Will the M1x MacBook pros be gaming worthy?

[MacCheetah3]

Yes, the next MacBook Pro is going to be gaming worthy. It's going to be covered in LEDs on every surface that switches colors, it's going to have a choice of either a flame or dragon decal, and it's going to be 8.6 lbs with an hour of battery life and a power brick the size of a building brick for max gaming capabilities.

I guess, Apple will outdo Origin as their high-end laptops use two AC adapters that are caged together to be the size of a building brick.

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[Kpjoslee]

Market projections I’ve seen estimate gaming-capable PC sales at somewhere around 40-60 million units in 2025. Apple sold around 20 million Macs last year. If they keep the with Apple Silicon models, that’s 20 millions Macs with gaming performance equivalent or better than an entry-level gaming laptop. Sounds to me like a reasonable market to go after.

Well, that is 40-60m million units of PC bought with real intent to play games on them, while you can't say the same with those 20m Mac sold, regardless of them being capable of running games or not.

It doesn't matter a damn thing even if all Apple Silicon Macs are capable of running games at a decent quality, when Apple keeps giving half assed effort when it comes to gaming.

I would bet even in the next 5 years, only great thing Mac would offer is the ability to run iOS games natively and nothing more than that.

 

[sunny5]

Well, that is 40-60m million units of PC bought with real intent to play games on them, while you can't say the same with those 20m Mac sold, regardless of them being capable of running games or not.

It doesn't matter a damn thing even if all Apple Silicon Macs are capable of running games at a decent quality, when Apple keeps giving half assed effort when it comes to gaming.

I would bet even in the next 5 years, only great thing Mac would offer is the ability to run iOS games natively and nothing more than that.

Steam stats already shows that only 2.51% of players are Mac users. It might be way less than what we think and it won't be a different story for others such as Epic Games, Origin, Ubisoft, GOG, and more.

 

[leman]

Well, that is 40-60m million units of PC bought with real intent to play games on them, while you can't say the same with those 20m Mac sold, regardless of them being capable of running games or not.

This is a valid point. I still think that there are good reasons to stay optimistic.

It doesn't matter a damn thing even if all Apple Silicon Macs are capable of running games at a decent quality, when Apple keeps giving half assed effort when it comes to gaming.

What would you have Apple do more? They have already invested tremendous resources in building innovative gaming GPUs packed with advanced, industry-changing features. They have designed a mature API that is very easy to use and has the most flexible graphics programming model on the market. They ship a shading language that supports metaprogramming, dynamic linking, function pointers, templated compilation and header-level compatibility with host CPU code. They have built state of the art GPU debugging tools and some of the best raytracing debugger the market has seen. They supports AAA devs in bringing native games to the Mac (as illustrated by the latest WWDC sessions). To me this sounds like they are taking these things quite seriously

 

[leman]

Steam stats already shows that only 2.51% of players are Mac users. It might be way less than what we think and it won't be a different story for others such as Epic Games, Origin, Ubisoft, GOG, and more.

Well, we talked about this. How does Steam count these percentages? For example, I play around 80% of my games under macOS. But I would occasionally use Bootcamp or GeforceNow to play some Windows exclusives. How do I enter the statistics? As a Mac user? A Windows user? If Steam counts „active“ installs within a certain period of time, I‘ll be registered as 1/3 Mac and 2/3 Windows, even if this is very far from my usage. What about people using Crossover or Parallels?

 

[Kpjoslee]

What would you have Apple do more? They have already invested tremendous resources in building innovative gaming GPUs packed with advanced, industry-changing features. They have designed a mature API that is very easy to use and has the most flexible graphics programming model on the market. They ship a shading language that supports metaprogramming, dynamic linking, function pointers, templated compilation and header-level compatibility with host CPU code. They have built state of the art GPU debugging tools and some of the best raytracing debugger the market has seen. They supports AAA devs in bringing native games to the Mac (as illustrated by the latest WWDC sessions). To me this sounds like they are taking these things quite seriously

I mean, you can sing the praises of how great the Metal all day long but unless Apple puts multi-billion dollar tier efforts in marketing and building echosystem around like how MS does with PCs and their consoles, I don't see Macs becoming any kind of decent PC alternative when it comes to AAA gaming. So yes, they need to do whole lot more than what they are doing right now.

 

[AgentMcGeek]

Building the ecosystem is what they’re doing by putting the hardware and software foundations first. There’s no point doing ads when they’re still training developers on their new tech at WWDC. Step by step.

 

[thekev]

What would you have Apple do more? They have already invested tremendous resources in building innovative gaming GPUs packed with advanced, industry-changing features. They have designed a mature API that is very easy to use and has the most flexible graphics programming model on the market. They ship a shading language that supports metaprogramming, dynamic linking, function pointers, templated compilation and header-level compatibility with host CPU code. They have built state of the art GPU debugging tools and some of the best raytracing debugger the market has seen. They supports AAA devs in bringing native games to the Mac (as illustrated by the latest WWDC sessions). To me this sounds like they are taking these things quite seriously

Part of it is a matter of time. Platform is still new. Apple sometimes ditches things and moves onto something new after a couple years, but I don't expect that to happen with Metal, given that (just browsing its docs) it seems really exceptional. It's hard to say what would be sufficient for smaller studios.

