The final blow for real gaming on the Mac, or the beginning of a new era?

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I've seen a lot of people hope (and insist) that Apple will run two lines of Macs for a while. They will to an extent as they transition model by model to Intel but does fragmenting their product lines like that really sound like an Apple move? Doesn't to me.

Snipped massive wall of text.

You sure like to talk, but sadly there's little of value in your post. You want me to predict who will and will not port their software? What am I? A soothsayer? I know what it was like with PowerPC and the software offerings were minimal compared to after the move to Intel. Having the ability to run Windows native was a huge boon as well that will now be thrown down the toilet.


ARM Macs Won't Support Windows BootCamp

I'd like to know what commercial software you're running that isn't available on either Mac or iOS.

What computer do you think I'm running? A Commodore 64 or an Amiga, perhaps? What do you mean that isn't Mac or iOS? I'm saying packages available for the Mac NOW may not be ported to ARM in the future. But if you mean Windows software, the sky is the limit en total. There's a lot of Windows only software. The question is whether that percentage will increase with Apple moving away from a compatible processor platform. You want specific packages for Windows that aren't available on the Mac? The sky is the limit. Do a search for Windows software and you'll find tons of it. But can I expect emulators, games, audio editing software like iZotope RX to be ported? It's hard to say this early, but moving away from compatible code is probably not going to help any. For god's sake, the developers for Windows apps couldn't even be bothered to make ARM apps for Windows phone or universal apps for that matter and you think everyone is just going to jump all over ARM apps for the Mac....

Have you seen how many developers who wouldn't port to Mac have made versions of their software for iPhone and iPad? Now its an easy job to make a Mac version too.

???? WTF are you talking about? iOS? I don't give a CRAP about iOS or their crappy apps. So what if inferior apps are easy to port to the Mac? The Mac used to be a serious open and scientific computer platform and these days Apple seems to care more about updating icons and making inferior phone apps run on the Mac than courting real software like gaming (that they never seemed to give a crap about and now even less so and I don't mean Angry Birds).

Your lack of naming all these critical apps that won't be ported to ARM is beginning to feel conspicuous.

OK, I'll just call up the maker of iZotope RX, CuBase, DTS's cinema soundtrack tools, etc. and every other game maker and ask them if they plan to port to the ARM based Mac since you clearly don't know of any major apps outside of iOS.

What makes you think Steam won't port to ARM? I'm quite sure they will.

Steam can port, but that doesn't mean the game makers will. Steam is just a store, launcher and hosting site for networked games. They're not gaming developers specifically. Aspyr made PowerPC ports so they'll probably make some ports to ARM as well, but the number of games available under PowerPC were minuscule compared to under Intel.

Any developer using Xcode for their Mac software will be able to put out a native ARM version without much work from what I gather.

You gather, huh? You're a game maker and know these things do you? I call total BS on nearly everything you have to say.

 

[EntropyQ3]

What will determine if AAA titles are released for AS Macs is money.
The publishers are multibillion dollar corporations, and if they anticipate a good ROI for their titles on AS Macs, they will have their products on the platform, otherwise not.

It really is that simple.

Case in point - there isn't a Mac in existence that doesn't outperform the Nintendo Switch. Yet there are a number of titles ported to the Switch that we still don't see on the Mac regardless of x86 and superior performance levels. If AS silicon Macs gain larger popularity, growing market share, game publishers' view of the platform may change.

 

[jeanlain]

Indeed, the transition to Apple Silicon (including GPUs) will have very little impact on the selection of AAA games available on the Mac. There is no reason to expect a radical increase in Mac market share, even if AS Macs beat PCs in terms of speed, battery life and hardware features. Most people will still need Windows, and a single vendor (Apple) can only achieve so much in the PC space.
The only way to significantly help AAA gaming on the Mac would be for Apple to release a relatively cheap gaming device (i.e., a console) whose games could also run on the Mac (and iOS). Don't expect the ability to run iPhone and iPad games to bring new AAA titles to the Mac. Phones and tablets are simply not suited for AAA gaming (due to insufficient storage space and poor controls).
But I could see Apple partnering with Nintendo as the designer of the SoC and APIs (Metal) powering the successor of the switch (which BTW uses an ARM SoC). This could benefit both parties.

 

[leman]

Indeed, the transition to Apple Silicon (including GPUs) will have very little impact on the selection of AAA games available on the Mac. There is no reason to expect a radical increase in Mac market share, even if AS Macs beat PCs in terms of speed, battery life and hardware features. Most people will still need Windows, and a single vendor (Apple) can only achieve so much in the PC space.

