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

[jeanlain]

I always recall the kind words from Aspyr way back in the PowerPC era. They said, and I paraphrase:

1 GHz is 1 GHz regardless of processor architecture. And to get timely ports, don't expect Altivec or any other architecture advantages to even see the light of day.

If Apple wants this to go, they need to do what Intel did and pump out the GHz from those ASMacs.

No.
What matters the most is single-core performance, for which the A14 is at the very top, and performance/W, where Apple SoCs absolutely crush X86 CPUs.
Clockspeed has nothing to do with that, and that Aspyr person probably resorted to a cop-out for the poor performance of their port.

 

[diamond.g]

Yes, am talking about the GPU performance Also, resolution doesn't matter much. You don't need to play games at native resolution. Using fractional scaling gets much better performance without imparting the subjective image quality a bit. I usually play games using 1650x1050 or 1920x1200 on my 16" MBP as it is a sweet spot for many games.

Whaaaa, if you aren’t doing temporal up scaling resolution totally matters. Otherwise what is the point of having such a high resolution display.

 

[diamond.g]

No.
What matters the most is single-core performance, for which the A14 is at the very top, and performance/W, where Apple SoCs absolutely crush X86 CPUs.
Clockspeed has nothing to do with that, and that Aspyr person probably resorted to a cop-out for the poor performance of their port.

So how is that single core performance going to make an AS Mac better at playing say No Mans Sky than a PS4 Pro? (Which admittedly has crappy cpu performance)

 

[jeanlain]

Where did I say that? I didn't mention any PS4 pro. We were discussing whether clock speed was the most important factor for a CPU. We were not discussing GPUs.

 

[diamond.g]

Where did I say that? I didn't mention any PS4 pro. We were discussing whether clock speed was the most important factor for a CPU. We were not discussing GPUs.

I was asking if ARM mattered for games. It wasn’t clear what advantages for games going to ARM would bring. It was said they are faster. That brought up being CPU limited which tends to happen at lower resolutions. Which if you are using a Mac is a crappy compromise with such high quality displays.

 

[jeanlain]

I reacted to another post, not to your question.
A good ARM implementation can bring high perf/W, which is an advantage for mobile/laptop gaming. A TBDR GPU has the same benefit.

 

[leman]

Whaaaa, if you aren’t doing temporal up scaling resolution totally matters. Otherwise what is the point of having such a high resolution display.

The point of having a high resolution display is super crips text and UI. Sure would be nice to play games with that quality too, but that's a bit too much to ask, don't you think? Right now that is a realm of dedicated high-end gaming machines and I think we can all agree that Mac is not taking that niche anytime soon.

In the meantime it's perfectly fine to benefit from that great screen for everyday work but treat it as a (still very good quality) lower-res screens for games. Unless you bought your Mac for the sole purpose of gaming . Which would be a really dumb thing to do...

I was asking if ARM mattered for games. It wasn’t clear what advantages for games going to ARM would bring. It was said they are faster. That brought up being CPU limited which tends to happen at lower resolutions. Which if you are using a Mac is a crappy compromise with such high quality displays.

What's so complicated here? "ARM" doesn't matter for games. What matters for games is that Apple chips (CPU and GPU) are getting way more performance per watt. This means that bulk of Macs will get faster (especially in the GPU department). Right now, the only Macs remotely capable of more demanding gaming are upgraded 16" models and some 27" iMacs or above. Apple Silicon will make all Mac laptops perform at least on par with entry level to entry mid range gaming laptops.

 

[sosumilee]

This is my first comment but I strongly disagree that Apple Silicon will have a new era with gaming. Here's why.

1. Most developers and big companies AREN'T interesting in Apple Silicon and there are no announcments for transitioning to AS.
2. AS performance has nothing to do with a new era of gaming because it's not just about gaming.
3. AS market is extremly un-popular. Even Intel Mac suffers from the market size.
4. Gaming's features for Mac itself are seriously inferior compared to PC and consoles such as ray tracing and DirectStorage.
5. PC or Windows are more developer friendly for game developing.
6. Who would want to spend more for less?
7. Cloud gaming services are available even for Mac so why would they spend too much money just for Mac?

