple ever been to GDC (as a sponsor)?

 

[Ethosik]

In many ways ARM is a much more open architecture than x86, the license for which is restricted to Intel, AMD, and *kind of* VIA and not open to anyone else. By contrast, any company that can pay to license the ARM instruction set can make their own ARM chips.

Anyways, Microsoft and big PC manufacturers seem to be taking a much stronger interest in Windows on ARM since the M1, so if the future is Microsoft it’s probably a future of custom ARM silicon regardless of how things shake out.

Yes this is going to be interesting. PC game developers will need to possibly make two different versions for x86 and ARM. We will see how much optimization takes place. Especially since Microsoft has been interested in ARM chips.

 

[ahurst]

Yeah it gets even weirder with VIA since they sort of sold off their x86 stuff to Intel though they may still have the licenses.

VIA To Offload Parts of x86 Subsidiary Centaur to Intel For $125 Million

www.anandtech.com

Deal is odd and not entirely clear what VIA will be doing with x86 if anything going forward.

Ah yes, thanks! The “kind of” in my post was because I remembered *something* recent about VIA partially giving up their x86 license but I didn’t know the specifics. Looking into it, VIA also shares their x86 license with a Chinese company they co-own (Zhaoxin), so I wonder what that Intel deal means for them...

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Maybe if all the gaming studios adopts arm architecture for their AAA, if the next PS6 and next gen xbox console will be arm

Apple should reach an agreement with Sony to supply it with PlayStation 6 ARM SOCs.

 

[diamond.g]

Apple should reach an agreement with Sony to supply it with PlayStation 6 ARM SOCs.

You think Apple would sell chips for a cheaper price than AMD? I don’t.

 

[Romain_H]

Apple should reach an agreement with Sony to supply it with PlayStation 6 ARM SOCs.

I guess that wouln't help much unless that implies Sony switches to using Metal

 

[mi7chy]

Apple should reach an agreement with Sony to supply it with PlayStation 6 ARM SOCs.

Doubtful Apple would undercut its own $3K+ products by selling its SoCs that go into competitor's $500 console. And, to generate interest there has to be at least one recent showcase game title that demonstrates its graphics capabilities and performance against AMD APU + GDDR. Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't qualify.

 

[throAU]

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.

You’ve got 3 Apple silicon processors/GPUs to target and test vs how many combinations on pc?

 

[leman]

Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't qualify.

Why doesn’t it qualify?

 

[diamond.g]

Why doesn’t it qualify?

I think the poster assertion is that BG3 isn’t showing something that the PS5 or Series X couldn’t do.

 

[Ethosik]

You’ve got 3 Apple silicon processors/GPUs to target and test vs how many combinations on pc?

Not exactly the same thing. And if you were a developer you would know. Windows and macOS operate differently. Some performance optimizations, graphical tweaks on the shaders, and other things that work on Windows won't work as well on Mac. And it would still require a full regression test when targeting an entirely different platform.

 

[throAU]

Not exactly the same thing. And if you were a developer you would know. Windows and macOS operate differently. Some performance optimizations, graphical tweaks on the shaders, and other things that work on Windows won't work as well on Mac. And it would still require a full regression test when targeting an entirely different platform.

Aware of that. But we are talking additional effort that is comparable to porting to say PS4/pro/5