Will the M1 affect Apple’s desire to do cross-platform games?

[Bodhitree]

It occurs to me that with 20 million M1 chips reportedly being sold, and that being across laptops, desktops and tablets, there is a really good use-case to do cross-platform games which target all three of those platforms. To date, I haven’t seen any titles which do this, but you could potentially sell a decent amount of copies.

You could take an engine like Unity 3D or Unreal 4, and rework the input scheme and user interface, which in most games is no more than 5-10% of the code, to create a game that can release on the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store and be available to nearly all M1 devices.

Considering the console-level power of the M1, you could do any of quite a wide range of style of game and take advantage of the bigger screens beyond just iPhone.

 

[BanditoB]

Doesn’t Apple Arcade already do this?

 

[Andropov]

to create a game that can release on the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store and be available to nearly all M1 devices.

You have to support Intel Macs if you release on the Mac App Store.

 

[jav6454]

Apple Arcade does it and Steam and several developers are jumping on. Intel Macs will stay around for a few more years, but apps will start being optimized more for M-series. Just like when Apple jumped from PPC to Intel.

 

[leman]

Apple doesn’t do games themselves so that’s a bit of a weird question. As to devs, maybe. For my game prototypes I think Catalyst is very convenient, allows me to code for pretty much all Apple platforms with the same code base.

 

[jav6454]

Apple doesn’t do games themselves so that’s a bit of a weird question. As to devs, maybe. For my game prototypes I think Catalyst is very convenient, allows me to code for pretty much all Apple platforms with the same code base.

Agreed with the first part. Good thing new devs are getting involved with porting, although I don't expect titles being churned quickly.