 

[Maximara]

This is my first comment but I strongly disagree that Apple Silicon will have a new era with gaming. Here's why.

1. Most developers and big companies AREN'T interesting in Apple Silicon and there are no announcments for transitioning to AS.
2. AS performance has nothing to do with a new era of gaming because it's not just about gaming.
3. AS market is extremly un-popular. Even Intel Mac suffers from the market size.
4. Gaming's features for Mac itself are seriously inferior compared to PC and consoles such as ray tracing and DirectStorage.
5. PC or Windows are more developer friendly for game developing.
6. Who would want to spend more for less?
7. Cloud gaming services are available even for Mac so why would they spend too much money just for Mac?

Several things here:

1. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
2. Like it or not gaming is what pushes consumer computer development.
3. There actual evidence for this? Most of the complaining can be chocked to 'but I don't want to get out of my comfort zone'
4. Non sequitur as you are using the current situation with regards to the future.
5. You're kidding right? Part of the reason King Crunch rules in the PC/Windows world is thanks to to the way workflow works on a PC. The other part is TPTB are clueless.
6. Study after study has shown if you look be beyond the sticker price that isn't true. The entry price may be cheaper but you really pay for it down the line. And that is not considering in some cases if you compare a Mac to a PC of name brand comparative hardware the Mac within a few hundred dollars of a PC
&. Cloud gaming depends on your internet being reasonably affordable and fast. In the US you get to choose ONE ie if you want inexpensive your connection is going to blow goats for true cloud gaming. If you can get the speed to make make cloud gaming practical get ready to pay a an arm, leg, and perhaps your first born.

 

[sosumilee]

Several things here:

1. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
2. Like it or not gaming is what pushes consumer computer development.
3. There actual evidence for this? Most of the complaining can be chocked to 'but I don't want to get out of my comfort zone'
4. Non sequitur as you are using the current situation with regards to the future.
5. You're kidding right? Part of the reason King Crunch rules in the PC/Windows world is thanks to to the way workflow works on a PC. The other part is TPTB are clueless.
6. Study after study has shown if you look be beyond the sticker price that isn't true. The entry price may be cheaper but you really pay for it down the line. And that is not considering in some cases if you compare a Mac to a PC of name brand comparative hardware the Mac within a few hundred dollars of a PC
&. Cloud gaming depends on your internet being reasonably affordable and fast. In the US you get to choose ONE ie if you want inexpensive your connection is going to blow goats for true cloud gaming. If you can get the speed to make make cloud gaming practical get ready to pay a an arm, leg, and perhaps your first born.

1. Then where is the proof? Did anyone ever interested in Mac especially from AAA game developers?
2. Not Mac. Mac is a niche market.
3. Base on the Steam stat, only 3% are Mac users and that's the total number of Mac users registerted to Steam so it can be much lower. Other platforms dont even support Mac that much such as Orizin, Ubisoft, and more. Also, because of Catalina, it will be much less since there are quite a lot of games using 32 bit such as L4D2.
4. It's a fact. Apple does not have any technologies related to game itself unlike Microsoft. MS even collobrate with other companies frequently. Apple doesn't even have any platforms just for gaming. Arcade is a joke btw.
5. Kidding? You better check how many games are available in PC compared to Mac.
6. Like I said, Mac is a niche market and they have to spend a lot of money for less players.
7. You dont need a fast internet to run cloud gaming service.
8. Mac is too expensive for its performance compared to gaming computers and it's already a huge diadvantage.

 

[mr_roboto]

Clockspeed has nothing to do with that, and that Aspyr person probably resorted to a cop-out for the poor performance of their port.

I think that's an overly harsh reading of the Aspyr paraphrase. Games, like virtually all pop culture, go stale. Once a game has launched, the clock is ticking. The longer it takes to get ported to non-launch platforms, the worse sales on those platforms will be. There are exceptions, but it's a pretty reliable rule. So there was a lot of pressure on Aspyr to get ports out as quickly as possible instead of taking a year to rewrite the engine so it could take full advantage of Altivec (or whatever other Mac-specific tech people wanted Aspyr's ports to use).