If Apple Silicon has good gaming capabilities out of the box, it might represent a significant increase in the market share of gaming-capable computers. One easily forgets that the bulk of PC out there are office machines with slow GPUs. If every single AS Mac offered GPU performance comparable with at least a lower-end gaming laptop, Macs might grow to represent a good portion of all game-capable PCs.

 

[jeanlain]

This is true, but I don't think that even tripling the potential base of Mac gamers would be enough to convince big publishers.
There's also the chicken-egg problem: people simply don't buy Macs for gaming, due to the lack of games (and poor price/perf ratio), whereas people do buy PCs for gaming.
So even if all Macs could run AAA games, I believe most of their owners won't be interested.

 

[leman]

@jeanlain Yes, that is true. Even if there is a solid technical and software basis (which is not a certainty), it would take a lot of social engineering to make a Mac into a viable gaming platform.

I don't think that we will see a lot of impactful titles coming to the Mac any time soon, but my hope is that popular studios like Creative Assembly, Larian, Amplitude, Paradox etc. continue bringing out their native Mac games. If they run very well on the new Mac platform, we will see a gradual shift in perception.

 

[MacModMachine]

Do you think that many high end publishers will be willing to spend a lot of money porting their games over to a different OS and platform? Especially given Apple's long history of providing tepid support of gaming. They're going to go where the money is, and with only a tiny niche (I believe) of apple's 10 percent market share seem focused on gaming, it doesn't make sense imo. There really isn't much opportunity to make money.

oh you mean like the nintendo switch ?

 

[diamond.g]

oh you mean like the nintendo switch ?

“Big” games are missing on that platform as well.

 

[MacModMachine]

“Big” games are missing on that platform as well.

only because of resources....not because its difficult to port.

i have refactored many apps to arm. its not a difficult process. and were only a team of 8. game engines have mostly been ported to arm already. a bulk of the work done.

 

[Spock]

I haven’t read all the 24 pages of this forum so it may have already been said but I think the future of gaming is streaming. As long as Apple doesn’t restrict the Mac like it does iOS, I could really see this taking off.

 

[Waragainstsleep]

Snipped massive wall of text.

You sure like to talk, but sadly there's little of value in your post.

Said without a shred of irony.

You want me to predict who will and will not port their software? What am I? A soothsayer? I know what it was like with PowerPC and the software offerings were minimal compared to after the move to Intel. Having the ability to run Windows native was a huge boon as well that will now be thrown down the toilet.

No, I want you to name the apps that you use that are so critical that you'll switch to Windows if any of them are missing from Apple Silicon. I was very clear about this. Repeatedly.

ARM Macs Won't Support Windows BootCamp

Intel Macs didn't have Boot Camp from day one. Things can change.

What computer do you think I'm running? A Commodore 64 or an Amiga, perhaps? What do you mean that isn't Mac or iOS? I'm saying packages available for the Mac NOW may not be ported to ARM in the future.

Software already on iOS now will run natively on AS Macs. Software on Mac now that was built with Xcode is worth tweaking to recompile for AS Macs the devs have a very small user base. Which would also render your whole argument void.

But if you mean Windows software, the sky is the limit en total. There's a lot of Windows only software. The question is whether that percentage will increase with Apple moving away from a compatible processor platform. You want specific packages for Windows that aren't available on the Mac? The sky is the limit. Do a search for Windows software and you'll find tons of it.

Again, I want whatever specific packages for any OS that you are so dependent on now that you'll abandon the Mac entirely if you can't run them on one with Apple Silicon. I have no interest in listing the endless software packages available for Windows for no good reason. Are you aware how much of that software sucks? A lot of it does.

But can I expect emulators, games, audio editing software like iZotope RX to be ported? It's hard to say this early, but moving away from compatible code is probably not going to help any. For god's sake, the developers for Windows apps couldn't even be bothered to make ARM apps for Windows phone or universal apps for that matter and you think everyone is just going to jump all over ARM apps for the Mac....

No one bought Windows phones, why would a developer invest the time for a handful of potential sales? There are several hundred million users between iOS and MacOS. And they spend more than most Windows and Android consumers.

