Are they blind. Gaming has not improved. The ability has but gaming itself is worse. Hey Apple there are no games!!! Flappy bird does not count as a game. Literally considering a gaming pc at this point even though it makes me nauseous.
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.
Apple Discusses Push Towards High-End Mac Gaming in New Interview
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That's Apple's MO. Remember when they sent a marketing guy to say "8 GB on our platforms is basically 16 GB on Windows" when media outlets were mad that Apple continues to fleece their customers for a base Macbook Pro?
And I can tell you that having played BG3 on an M1 Pro with 16GB of RAM, that is absolutely the minimum. It’s choppy as hell and the fans run full blast the whole time and the battery lasts about three hours.
So pretty much exactly like a low end Windows gaming laptop. We’ll see about the new M3s and beyond with ray tracing, but it’s going to be many years before I drop another nearly two grand on a laptop when this one works perfectly fine except for games.
And via GeForce Now with a good internet connection BG3 looks great and plays fine.
If you really care about games and have $2k+ to spend on a machine to play them, the Mac value proposition is still just not there. And I say this as someone who can’t stand Windows anymore. But also as someone who uses the best computer for the task without being religious about it.
There's a difference between high end gaming and some "high end gamers" you described. High end gaming is playing the latest, typically graphically intensive games (AAA). "High end gamers" do whatever they want with their money to play whatever they want to play.
To be a serious gaming rig, wouldn't one need the ability to uppgrade the GPU from time to time?
It's been a decade since I had my Alienware with dual GPU's, so maybe they are not as important now (though I'm suspect)
It's been a decade since I had my Alienware with dual GPU's, so maybe they are not as important now (though I'm suspect)
I've been hearing about gaming on the Mac since the failed Quake demo in what, 1999? It's never amounted to much.
I’m genuinely glad Apple is in one of its periodic semiserious-about-gaming moods, and the addition of hardware-accelerated raytracing is encouraging, but it still has quite a ways to go both on the software and hardware fronts before it’s competitive with Nvidia’s (or even AMD’s) GPUs.
Yes, and other components like the CPU, RAM, SSD. A gaming PC (usually) allows for all of these.
A Mac is a fantastic workstation, but it can't be taken seriously for gaming. None of it is remotely upgradable and that's just the hardware part.
What are your settings? You should get solid performance using these settings (not my video):
The hardware is there and has been. It's all up to the developers to invest money and time now. Apple should probably help fund that to get it going.
Here are some options for games you can play on macOS: https://steamdb.info/charts/?category=998
If you think there are no games, you might not be looking hard enough. I do have a Windows computer as my main gaming computer but there are plenty to play on macOS.
If Apple is serious about high end Mac gaming, then the Game Porting Toolkit is not enough. App notarization needs to go, D3DMetal needs to be made open source and allowed to be put in commercial products, and maybe even a system wide compatibility layer needs to be implemented similarly to Steam Proton, because for many developers it's too little too late as most would rather just support Windows and Linux since it's miles easier and their APIs already work.
Can we stop with this myth? I constantly hear this from the console warring PlayStation fanboys despite it being debunked numerous times. The majority of Cyberpunk 2077's sales were on PC. Valheim sold over 10 millions copies on PC alone long before it got it's Xbox port. Undertale was originally a PC exclusive and it exploded in popularity long before it got console releases. The PC market is so big Sony broke their tradition of PlayStation exclusivity and started doing PC releases of their first party titles, even buying Nixxes Software for the sole purpose of expediting PC releases.
Even the most hardcore Mac haters want Mac gaming to succeed for one reason: We need competition. Microsoft has held a monopoly on PC gaming for so long, with the only alternative being Linux which isn't perfect due to a lot of distros not being user friendly or having issues, with SteamOS being the only exception. Unfortunately SteamOS is not available for desktops yet only available for the Steam Deck since Valve Time™️ has reared it's ugly head again
If macOS was a viable hardcore gaming platform, Microsoft would have competition and would have to step up Windows actually addressing the problems people have. Remember the last time the Mac was a threat was during Vista, and it made Microsoft wake up and make Windows 7.
If Mac Gaming was a thing, we all win.
Can we stop with this myth? I constantly hear this from the console warring PlayStation fanboys despite it being debunked numerous times. The majority of Cyberpunk 2077's sales were on PC. Valheim sold over 10 millions copies on PC alone long before it got it's Xbox port. Undertale was originally a PC exclusive and it exploded in popularity long before it got console releases. The PC market is so big Sony broke their tradition of PlayStation exclusivity and started doing PC releases of their first party titles, even buying Nixxes Software for the sole purpose of expediting PC releases.
