I don't know for sure, but with the switch to Apple Silicon and no slots/support for established GPUs, Apple moved macOS even further away from a wide game developer support. I'm afraid, the next best solution on Macs will be the arrival of a relatively lag-free game streaming experience, whenever that may be. I am no fan of streaming and despise subscriptions but at least Apple could no longer break compatibility then, should they remove 64 bit support or switch to their next CPU architecture. I think a Windows PC is still the best solution.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
A gamer's lament: Apple please let us game on the Mac!
- Thread starter groove-agent
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'd love it, but at the same time I really don't see how they get to AAA without embracing graphics APIs beyond Metal. Getting locked out of NVidia world, including CUDA running native, blocks a whole lot of paths forward for cross-development. Especially with the lowest common denominator, OpenGL, on the chopping block, and its successor, Vulkan, supported on Metal only via a third-party tool.
If Apple's view is that the way to get your game onto Apple is to redo all your shaders etc. in Metal, I don't think they're going to get much in the way of uptake. They need to be focusing some energy on the conversion process and the conversion pipeline. An ivory tower, even if it's a powerful one, won't be enough.
Having said that, there's more to gaming than AAA. But it's nice to see there is at least one person at Apple thinking in those terms.
I suppose I could add that I tend to get just a few AAA games and then play the hell out of them. But I've moved them over to the PC side, with a middle-of-the-road GPU (GTX 1060) to keep from melting my Mac down at 1080p. So I'm not sure my wallet would provide much incentive for game developers to move back to the Mac.
At the moment I'm half a level from reaching Paragon 800 in Diablo III, which I've played off and on since it first came out a little short of a decade ago. Diablo III was released on the Mac the very same day it was released for the PC (as were I and II). Now, with OpenGL deprecated, Blizzard has no plans for a Mac release of the upcoming Diablo IV.
Last edited:
What the hell is peoples obsession with CUDA anyway? NVidia hasn’t made a good GPU since Pascal (1080ti owners still have zero reason to upgrade) there’s more to gpu tech than one ****in company.
“b-b-but muh cross-platform!”
****ing AAA games are released on a wide variety of platforms, which often do not have much in common. I know that Xbox and PS don’t use CUDA because their SOCs are made by AMD.
I feel like ranting more in fact, so here goes.
Apple has done nothing wrong with gaming. They provide APIs to work on their systems, and are now delivering great cpu tech with tight integration with their programming tools. Everything is there, set up and ready to port games to MacOS.
Still, crickets from many devs. Engines go un-updated and bugs never fixed. “Wow, what the **** Apple, why are you so hostile!” Cry morons.
You want CUDA or Vulkan? Fork over $400 or more (msrp, not scalped) for an entry level new gpu and enjoy the fans blowing at full speed to cool the damned things. Apple dropped 32 bit support so they could move forward with cpu tech. You want your 32-bit support, you’re free to buy an intel or AMD cpu.
You want more games on MacOS? You’re attacking the guys who make every tool available to game devs. The devs don’t port? That’s on them.
The complaining just reinforces my opinion of “gamers” as whiny spoiled children (or manchildren) who don’t understand they can’t have their cake and eat it too.
“b-b-but muh cross-platform!”
****ing AAA games are released on a wide variety of platforms, which often do not have much in common. I know that Xbox and PS don’t use CUDA because their SOCs are made by AMD.
I feel like ranting more in fact, so here goes.
Apple has done nothing wrong with gaming. They provide APIs to work on their systems, and are now delivering great cpu tech with tight integration with their programming tools. Everything is there, set up and ready to port games to MacOS.
Still, crickets from many devs. Engines go un-updated and bugs never fixed. “Wow, what the **** Apple, why are you so hostile!” Cry morons.
You want CUDA or Vulkan? Fork over $400 or more (msrp, not scalped) for an entry level new gpu and enjoy the fans blowing at full speed to cool the damned things. Apple dropped 32 bit support so they could move forward with cpu tech. You want your 32-bit support, you’re free to buy an intel or AMD cpu.
You want more games on MacOS? You’re attacking the guys who make every tool available to game devs. The devs don’t port? That’s on them.
The complaining just reinforces my opinion of “gamers” as whiny spoiled children (or manchildren) who don’t understand they can’t have their cake and eat it too.
Ehh those 1080ti folk have every reason to upgrade for DLSS and RTX, plus in straight rasterization the 3080ti is twice as fast.
So is it your opinion that Apple is wasting it's time with these game related changes?
To clarify my opinions:
I think trying to appease the core gaming crowd is a waste of time.
Apples efforts are nigh useless because there is almost zero interest from devs to make games available for the Mac. I.e. bugs in many engines going unfixed.
