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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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Gamers make up a huge market. I believe that, if a significant portion moves to/explores Mac, there will be a big opportunity for money and reputation (and fans).
There are lots of Steam games compatible with Macs I believe.
That's a big IF, I don't see gamers (and I consider myself a fairly involved gamer but not hardcore) moving to an ARM mac because they showed off Tomb Raider at 1080p with minimum settings ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Actually its a tiny subset of what's available and its even smaller thanks to Catalina not supporting 32bit.
I agree with you. At WWDC Apple so far showed Tomb Raider at 1080p, with basic settings barely doing ok. It's not promising now. I sincerely hope Apple will make good GPUs or stay with AMD.
Tiny subset eh? Hmm. I hope Apple will support bootcamp or something like that for a long time.
Not a good idea, as all these games you probably have in mind (Overwatch, The Witcher 3, Skyrim, DOOM, etc.) actually don't run that well on the Switch without heavy compromises.
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They also showed Dirt Rally in other videos, e.g. the Platform State of the Union.
They showed Tomb Raider downloaded from the App Store with absolutely NO modifications. Why are you taking that as an example of something built natively for the new Apple Silicon?
Considering the age of the chipset (which wasn't exactly a powerhouse to begin with) they run remarkably well... But my point was more that if game studios want to put their games onto an Arm platform there's really no barrier to doing it if they think the market is there. x86 really hasn't helped the Mac in this regard either way for all the talk of 'compatibility' as it's hardly been a panacea for Mac gaming.
Absolutely it will run better. The fact that an A12z could run tomb raider in emulation mode at 1080p with what looked like a frame rate above slideshow quality is impressive. The first thing that came to mind for me when they announced IOS apps will be compatible with arm macs is how you would finally be able to run Fortnite or COD on 13 inch apple products.
On to the OP question, it could go two ways just like the OP states. I see apple arcade and IOS gaming growing with more high quality AAA titles being release on IOS. With that, ARM macs get to benefit as well since they can run those games. I doubt we will see developers targeting Macs for gaming in the future though.
For me, IOS games on Mac would be perfectly fine. It would give me something to play while on travel and would be supplemented at home with an Xbox Series console for new AAA titles. And that is not even mentioning the possibility of high quality game streaming services in the future.
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On top of the fact that it was running in emulation mode, it was running on a chip designed for a 5-6 watt TDP. It was running that game better then any current Intel IGPU could so I would say it was actually pretty damn impressive.
Publishers will go where the money is. It doesn't matter what architecture is used in the device/computer, or what limitations comes with it. If they think taking the time to target the new Mac architecture is worth it, they'll do it. That said, Mac gaming was never really alive to being with and the only thing that will change with this transition is you'll be able to play iPhone/iPad games. When it comes to traditional console/PC games (e.g. AAA titles), publishers will stick to consoles and PCs. I mean, Macs in general only represent a small portion of the overall computer market and I don't see a lot of gamers moving from a console/PC to a Mac for gaming, regardless of how good Apple's next Macs are.
Plus, the new PS and Xbox consoles coming out this year will make it an even harder sell for publishers to bother with a Mac if they're as good as they claim to be and they can keep the price relatively close to current consoles.
Plus, the new PS and Xbox consoles coming out this year will make it an even harder sell for publishers to bother with a Mac if they're as good as they claim to be and they can keep the price relatively close to current consoles.
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Glad someone else also noticed it did not look great despite what Craig or whoever presented suggested. Apple hyperbole and hubris as always on these keynotes.
The Tomb Rider demo was pretty impressive not only because it was emulated but because there is not a single integrated intel gpu that can run that game with that frame rate natively! You can look at gpu benchmark sites, most of intel Gpus run this game on 1080p below 15fps!
About portability, games that already run on Metal API like World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online should have little effort to port their games to Apple Sillicon.
Also, Apple is working with Unity to help developers that use unity port their games easily.
Finally, I think that should be easy to port Nintendo Switch games to Apple Sillicon since both run on ARM.
About portability, games that already run on Metal API like World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online should have little effort to port their games to Apple Sillicon.
Also, Apple is working with Unity to help developers that use unity port their games easily.
Finally, I think that should be easy to port Nintendo Switch games to Apple Sillicon since both run on ARM.