 

[AgentMcGeek]

Also, Metal has been around for more than just a couple years. It ensures cross device portability. It’s here to stay.

 

[quarkysg]

Well, that is 40-60m million units of PC bought with real intent to play games on them, while you can't say the same with those 20m Mac sold, regardless of them being capable of running games or not.

Not really. I have two nephews who bought two ‘gaming’ capable notebook meant for school work, because they were on sale. No intention for any gaming on it. I’m pretty sure they are not the only ones.

 

[leman]

I mean, you can sing the praises of how great the Metal all day long but unless Apple puts multi-billion dollar tier efforts in marketing and building echosystem around like how MS does with PCs and their consoles, I don't see Macs becoming any kind of decent PC alternative when it comes to AAA gaming. So yes, they need to do whole lot more than what they are doing right now.

MS is a direct player in console business, I don’t see why Apple has to be. They definitely need to put some more efforts in incentivizing developers to bring their games to Mac (and they do), the rest is inertia and demand. But Apple doesn’t need to buy a game studio and make crappy games aka Halo to become a competent gaming platform.

 

[diamond.g]

Building the ecosystem is what they’re doing by putting the hardware and software foundations first. There’s no point doing ads when they’re still training developers on their new tech at WWDC. Step by step.

It is really simple. Follow the route of Apple of old. Great hardware needs great software. Apple used to not rely on third parties to make software for their hardware (see FCP, Logic, iWork, etc) why are they doing it for games. They should buy Everelis, Aspyr, and Feral Interactive and have them actually make original games. Especially since these developers have the most experience with Apple APIs and hardware.
It could also be seen as the AppleTV+ Original Content plan.

 

[diamond.g]

MS is a direct player in console business, I don’t see why Apple has to be. They definitely need to put some more efforts in incentivizing developers to bring their games to Mac (and they do), the rest is inertia and demand. But Apple doesn’t need to buy a game studio and make crappy games aka Halo to become a competent gaming platform.

So you reject using the AppleTV+ route for gaming?

 

[leman]

Part of it is a matter of time. Platform is still new. Apple sometimes ditches things and moves onto something new after a couple years, but I don't expect that to happen with Metal, given that (just browsing its docs) it seems really exceptional. It's hard to say what would be sufficient for smaller studios.

They’ve been carefully building Metal for years, experimenting with new features on mobile first before stabilizing them on the desktop. I think the API is very mature now, and is lacking nothing compared to Vulkan or DX12. In some areas, like GPU-driven pipelines, it is actually superior.

 

[VArase]

Well, we talked about this. How does Steam count these percentages? For example, I play around 80% of my games under macOS. But I would occasionally use Bootcamp or GeforceNow to play some Windows exclusives. How do I enter the statistics? As a Mac user? A Windows user? If Steam counts „active“ installs within a certain period of time, I‘ll be registered as 1/3 Mac and 2/3 Windows, even if this is very far from my usage. What about people using Crossover or Parallels?

Ditto.

I have a 2020 iMac 5K, core-i9 (10910) 128 GB RAM, AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT w/16 GB, 10 gb ethernet, and a 4 TB SSD which games pretty well under boot camp.

I was just playing Mass Effect Legendary Edition on my iMac in boot camp under Windows 10 at 5K using 4K assets - that's where I had to play because Windows under parallels still sucks wind, and the macOS graphics processing still uses the traditional Wintel workflow of packing up graphics requests, compressing them, passing them over PCIe to the graphics coprocessor, unpacking them into GPU memory and processing them there - so the additional overhead of converting DirectX calls to Metal is enough to adversely affect realtime response (not to mention Intel's relatively slow processor cores).

So ... buying MELE in Windows definitely makes me look like a Windows user. And as long as the AAA we want are only appearing under Windows, we will continue to appear to be Windows users when we buy and play games.

Even on the Mac, AFAIK all Mac games have to be Intel because Steam tries to insert an Intel DLL (or some such) into the game stream to handle their chat and other functions which crash ARM native games.

Steam really needs to get their act together on this.

 

[diamond.g]

Well, we talked about this. How does Steam count these percentages? For example, I play around 80% of my games under macOS. But I would occasionally use Bootcamp or GeforceNow to play some Windows exclusives. How do I enter the statistics? As a Mac user? A Windows user? If Steam counts „active“ installs within a certain period of time, I‘ll be registered as 1/3 Mac and 2/3 Windows, even if this is very far from my usage. What about people using Crossover or Parallels?

The steam survey is self reported. You don’t get included without the popup asking for your permission.

 

[leman]

So you reject using the AppleTV+ route for gaming?