???? WTF are you talking about? iOS? I don't give a CRAP about iOS or their crappy apps. So what if inferior apps are easy to port to the Mac? The Mac used to be a serious open and scientific computer platform and these days Apple seems to care more about updating icons and making inferior phone apps run on the Mac than courting real software like gaming (that they never seemed to give a crap about and now even less so and I don't mean Angry Birds).

So games are what qualifies as "real" software to you? All your opinions are rendered laughable by this one.
You also seem to think that gamers want to play old games on much newer hardware. For the most part this is wrong. For the part where its accurate, older games with lower hardware requirements (like SOTR for example) will likely run just as well on newer hardware under emulation for as long as most people are interested in playing them. I don't think Devs make a huge amount from older titles and hardware/OS vendors even less. Certainly not enough to motivate them into hobbling their state of the art equipment so that it can play Manic Minor natively.

OK, I'll just call up the maker of iZotope RX, CuBase, DTS's cinema soundtrack tools, etc. and every other game maker and ask them if they plan to port to the ARM based Mac since you clearly don't know of any major apps outside of iOS.

Cubase doesn't look like it will be a problem, it already runs well on Big Sur apparently. Steinberg and iZotope both highly likely to recompile for AS Macs. I couldn't find anything about DTS soundtrack tools but I've already done enough of your homework for you.
It seems like the only things you really care about are games and I have covered those above. Gaming will improve on AS Macs. It might take a little time but I believe it will pay off. And during that time you can continue to use your Intel Mac. So why not wait and see what actually happens instead of sulking about speculation and trying to pass off your pessimism as everybody's problem instead of just yours?

You gather, huh? You're a game maker and know these things do you? I call total BS on nearly everything you have to say.

Everything you have to say appears to be a smokescreen for whinging about games, and a situation that may never happen.

 

[jeanlain]

I haven’t read all the 24 pages of this forum so it may have already been said but I think the future of gaming is streaming. As long as Apple doesn’t restrict the Mac like it does iOS, I could really see this taking off.

Streaming may be the future of gaming, but it's not the present yet. At any rate, Apple does not appear to be interested and understandably so. Apple sells hardware, they want everything to happen "on device".

 

[Waragainstsleep]

Microsoft likes to buy up Software houses to snag specific titles but I wonder if Apple ought to try a different approach and get their own game engine for devs to use. Something they can make massively scalable from iPhone all the way to a tricked out AS Mac Pro. And maybe for now keep it reasonably Rosetta 2 friendly?

Maybe they'll end up taking Unreal from Epic in the settlement

 

[Spock]

Streaming may be the future of gaming, but it's not the present yet. At any rate, Apple does not appear to be interested and understandably so. Apple sells hardware, they want everything to happen "on device".

I agree with you to a point, but unless Apple locks down the Mac like they have with iOS they won’t be able to control games from streaming on the Mac, especially if it can be done in browser.

 

[diamond.g]

only because of resources....not because its difficult to port.

i have refactored many apps to arm. its not a difficult process. and were only a team of 8. game engines have mostly been ported to arm already. a bulk of the work done.

I dunno if that is 100% the case, id Software and Bethesda have (had?) plenty of resources to make Mac games, but have chosen not to.

 

[EntropyQ3]

This is true, but I don't think that even tripling the potential base of Mac gamers would be enough to convince big publishers.
There's also the chicken-egg problem: people simply don't buy Macs for gaming, due to the lack of games (and poor price/perf ratio), whereas people do buy PCs for gaming.
So even if all Macs could run AAA games, I believe most of their owners won't be interested.

I think there is a fair bit of truth in this, but I also think that Mac users that like to play games to a large extent use other platforms. One of which is Windows under bootcamp on Macs. Why would you port your game to MacOS, if your target demographic buy the Windows version anyway? If that option is no longer there, the interest in native Mac version likely grows. To what extent is harder to say of course.

AS Macs will likely establish a reasonable base line performance. Which means that games that run on current gen (XBone/PS4) level will run well on any Mac, and AS Macs will have a growing user base extending from that base line. And that user base is not all that small. A lot of Windows volume are systems sold in container ship volumes to administrations and institutions. Those systems will never see Doom Eternal running on them anyway.

So I think there is a fair bit of money on the table for games on MacOS, certainly more than there was when boot camp was an option, the question is simply who will pick that money up. Economy abhors a vacuum. It will be filled.

