There are plenty of high-quality, popular games that run on Mac using Metal. The only absent genre is shooters. Modern strategy and RPG games for example are well represented. Upcoming highly anticipated titles such as Baldur Gates 3 and Humankind will run on Mac as well.
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The final blow for real gaming on the Mac, or the beginning of a new era?
- Thread starter Frankied22
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There are plenty of high-quality, popular games that run on Mac using Metal. The only absent genre is shooters. Modern strategy and RPG games for example are well represented. Upcoming highly anticipated titles such as Baldur Gates 3 and Humankind will run on Mac as well.
More publishers should make their games available on platforms like Geforce Now, then we can all play regardless OS or computer performance.
Yes, but that already was the case before the release of Metal 2 and the deprecation of OpenGL which this article is about. In contrast to its predictions, these things did not improve the situation in any noticeable way.
Metal did improved performance and stability. I agree with you that it didn’t increase the port rate (for reasons that have been mentioned by many people in this thread).
How can I play games like Factorio on a console? Playing 200 hours, 100 hours of that would be just having trouble with the controller alone building stuff. I tried Minecraft on console. Half the time was fighting with the controller. Sometimes keyboard/mouse is better for games. This is why I hate consoles.
Yeah consoles aren't good for games that require KB/M. I remember when WoW came out people wanted a console version, but with all the keybinds and the inability to rely on folks having a keyboard for their console meant it wont (hasn't) happened.
Why doesn't consoles support KB/M ? I find it beyond crazy , almost all the games are being ported to PC anyway , and those consoles are basically x86 system now days , weird , I can see why MS dont want to enable it if they can get some PC sells as well , but PS5 supporting KB/M will be crazy good for Sony , they can easily compete in all the gaming market and not just the controller based one.
Well, I'll cross my fingers and hope Rosetta will run it then. Also, Steam has very little in the way of quality control. Valve doesn't even list older games as not being compatible with Catalina.It would work just like anything else. Also, DF is coming up on Steam
IIRC Playstation and Xbox has supported keyboards since the PS2 and X360. Developers still tend to not rely on peripherals that didn't come with the system (and in the case of kinect just outright ignored it).
AS already mentioned, both consoles do in fact support KB/M. The thing is that console gaming usually takes place in environments (living, couch, etc.) in which KB/M aren't convenient to use.
I think it will actually lead to more games coming out on the Mac. Right now, a lot of Macs are underpowered when it comes to the GPU. Since all Macs with Apple Silicon will have pretty decent GPU power (At least according to WWDC), we should see lots of new games come to the Mac if developers are willing to port their apps to ARM, as they are no longer limited to only the higher powered Macs.
What would inspire developers to write games for Apple Silicon? Its hard enough to get them to port x86 based games to work on a Mac because of all the recent OS changes IMHO. Aren't newer Macs are't already offering pretty decent CPU/GPU combos that make ARM look bad?
Not many Macs out have GPUs fast enough for gaming. ARM Macs are going to have faster CPUs and GPUs than the current Intel baseline. And it doesn’t matter match whether you are porting to x86 Mac or the ARM Mac, the effort is pretty much comparable.
The only way the Mac is going to be a viable gaming platform is if:
Developers will only target the platforms they can make money in. Today there is money in iPhone games, so you will get those ported to the Mac. However, those lend themselves to certain play styles with a few exceptions.
Microsoft was willing to lose money on the xbox when they first launched it. Now they make it easy to port games between the pc and Xbox. Meanwhile Apple wants 40% margins on their products and then take a 30% cut of someone else’s software. Their priorities have to change if they want the Mac to be a gaming platform. I don’t think they will. The closest they ever did was when they embraced OpenGL in the early days of OSX.
- Apple releases a console using their own architecture.
- This console would have high performance components in it and not just left over three year old iPhone chips.
- It is cheap relative to the other consoles (like the Switch vs XBox/PS, not requiring people to buy a $1200 iPhone)
- Apple buys its own game studio to make exclusive games that show off the capabilities of it’s console.
- Most importantly, make it easy to port the games between console/Mac/iOS/ipados (this is the path they are on already)
- Preferably do something about their 30% cut from any software that runs on their devices at least for the console.
Developers will only target the platforms they can make money in. Today there is money in iPhone games, so you will get those ported to the Mac. However, those lend themselves to certain play styles with a few exceptions.
Microsoft was willing to lose money on the xbox when they first launched it. Now they make it easy to port games between the pc and Xbox. Meanwhile Apple wants 40% margins on their products and then take a 30% cut of someone else’s software. Their priorities have to change if they want the Mac to be a gaming platform. I don’t think they will. The closest they ever did was when they embraced OpenGL in the early days of OSX.