There was also the money issue. Aspyr was trying to make Mac game port economics work when potential sales were always quite small compared to the launch platform. In most cases, they couldn't afford to pay for lots of extra engineering to fully optimize the game for the Mac. (Don't get me wrong, from what I remember when discussing this online with friendly Aspyr engineers, they had to do quite a bit just to get most games running at an acceptable framerate on Macs. But they didn't necessarily have the time or budget to go further.)


And that segues back into the general thread topic, where I want to say something which isn't a response to anything you (jeanlain) said.

As some have said, Apple Silicon will make the Mac a more attractive platform for games just by dramatically raising graphics performance on the cheapest Macs.

But that won't be enough by itself. Apple needs an exec who understands the game industry, has lots of contacts in it, can advocate for changes to the Mac and iOS platforms to meet game industry needs, and, most important of all, has the authority and budget to run a department which assigns Apple engineers to assist other companies in porting and optimizing games. Because, if you're Apple, you have to solve those problems for them, almost for free. They won't do it for themselves. Even when the economics are favorable, they're often looking at it as an opportunity cost. They could be assigning their engineering talent to Mac ports, or they could assign them work on the next game. Guess what wins?

That's how Aspyr worked. Whenever someone had a hit game that could sell decent numbers if ported, but didn't have the in-house Mac dev experience and/or didn't want to detract from their own projects, Aspyr could step in.

This kind of thing is just normal business practice in gaming. Ever wonder how Nvidia gets their logo on the splash screen of so many games? That's non-monetary payment for Nvidia's help with graphics optimization, extra Nvidia-only special effects, and so forth. The game dev gets a faster, prettier game, Nvidia gets marketing value to help sell their hardware.

Apple has to do that. There's been some signs that they get this to some extent, e.g. their now-exploded partnership with Epic to make Unreal Engine work better on iOS, but there needs to be more.

 

[jeanlain]

Oh, I totally understand the challenges faced by porting houses. But saying "1 Gz is 1 GHz regardless of processor architecture" is either self evident (1 GHz is 10^9 events/s, regardless of what you measure) or idiotic if they implied that a 1GHz CPU core will perform the same regardless of its architecture.

 

[EntropyQ3]

It's funny but so far we didn't get a word from you about DLSS 2.0.

TBDR will be DOA on low end machines pretty soon.

This is bizarre.
First, DLSS is a good upscaling technique, but that’s all it is. It requires support in the game code, which is why only a handful of games support it, none of them in my 200 game Steam+GoG library for instance. Its presense in gaming is miniscule, and the only graphics cards that support it are Nvidias newer products that have enough tensor cores to pull it off at high frame rates.
Assuming this will be an industry wide method is very, very questionable.
Second, whether the GPU is a TBDR or IMR is irrelevant to DLSS like approaches.

Personally, I think upscaling techniques with less hardware+code demands are a better bet even if results are less impressive when zoomed in. The high resolution of current displays (yay!) is why upscaling makes sense in the first place. Choosing an approach that is expensive for slightly better pixel level results doesn’t make a lot of sense.

 

[jeanlain]

1. Then where is the proof? Did anyone ever interested in Mac especially from AAA game developers?
2. Not Mac. Mac is a niche market.
3. Base on the Steam stat, only 3% are Mac users and that's the total number of Mac users registerted to Steam so it can be much lower. Other platforms dont even support Mac that much such as Orizin, Ubisoft, and more. Also, because of Catalina, it will be much less since there are quite a lot of games using 32 bit such as L4D2.
4. It's a fact. Apple does not have any technologies related to game itself unlike Microsoft. MS even collobrate with other companies frequently. Apple doesn't even have any platforms just for gaming. Arcade is a joke btw.
5. Kidding? You better check how many games are available in PC compared to Mac.
6. Like I said, Mac is a niche market and they have to spend a lot of money for less players.
7. You dont need a fast internet to run cloud gaming service.
8. Mac is too expensive for its performance compared to gaming computers and it's already a huge diadvantage.