As someone who's been gaming all his life on multiple platforms, I welcome a new era with games that run on ARM and stay much cooler and quieter without the need for hoses and fans screwed onto the process so it doesn't implode. Especially with laptops, if this heralds in a new era where people can easily game decent looking titles without all the heat and fan noise...that'd be huge for mobile gaming imo. Mobile gaming on iOS is popping off and mobile games are pretty popular around the world, having laptops act as a console type system for higher end stuff without all the downsides of the heat/noise they usually produce would be amazing. As a gamer I just want devs to get off their asses, I know it's a pain for them and investment that's hard to justify cuz they mostly care about money these days but...please lol
For WoW, it’s not very optimistic.
Apple moving to their own chips
This is different. The first transition actually made game development EASIER. windows and mac were finally using same architecture. Two, it was only CPu These arm macs, at least the ones coming out first do not have AMD or nvidia gpu, it’s an apple gpu with an entirely different feature set...
us.forums.blizzard.com
I used to be concerned but now I realize that if I want to game I can just buy a console or a PC to compliment my mac
I was under the impression you could run WoW on a piece of used chewing gum? Don't see how that's going to pose a challenge to Rosetta 2 running on powerful Apple Silicon, even if they cba to port it properly?For WoW, it’s not very optimistic.
Apple moving to their own chips
This is different. The first transition actually made game development EASIER. windows and mac were finally using same architecture. Two, it was only CPu These arm macs, at least the ones coming out first do not have AMD or nvidia gpu, it’s an apple gpu with an entirely different feature set...
For WoW, it’s not very optimistic.
Apple moving to their own chips
This is different. The first transition actually made game development EASIER. windows and mac were finally using same architecture. Two, it was only CPu These arm macs, at least the ones coming out first do not have AMD or nvidia gpu, it’s an apple gpu with an entirely different feature set...
That's a post by a community member, not part of WoW's development team. They don't have any more knowledge than anybody here.
I personally think ARM will be a boon for Apple gaming. Macs have long been second class citizens in the traditional AAA PC gaming market, but now it's much easier to develop a game a game that can be targeted at the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Mac. Instead of being a second class citizen on an Intel platform, they will now be a first class citizen on a massive ARM gaming platform. For the first while, I'd expect a drop in complexity as largely iPhone games are adapted, but they will scale up from there.
I doubt people buy Macs for gaming but with Boot Camp it’s kinda nice to just have one system and it works well with an eGPU. IMHO anyway.
I actually had a thought that, within the lifecycle of the PS5, an Apple TV will outcompete the major consoles on performance. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-tv-competing-with-consoles.2243522/ which would massively change gaming in general, never mind availability of AAA games on the Mac
Thats a chicken and egg scenario. Do they not make games for Macs because there are noMac gamers or are there no Mac gamers because there's no games?
Under Apple Silicon there will be games because those new games will run on iPads and iPhones etc as well so you can make a single game that runs at top notch quality on an iMac, and slightly lower quality on iDevices. All 100m+ of them. So if you think that's not worth porting to Metal/MacOS, I can't agree with you there.
The iPhone 6 supposedly compared quite well to an Xbox360. The iPhone 8 had about 20% the GPU power of a PS4, but could run rings around its CPU. That was an A11 chip, the A13 is twice as powerful. So an A13 is half as good or better than a PS4 depending how much its CPU can compensate for the differences in GPU. In a tiny, passively cooled, water tight phone case.
I have a feeling that when Apple drops its first Silicon Macs, they are going to be quite something. What exactly they will do as far as graphics goes is anyone's guess, but GPUs are quite scalable when it comes to adding cores so it may be that they bolster the graphics in Macs by adding a bunch of extra GPU cores to their Mac chips.
I mean, with all the games on Apple Arcade plus whatever games are on iPadOS and iOS you'd think there'd be some progress.
The A12x/z is suppose to be comparable to an Xbox One S. That would put it on par with the PS4 (non pro) as well. A chip designed for a 15-20 watt TDP might just be able to get close to a PS4 Pro (4 Teraflop) performance.
Apple said on their keynote High Performance GPU so I think their performance will be on par of some discrete GPU, probably will blow intel’s iGPU performance
From the current status, it is just good for games originally designed for iOS and iPadOS. For PC games, those developers may just want to run away. Blizzard Entertainment used to be the most supportive for Mac, but now Overwatch is not available for macOS, and Diablo IV is presumed to be not available for macOS either.
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No matter how good the Apple Silicon chips are, the decision is determined by game developers. I’m not very optimistic about the recent trend from them that Metal-based games are still very few, and more new games are even unavailable for macOS.
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