If the core audience is more concerned with compatibility with gaming pcs then they need to get a goddamn gaming pc. Not beg Apple to make a gaming pc.
Dropping support for OpenGL (which was stagnant for many years so Apple made Metal), dropping support for 32-bit libraries (so they could make AArch64 as efficient as possible) were necessary evils to deliver better performance. Vulkan came after Metal. NVidia wouldn’t work with Apple, too bad. They told Apple to take it or leave it and Apple left for AMD. And now they’re working on their own gpus.
There’s no hinderance from Apple to devs directly. Devs simply don’t want or don’t see the point in making anything for MacOS.
Pointing the finger at mean ol Apple like they’re obligated to maintain compatibility with companies that they no longer work with, or hinder them from making better products is idiotic.
They’ve made their move with the M1, the ball is in the devs court.
Its an AI thing: AI tends to run in the cloud in production. CUDA is the standard there. You won‘t even find cloud instances using anything else
I’ve given up on being able to game on a Mac, and I’m okay with it. My dinky little PC is average to godawful in most respects even as a gaming laptop, but it’s still way better for gaming than my Macs. (Have yet to even try on my M1 MBA, but I got that for school/work/productivity.) Otherwise, I have my trusty PS4, and prefer to play on that for newer games/games I’m not interested in modding.
It’s AI image upscaling, the M1 already has AI cores. Maybe they’re not fast enough yet to upscale to retina quality, but I could see them getting there.
Side note: I remember nearly a decade ago when gamers mocked graphic upscaling, now it’s a make or break deal.
I am a fan of native or bust, but I understand that adding things like ray tracing and expecting 60+fps at 4k native is probably unrealistic. As far as I can tell (from a gamers perspective) it is literally the only thing that uses the Tensor cores they added to consumer cards.
Maybe that space would have been better used for more RT Cores, who knows, we are where we are now.
I’m sure the engineers at NVidia balanced the right amount of rt and upscaling cores. I’m not here to denigrate the engineers there.
However, the situation with ray tracing reinforces my point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_ray_tracing_support
Here’s the list of games with rt support. It’s not that many, yet nobody yells at NVidia to be more friendly to devs (though easier to implement due to dedicated things in directx). It’s up to the developers to implement ray tracing in their games. Same as it’s up to devs to port games to MacOS. If they don’t, the blame is on the devs.
This is one of the topics I was going to extend the spotlight on. As you mentioned earlier, Apple provides the tools (i.e., APIs, etc) but also WWDC sessions and regular improvements… For example:
Additionally, I assume in at least the game studio sector, the reason for not expanding support is lower cost. If devs can simply rehash and/or update OpenGL/OpenCL or Unreal engine code, for examples, why hire new devs or have devs use time learning new APIs/platforms? In other words, it’s the Windows legacy support argument from the provider side.
All those red x's on the macos column are making me a sad panda. I am also a sad panda at how many games don't know if AMD is supported.
Yeah, it begs the question, if Metal supports RT, then why doesn't Unity and Unreal Engine support it on Mac? Both had support for RTX before DXR was a thing, so it isn't like they had to wait on Windows for support (per se). So what is the hold up on the Apple side of the house?
It’s the source of my rant: blame the devs for the gaming situation on Mac.
it’s the old saying, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
I agree with the statement that what’s so special about NVIDIA? I game just fine on my 5700XT. And Xbox/PS5 are AMD. We have been hearing this for 5-10 years now about lack of higher end NVIDIA.
Again, competing to the level of 3070/3080/3090 is a nice market.
Fully agree. If id can make Doom run well on a Switch, and other third party devs too, the Mac should have more than enough power for most of the games. Especially if my 5700xt can play games better than my PS4 can.
Mac still doesn't support Lumen or Nanite from what I can tell.
In the high end AMD was getting crushed by nvidia. The 6000 series has clawed back the rasterization crown for 1080p and 1440p. 4K and 8K still lean team green for rasterization. RT at any resolution is a team green affair.
I would hope the 5700XT is better than the PS4 for graphical performance...
This is it, right here. There is nothing about the Mac that makes it "un-game-y", it's purely about developers being willing to put in the effort for the smaller target market.
Yep. Seems to me that if the bean counters thought there'd be money in it, they'd be doing it.
There are more Macs than PlayStations. Wouldn't that imply there is more money to be had?
I imagine it'd depend on what percentage of each platform would potentially purchase the developer's game. If you get, say, 20% of PlayStation owners to purchase your title, that'd probably be significantly more lucrative than a much smaller percentage of the Mac market.
With the most popular video card on Steam is a 1060, I doubt Apple is seriously missing out on a very SMALL 4K or 8K market. This is still extremely niche. No point for Apple to chase this.
And no not even a 3080Ti can do 8K gaming. 3080 still struggles sometimes with even 4K @60fps.