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Max Tech thinks cross-platform gaming on Apple devices is around the corner along with the development of a new game console. This could be big for Apple.
If the development environment/toolkits for coding games for MacOS becomes essentially the same as for iOS then, given the size of the iOS gaming market, isn't that's going to, effectively, vastly increase the number of developers who are comfortable with the type of tools/dev enviroment needed to develop games for the Mac?
And if that is combined with a significant increase in average Mac GPU capablity, might that not motivate some of those iOS/mobile game devs to try their hand at writing more complex (and perhaps AAA) games for the Mac? [This could take the form of either de novo game creation, or enhancement/extension of the complexity/sophistication of one of their existing games.]
And if that is combined with a significant increase in average Mac GPU capablity, might that not motivate some of those iOS/mobile game devs to try their hand at writing more complex (and perhaps AAA) games for the Mac? [This could take the form of either de novo game creation, or enhancement/extension of the complexity/sophistication of one of their existing games.]
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You're 100% on the money. I've been arguing much the same for a while. I'd even go further. I think they *have* to make a console if they are going to stay relevant in the home market. What can a current AppleTV do that a console (with a decent UI) can't. Streaming, home automation, music, gaming, and even fitness apps are all key to keeping consumers within the Apple ecosystem and to buoy services revenue. They're already at least half way there with iOS. A console would also dovetail with their AR/VR plans. A console could even help offload some of the compute workload of future headsets.
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I have to believe iOS game developers would jump at the chance write games in Swift rather than C++ or C#. Of course they'd probably want or need some proper dev tools, frameworks, and environment like Unreal or Unity. They'd probably want some sort of graphical node based interface as well. ARKit would certainly help. Maybe Reality Composer is just a toe dip? I've got to believe that Apple silicon and frameworks optimized for Metal could compete with next generation consoles like the PS5. I wonder if their work with the Octane renderer could be leveraged? Certainly their efforts could cascade into their AppleTV+ offerings for VFX. Unreal Engine was apparently used extensively in the production of The Mandolorian. How much longer can Apple sit on the sidelines and watch Sony dominate?
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I’m not sure the Switch example would be a good lead to follow. The vast majority of the Switch store is shovelware.
That doesn't mean it isn't a win in general. I can take things out of context (from 12 years ago, no less) as well.
I wonder if Apple could get Epic to show off Lumen and Nanite on Apple Silicon. That would go a long way towards a showing of good performance. If it could be done at 4k60 that would be even better.
9-5 had this Apple Silicon benchmarks article (7/23) which gave some specifics to speed.
I am presently using a late 2015 4 i7 4Ghz iMac with a AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4 GB video memory to play AAA games. The newer 2019 iMacs are quite a bit faster.
Perhaps ARM would satisfy the future 13" Airbook owners.
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9-5 had this Apple Silicon benchmarks article (7/23) which gave some specifics to speed.
I am presently using a late 2015 4 i7 4Ghz iMac with a AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4 GB video memory to play AAA games. The newer 2019 iMacs are quite a bit faster.
Perhaps ARM would satisfy the future 13" Airbook owners.
Do you feel as if your late 2015 iMac is adequate for AAA gaming? If so, the A12Z in the DTK has a faster CPU (per that article) and a GPU very much in the ballpark of your iMac.
Naturally newer iMacs are significantly faster. But recall that this DTK chip is a ~10w iPad chip v your 65w cpu + high wattage gpu, and the shipping ASi Macs will benefit from two years of architectural improvements to CPU / GPU as well as a die shrink. A future "13" Airbook" (assuming you mean a Macbook Air) would have at least the equivalent of an A14X in it, and will likely be 50 to 100% faster than your iMac in both CPU and GPU. The entire ASi line from there up will presumably have at least the rumored 8x4 cpu and presumably increased GPU core counts as well. We don't know what Apple can pull off in a large iMac yet gpu-wise, but at the minimum the shift to Apple Silicon will bring a large gain to potential gaming performance across the Mac line broadly. Raising the average gaming potential of a Mac is probably more valuable to AAA developers than raising the top-end.
9-5 had this Apple Silicon benchmarks article (7/23) which gave some specifics to speed.
I am presently using a late 2015 4 i7 4Ghz iMac with a AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4 GB video memory to play AAA games. The newer 2019 iMacs are quite a bit faster.
Perhaps ARM would satisfy the future 13" Airbook owners.
DTK is not Apple Silicon we will see in the upcoming Macs. It’s a modified iPad Pro. The new Macs will use new 5nm chips and we can only speculate as to how the performance will be. All this was discussed in depth on these forums in the last couple of weeks, I recommend you to read the popular threads if you are interested in the topic.