It's too early to make a judgement, IMO.
If game studios are currently developing AAA games for AS Macs (and other Apple devices), they're probably collaborating with Apple for that, and they are under NDA. They can't annouce anything yet. But if the next Apple event comes and goes with nothing of note being announced with respect to gaming, then we may indeed worry.
It's true that most current Mac games won't work on AS Macs, but we're talking about future games. That said, Apple should probably worry a bit about that and make sure that lack fo initial games is not a hindrance.
But consider that AS Macs will be superior to the average PC for gaming. Most PCs are laptops coming with paltry intel iGPUs. All AS Macs will be vastly faster in both compute and graphics. We'll see how AS Macs compare to PCs in perf/$. Results could be interesting.
Game development tools may not up to what's available on Windows, but they are not bad at all. Xcode/Metal have high-end features for game development and optimisation. I think these tools are fine. Porting the game to Metal is the main challenge regardless of the IDE used.

As for cloud gaming, I don't think it's mature enough yet. At any rate, Apple may not like the prospect of cloud gaming gaining traction. Their business model revolves around portable devices with high performance SoCs, which are not required for cloud gaming.

 

[sosumilee]

It's too early to make a judgement, IMO.
If game studios are currently developing AAA games for AS Macs (and other Apple devices), they're probably collaborating with Apple for that, and they are under NDA. They can't annouce anything yet. But if the next Apple event comes and goes with nothing of note being announced with respect to gaming, then we may indeed worry.
It's true that most current Mac games won't work on AS Macs, but we're talking about future games. That said, Apple should probably worry a bit about that and make sure that lack fo initial games is not a hindrance.
But consider that AS Macs will be superior to the average PC for gaming. Most PCs are laptops coming with paltry intel iGPUs. All AS Macs will be vastly faster in both compute and graphics. We'll see how AS Macs compare to PCs in perf/$. Results could be interesting.
Game development tools may not up to what's available on Windows, but they are not bad at all. Xcode/Metal have high-end features for game development and optimisation. I think these tools are fine. Porting the game to Metal is the main challenge regardless of the IDE used.

As for cloud gaming, I don't think it's mature enough yet. At any rate, Apple may not like the prospect of cloud gaming gaining traction. Their business model revolves around portable devices with high performance SoCs, which are not required for cloud gaming.

It's not too early. It's already predicted since Apple is NOT interested in PC and console market for a decade. Who would like to develop games just for Mac? None.

 

[jeanlain]

Not just for Macs, and that's the whole point. The same game can run on several Apple Devices. Apple may announce a new Apple TV at the next event.

 

[EntropyQ3]

Not just for Macs, and that's the whole point. The same game can run on several Apple Devices. Apple may announce a new Apple TV at the next event.

Yup. I think that was pretty clear at WWDC. Application support is assumed to primarily migrate from iOS to MacOS. What that means longer term in terms of gaming remains to be seen.

Application support for a platform is primarily a business decision. ROI, basically. If the users are there, and there is money on the table, someone will pick it up. In the Apple x86 era, porting games to MacOS was negatively impacted sales wise because those who cared a lot about gaming not only could use other platforms for that, but could dual boot their Macs to Windows, and run them on their computers without having to buy them later/more expensively/with only partial feature support for MacOS.

That will no longer be possible, so the market for native games under MacOS will increase, all other things staying equal. And if Apples AS products are attractive enough to grow market share, ROI is likely to improve further.

 

[leman]

3. Base on the Steam stat, only 3% are Mac users and that's the total number of Mac users registerted to Steam so it can be much lower. Other platforms dont even support Mac that much such as Orizin, Ubisoft, and more. Also, because of Catalina, it will be much less since there are quite a lot of games using 32 bit such as L4D2.
6. Like I said, Mac is a niche market and they have to spend a lot of money for less players.

The argument is that Apple Silicon Macs will have much better GPUs which will catapult them to an entirely different position regarding gaming capabilities. While you are right that Macs are a niche market, they represent a decent chunk of premium computers, which are already a niche market. And finally, let's not forget that gaming-capable computers are a in a way a "niche market" themselves — most PCs out there are office machines with ultra-low end integrated GPUs. Even among Steam users the overwhelming majority of machines have something like a GTX 1660 or lower. We like to talk about high-end GPUs when we look at gaming but the fact is that only few % of gamers own them.