We'll see how this plays out. I hope Apple provide systems with good 3D graphics performance, because I have a feeling future iMacs for instance will have screens that you'd really want to play games on. This switch to AS is a case where I feel Apples secrecy in terms of roadmaps works to their disadvantage - if you have no idea what is coming, the safer route is to go with what you know will provide what you want. In this case I think it would be wiser to be more open with what they are planning to provide, and when. The Mac market is not the iPhone market.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Streaming may be the future of gaming, but it's not the present yet. At any rate, Apple does not appear to be interested and understandably so. Apple sells hardware, they want everything to happen "on device".

Streaming is getting closer every day. GeForce Now, Playstation Now, Microsoft xCloud (I think that's what it's called). I believe Steam has an iOS app where you can stream games from your PC.

People already stream music, TV shows, and movies. It's simply a matter of time before streaming games is mainstream.

Just about a week ago, Oculus/Facebook announced that they were exiting the PCVR market to focus on wireless VR headsets. Soon they won't be tethered even wirelessly to PCs.

 

[Janichsan]

Microsoft likes to buy up Software houses to snag specific titles but I wonder if Apple ought to try a different approach and get their own game engine for devs to use.

That's effectively the whole collection of Apple's various game related APIs: SpriteKit, SceneKit, ControllerKit, GameKit, etc.

 

[magbarn]

Streaming is getting closer every day. GeForce Now, Playstation Now, Microsoft xCloud (I think that's what it's called). I believe Steam has an iOS app where you can stream games from your PC.

People already stream music, TV shows, and movies. It's simply a matter of time before streaming games is mainstream.

Just about a week ago, Oculus/Facebook announced that they were exiting the PCVR market to focus on wireless VR headsets. Soon they won't be tethered even wirelessly to PCs.

When are they going to get rid of the Lag? Tried Geforce Now, PS Now and they're both lag monsters on my 1 gig fiber connection. You're stuck playing Civ type games unless you turn all the settings to easy mode and take your time.

 

[jeanlain]

Microsoft likes to buy up Software houses to snag specific titles but I wonder if Apple ought to try a different approach and get their own game engine for devs to use.

What Apple does is having the major games engines running on Metal: Unity, Unreal... (oh wait!)
These are the de facto reference tools, and Apple won't compete with them, especially with an engine running only on Apple hardware.

But most of the games that use these cross-platform engines are not ported to Apple platforms. It's not worth the effort. See for example Rocket League (an UE4 game) that recently dropped Mac support. I bet that even if all it took to have a Mac version was clicking a "recompile" button, these devs would still not do it. It costs too much in support for too little benefit.

In sum, if the user base does not drastically increase, all the efforts in the word are not going to change the gaming landscape on the Mac.

 

[MacModMachine]

I dunno if that is 100% the case, id Software and Bethesda have (had?) plenty of resources to make Mac games, but have chosen not to.

there is no money in it. but if your making games that can work on the ios ecosystem in general thats worth it. thats why bethesda does just that. time is money.

 

[PortoMavericks]

People suggesting that Apple should adopt GDDR6x or HBM need to realize they use DDR4x for a specific reason.

Right now, with what we currently have on the A-Series lineup, they’re simply not fast enough to keep up with the huge bandwidth for those RAM specs.

It’d be a waste of money and a huge bottleneck for Apple if they adopted it with current performance. The expectation is that they’re going to announce a huge improvement on the A-Series Mac line in October.

 

[diamond.g]

there is no money in it. but if your making games that can work on the ios ecosystem in general thats worth it. thats why bethesda does just that. time is money.

I mean they ported Skyrim to the Switch (as in they ported their Creation Engine). Yet after all this time (9 years) they hadn't bothered to do the same for macOS or iOS. They chose to use Unity instead for their two games that are on iOS.

Though it does make me wonder how much of the game engine (Crystal Engine) did Feral Interactive rewrite to get Tomb raider running (metal native) on macOS.

 

[rkuo]

The real value for Apple gamers is in unifying the development platforms and taking gaming support seriously across all devices. The individual addressable markets might not be big enough, but combined (Apple TV, mac, and iPad/iPhone) and with more serious support (gamepad support in iOS is an example of where Apple needs to go on this), traction can be had.

 

[diamond.g]

The real value for Apple gamers is in unifying the development platforms and taking gaming support seriously across all devices. The individual addressable markets might not be big enough, but combined (Apple TV, mac, and iPad/iPhone) and with more serious support (gamepad support in iOS is an example of where Apple needs to go on this), traction can be had.

From your post to developers eyeballs.