Here is a thing, there are different kinds of gaming. I’m sure that AppleTV could be a worthy competitor to something like a Switch, targeting the family/fun gaming circles. It’s just not something I personally care about. I mean, I was thinking about buying a console but there are very few games I am interested in, and I can’t justify spending $500+ (not to mention space issues, which for me is worse than money) just because I’m curious about Horizon Zero Dawn

This year, games I play are Bldurs Gates 3, Humankind, Factorio and the oldie but goodie Darkest Dungeon. All of these are available on macOS.

If Apple wants to go console route with AppleTV, by all means. I might even buy it to play some fun games with my partner. But it’s not something that will make my heart bear faster if you know what I mean

 

[VArase]

Well, that is 40-60m million units of PC bought with real intent to play games on them, while you can't say the same with those 20m Mac sold, regardless of them being capable of running games or not.

It doesn't matter a damn thing even if all Apple Silicon Macs are capable of running games at a decent quality, when Apple keeps giving half assed effort when it comes to gaming.

I would bet even in the next 5 years, only great thing Mac would offer is the ability to run iOS games natively and nothing more than that.

Oh, I dunno.

Seems like a bit of hubris thinking you can ascertain with any certainty what the intent of the user is in buying a powerful gaming-capable computer.

Consoles for sure, and maybe the flashy LED adorned models - but do those count up to 40-60 million units annually?

 

[VArase]

You clearing ignoring the fact that PC/Consoles are leading the game market and it won't gonna change just because the hardware of AS Mac is better. The market share of gaming is actually decreasing since some games are no longer supports Mac and Steam stats already proves that less than 3% of players are Mac users. So far, Mac is not providing anything better than PC/Consoles in terms of platform. Simply, gamers aren't interested in Mac.

It will be worse than Intel Mac for sure.

You're also ignoring the fact that any game played under boot camp or a hypervisor on a Mac is counted as a Windows user.

I would vastly prefer a Mac version of any game I play, but often it's simply not an option.

 

[diamond.g]

Here is a thing, there are different kinds of gaming. I’m sure that AppleTV could be a worthy competitor to something like a Switch, targeting the family/fun gaming circles. It’s just not something I personally care about. I mean, I was thinking about buying a console but there are very few games I am interested in, and I can’t justify spending $500+ (not to mention space issues, which for me is worse than money) just because I’m curious about Horizon Zero Dawn

This year, games I play are Bldurs Gates 3, Humankind, Factorio and the oldie but goodie Darkest Dungeon. All of these are available on macOS.

If Apple wants to go console route with AppleTV, by all means. I might even buy it to play some fun games with my partner. But it’s not something that will make my heart bear faster if you know what I mean

I was more talking about original content, ie Apple having their own IP and making games based on it. Say like a game based on Foundation or See.

I am not saying Apple shouldn't make a console, I am saying they need compelling content for one and the best way to get compelling content is either to make your own or buy it.

 

[diamond.g]

You're also ignoring the fact that any game played under boot camp or a hypervisor on a Mac is counted as a Windows user.

I would vastly prefer a Mac version of any game I play, but often it's simply not an option.

I am pretty sure that is not how the Steam Hardware survey works. Yes that would be the case for the top ten (or whatever) games list, but not the hardware survey.

 

[VArase]

Emulating game only works with games that were actually released for Intel macs or through Parallels on games that are compiled for the ARM version of Windows. It doesn't work otherwise.

As for big and noisy, you can do better on noise if you're building them yourself. Dell and some of the others have been cheaping out the past few years. The biggest bottleneck right now is graphics card pricing, but they should be back to MSRP later this year with China cracking down on crypto-currency mining.

TLDR, your advice only works for a small number of games, some of which may not be supported in a year or two.

Actually, a lot of folks are running games under Parallels or some other hypervisor using ARM Windows and using its capability of emulating x86 - and this is on low end Macs using the M1 SoC.

The M1x will have double the Firestorm high performance cores, and double or quadruple the number of GPU cores as well as being less memory constrained.

 

[leman]

I was more talking about original content, ie Apple having their own IP and making games based on it. Say like a game based on Foundation or See.

I am not saying Apple shouldn't make a console, I am saying they need compelling content for one and the best way to get compelling content is either to make your own or buy it.

What you say makes a lot of sense, I just don’t think I will find any of the Apple original game IP compelling. But it could be a way to popularize the platform, I don’t know.

 

[diamond.g]

What you say makes a lot of sense, I just don’t think I will find any of the Apple original game IP compelling. But it could be a way to popularize the platform, I don’t know.

Well we don't know what we don't know. Apple doesn't have any original game IP. They need to make some. I have not seen Foundation (or read the books) so I am not sure what genre of game would go with it. See could be an action stealth game, kind of like Tomb Raider. Maybe they could make a football (soccer) manager with characters from Ted Lasso.

 

[JMacHack]

Steam really needs to get their act together on this.

Snowballs chance in hell.