Basically, the estimation would be something like this: only about 30% of PCs have hardware capable of gaming and only about 20% of those have high-end GPUs. Macs are about 10% of the PC market and right now probably less than 5% have hardware capable of gaming. With Apple Silicon Macs however, this figure goes up to 100%. In other words, in a couple of years, every new Mac will be at least as good — or better — than 70-80% of PCs on steam. The 10% of Mac marketshare will translate to at least 20-30% of gaming-capable PC market share — which becomes sizable.

4. It's a fact. Apple does not have any technologies related to game itself unlike Microsoft.

Of course Apple has technologies related to gaming. Metal currently has more or less the same features as DX12. Apple has game controller support built into the OS. They have decent tools. Etc.

8. Mac is too expensive for its performance compared to gaming computers and it's already a huge diadvantage.

It's not too early. It's already predicted since Apple is NOT interested in PC and console market for a decade. Who would like to develop games just for Mac? None.

Nobody is talking about Macs becoming a dedicated gaming platform. We are talking about Macs becoming a suitable platform for gaming. If all you care about is games and are on a budget you will obviously buy a cheapo gaming PC. This is not going to change.

The point is simply that future Macs will have the performance — and the market share — to make them attractive platform for more game developers. Gaming on Mac is already doing rather well with most popular engines supporting macOS — it is very rare these days that I come across a game I am interested in that won't natively run on my 16" MBP, and the performance uplift should encourage more studios to port their games over.

 

[leman]

First, DLSS is a good upscaling technique, but that’s all it is. It requires support in the game code, which is why only a handful of games support it, none of them in my 200 game Steam+GoG library for instance. Its presense in gaming is miniscule, and the only graphics cards that support it are Nvidias newer products that have enough tensor cores to pull it off at high frame rates.

It's really strange how people tend to get hang up on irrelevant stuff, isn't it? I see things like raytracing, DLSS and DirectStorage mentioned here as if "gaming" is impossible without these things.... while almost 0% of games use these technologies and only 1% (if at all) of hardware out there even supports it...

 

[Maximara]

1. Then where is the proof? Did anyone ever interested in Mac especially from AAA game developers?
2. Not Mac. Mac is a niche market.
3. Base on the Steam stat, only 3% are Mac users and that's the total number of Mac users registerted to Steam so it can be much lower. Other platforms dont even support Mac that much such as Orizin, Ubisoft, and more. Also, because of Catalina, it will be much less since there are quite a lot of games using 32 bit such as L4D2.
4. It's a fact. Apple does not have any technologies related to game itself unlike Microsoft. MS even collobrate with other companies frequently. Apple doesn't even have any platforms just for gaming. Arcade is a joke btw.
5. Kidding? You better check how many games are available in PC compared to Mac.
6. Like I said, Mac is a niche market and they have to spend a lot of money for less players.
7. You dont need a fast internet to run cloud gaming service.
8. Mac is too expensive for its performance compared to gaming computers and it's already a huge diadvantage.

1. As I pointed out before that is not how proof works per Kusche's Parrot or Sagan's Dragon. And if you have no idea what either one of those are they are basically 'here is a totally off the wall gonzo premise - prove it isn't true': "The burden of proof should be on the people who make these statements, to show where they got their information from, to see if their conclusions and interpretations are valid and if they have left anything out." That is what absence of evidence is not evidence of absence means.
2. I have pointed out before ithe Mac is around ~10%; on what planet is that not a niche market?!
3. You did included iOS games in that sampling, right? Remember AS Mac run those games as well.
4. Didn't say it wasn't I have said on several forums here that current Mac gaming effectively blows goats. There was a time where VHS was all the rage so much that Blockbuster turned down a chance to buy a company. Perhaps you have heard of them - Netflix.
5. You said "developer friendly". So now you are claiming that crunch is developer friendly?!
6. You said "spend more for less" regarding the Mac.
7. Only if you count mobile (which apple has 1/4 of the market) "cloud gaming".One of Yahtzee's complaints about on-line gaming was (and I think still is) if you have "standard" internet be prepared for really bad lag times.
8. As I have pointed out before that was due to Intel basically FUBARing Apple up the rear end with Skylake ( "The quality assurance in Skylake was abnormally bad," François Piednoël)

I am reminded of the story of Wilhelm Kress who wanted an engine of a spastic power and weight. Sadly the company pulled an Intel and sent him an engine twice as heavy (ie more buggy then normal) resulting in his effort to launch what he planned to be the new terror weapon to fail. Years later it was shown if Kress had gotten the engine he had asked for he not the Wright brothers would have been credited with the first successful airplane.

Nobody is talking about Macs becoming a dedicated gaming platform. We are talking about Macs becoming a suitable platform for gaming. If all you care about is games and are on a budget you will obviously buy a cheapo gaming PC. This is not going to change.

These days "cheapo gaming PC" seems to mean "console" and yes Apple's one attempt in that market was a disaster. Pip pin cheerio. But really what serious general PC gamer is going for a "cheapo gaming PC"? If the youtube videos are any guid they are going to bling the crap out of a customer built PC.

The point is simply that future Macs will have the performance — and the market share — to make them attractive platform for more game developers. Gaming on Mac is already doing rather well with most popular engines supporting macOS — it is very rare these days that I come across a game I am interested in that won't natively run on my 16" MBP, and the performance uplift should encourage more studios to port their games over.

Especially when ~62% of game developers use the Unity engine which already has an ARM version out.

 

[leman]

These days "cheapo gaming PC" seems to mean "console" and yes Apple's one attempt in that market was a disaster. Pip pin cheerio. But really what serious general PC gamer is going for a "cheapo gaming PC"? If the youtube videos are any guid they are going to bling the crap out of a customer built PC.

Well, consoles came a long way... current gen consoles are ridiculously powerful. As to "serious" gamers — they are one of those tiny demographics that happen to be surprisingly vocal. While they drive public opinion and sales, I wouldn't listen to them too much. Or one will inevitably end up with a homermobile

 

[jeanlain]

It's really strange how people tend to get hang up on irrelevant stuff, isn't it? I see things like raytracing, DLSS and DirectStorage mentioned here as if "gaming" is impossible without these things.... while almost 0% of games use these technologies and only 1% (if at all) of hardware out there even supports it...

Yeah, they make a lot of noise about ray-tracing, but when you look at the games that have it, you can hardy tell the difference in image quality (while you do notice the difference in performance). Seriously, in Control, you have to pause and look at reflections in tea pots to see a difference. I've looked at Metro Exodus, same thing. The difference is hardly noticeable.
Of course, if you compare global illumination to low-quality rasterisation (as in Quake 2, Minecraft or Fortnite) you can tell the difference, but you could probably get very similar results at much lower cost with traditional approaches.

 

[jeanlain]

Basically, the estimation would be something like this: only about 30% of PCs have hardware capable of gaming and only about 20% of those have high-end GPUs. Macs are about 10% of the PC market and right now probably less than 5% have hardware capable of gaming. With Apple Silicon Macs however, this figure goes up to 100%. In other words, in a couple of years, every new Mac will be at least as good — or better — than 70-80% of PCs on steam. The 10% of Mac marketshare will translate to at least 20-30% of gaming-capable PC market share — which becomes sizable.

I don't think this tells the whole story. I believe that the Mac demographics and PC demographics are different, and that the typical Mac user is less likely tot be interested in AAA gaming. And that's unrelated to the fact that the Mac hardware can run AAA games or not.
Case in point, the Mac user base (in %) is much lower on Steam than what it is in general. Admittedly though, it's a chicken-egg problem. Few people game on a Mac because of the lack of games, hence those who get a Mac tend to be "not gamers".

 

[rkuo]

I don't think this tells the whole story. I believe that the Mac demographics and PC demographics are different, and that the typical Mac user is less likely tot be interested in AAA gaming. And that's unrelated to the fact that the Mac hardware can run AAA games or not.
Case in point, the Mac user base (in %) is much lower on Steam than what it is in general. Admittedly though, it's a chicken-egg problem. Few people game on a Mac because of the lack of games, hence those who get a Mac tend to be "not gamers".

The appeal lies more in unified development across iOS and macOS and tvOS. I don't think the Mac market and whatever GPU's go into the new Mac's are going to drive game development directly. It's the total addressable market sharing similar hardware and API's that could make ports worth the investment for a developer.

DLSS and Raytracing and DirectStorage are all important as well. Technologies like these are in the next gen consoles (well maybe not DLSS but I'd guess something like it will appear), so not having a equivalent on a PC/Mac will make ports more costly or difficult.

 

[diamond.g]

1. As I pointed out before that is not how proof works per Kusche's Parrot or Sagan's Dragon. And if you have no idea what either one of those are they are basically 'here is a totally off the wall gonzo premise - prove it isn't true': "The burden of proof should be on the people who make these statements, to show where they got their information from, to see if their conclusions and interpretations are valid and if they have left anything out." That is what absence of evidence is not evidence of absence means.
2. I have pointed out before ithe Mac is around ~10%; on what planet is that not a niche market?!
3. You did included iOS games in that sampling, right? Remember AS Mac run those games as well.
4. Didn't say it wasn't I have said on several forums here that current Mac gaming effectively blows goats. There was a time where VHS was all the rage so much that Blockbuster turned down a chance to buy a company. Perhaps you have heard of them - Netflix.
5. You said "developer friendly". So now you are claiming that crunch is developer friendly?!
6. You said "spend more for less" regarding the Mac.
7. Only if you count mobile (which apple has 1/4 of the market) "cloud gaming".One of Yahtzee's complaints about on-line gaming was (and I think still is) if you have "standard" internet be prepared for really bad lag times.
8. As I have pointed out before that was due to Intel basically FUBARing Apple up the rear end with Skylake ( "The quality assurance in Skylake was abnormally bad," François Piednoël)

I am reminded of the story of Wilhelm Kress who wanted an engine of a spastic power and weight. Sadly the company pulled an Intel and sent him an engine twice as heavy (ie more buggy then normal) resulting in his effort to launch what he planned to be the new terror weapon to fail. Years later it was shown if Kress had gotten the engine he had asked for he not the Wright brothers would have been credited with the first successful airplane.



These days "cheapo gaming PC" seems to mean "console" and yes Apple's one attempt in that market was a disaster. Pip pin cheerio. But really what serious general PC gamer is going for a "cheapo gaming PC"? If the youtube videos are any guid they are going to bling the crap out of a customer built PC.


Especially when ~62% of game developers use the Unity engine which already has an ARM version out.

Is this to say that mobile gaming is real gaming? I would hope the free to play, pay to win style of most mobile gaming wouldn't be brought to the Mac, but that feels like what everyone is advocating when bringing up how easy it would be to bring iOS games to AS Macs.

Yeah, they make a lot of noise about ray-tracing, but when you look at the games that have it, you can hardy tell the difference in image quality (while you do notice the difference in performance). Seriously, in Control, you have to pause and look at reflections in tea pots to see a difference. I've looked at Metro Exodus, same thing. The difference is hardly noticeable.
Of course, if you compare global illumination to low-quality rasterisation (as in Quake 2, Minecraft or Fortnite) you can tell the difference, but you could probably get very similar results at much lower cost with traditional approaches.

Real time ray tracing is new though, made worse by only 1 vendor supporting it, with meh performance at high prices (at the time). Now that the next gen consoles support it I would expect (for sure on Sony's side) that they will push for the added features. I mean look at Spider-Man Miles Morales. Folks are complaining that the reflections aren't that great but don't seem to remember that in the first SM the reflections didn't really exist or showed up as shadow blobs for just the main character.

I guess my thought is yeah you can get a Unity Engines Call of Duty Mobile on AS Mac and iOS, but you won't see Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War (single player campaign) on either, and that is sad.
The other thing that makes me sad is Skyrim has been ported to everything but MacOS. They did make a mobile version "in the same universe" but it isn't open world so not really the same game. Now that Microsoft owns Bethesda I doubt other platforms will see any more Elder Scrolls games, which is a shame.