Even the most hardcore Mac haters want Mac gaming to succeed for one reason: We need competition. Microsoft has held a monopoly on PC gaming for so long, with the only alternative being Linux which isn't perfect due to a lot of distros not being user friendly or having issues, with SteamOS being the only exception. Unfortunately SteamOS is not available for desktops yet only available for the Steam Deck since Valve Time™️ has reared it's ugly head again
If macOS was a viable hardcore gaming platform, Microsoft would have competition and would have to step up Windows actually addressing the problems people have. Remember the last time the Mac was a threat was during Vista, and it made Microsoft wake up and make Windows 7.
If Mac Gaming was a thing, we all win.
Last edited:
The biggest issue is Apple's lack of long term support. You can play decades old games in Windows mostly fine, but you can't even run 32-bit apps anymore on macOS.
apple needs to cut the storage pricing big time if they want games.
You forget that now, any game made for iOS can easily be adjusted to the Mac, as it is now the same ISA on both.
"AAA games" as in plural?
Inverse's Raymond Wong today published an in-depth overview of Apple's increasing push towards high-end gaming on the Mac. The story includes commentary from Apple marketing managers Gordon Keppel and Leland Martin.
One of the biggest reasons that gaming has improved on the Mac in recent years is the switch from Intel processors to Apple silicon, resulting in MacBooks providing industry-leading performance-per-watt. In addition, the latest M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips for the Mac feature hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading for improved graphics rendering, which is especially beneficial for high-end AAA games.
"Now, every Mac that ships with Apple silicon can play AAA games pretty fantastically," said Keppel. "Apple silicon has been transformative of our mainstream systems that got tremendous boosts in graphics with M1, M2, and now with M3."
Apple silicon also results in the Mac having the same underlying hardware architecture as the iPhone and iPad, simplifying the development process.
"If you look at the Mac lineup just a few years ago, there was a mix of both integrated and discrete GPUs," said Martin. "That can add complexity when you're developing games. Because you have multiple different hardware permutations to consider. Today, we've effectively eliminated that completely with Apple silicon, creating a unified gaming platform now across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Once a game is designed for one platform, it's a straightforward process to bring it to the other two. We're seeing this play out with games like Resident Evil Village that launched first [on Mac] followed by iPhone and iPad."
A new technology built into the M3 family of chips is Dynamic Caching, which allows the GPU to allocate memory usage in real time. Apple says this capability "dramatically increases GPU utilization and performance" for demanding apps and games.
Apple has made gaming-related improvements on the software side, too. macOS Sonoma features a new Game Mode that temporarily prioritizes CPU and GPU performance for gaming. Game Mode also lowers AirPods audio latency, and reduces input latency with popular third-party game controllers by doubling the Bluetooth sampling rate.
Earlier this year, Apple released a new toolkit that makes it easier for game developers to port Windows games to the Mac. The toolkit provides an emulation environment that allows developers to run their existing, unmodified Windows game on the Mac and quickly evaluate how well the game could run on macOS before writing any code.
"We've definitely seen interest from developers and publishers like Kojima Productions and Annapurna Interactive Games on how to take advantage of both parts of the Game Porting Toolkit," Martin said. "When you download the toolkit, there's really two parts to it. There's that emulation environment and that's helped demonstrate today's game — you drop in an existing Windows game and see how well it could run on the Mac. The second part is the Metal shader converter and that's there to help developers convert their tens of thousands of shader code into Metal. And they've praised how incredibly useful this is and how it's saved them a bunch of time in their development timeline."
Several high-profile games launched on the Mac this year, including a Resident Evil 4 remake, Resident Evil Village, Stray, and Baldur's Gate 3. Death Stranding Director's Cut and Assassin's Creed Mirage are also expected to launch on the Mac next year.
The full interview at Inverse is a worthwhile read for those interested in gaming on the Mac.
Article Link: Apple Discusses Push Towards High-End Mac Gaming in New Interview
I find this very intriguing. Building a gaming PC today is a bit of a mess and pretty costly. If Apple can make the Mac Mini a solid gaming machine, then convince developers to port games to the Mac, then they may be on to something. A Mac Mini with an M2 Pro is $1299, comparable to a low to mid-level gaming PC.
This will change if Intel's plan of throwing out legacy functions or the Windows on ARM get's a lot of interest
I don't know anything about either of those, but you can look up the numbers for revenue and console is about 55% vs 45% for PC.
Either way, you don't need an high-end PC to play the majority of PC games. Any PC will work, not for new high-end titles like you listed, but there is a lot to gaming than first person.
Last edited by a moderator:
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
If your PC (or PC to purchase for old fashioned bootcamp) has a Nvidia graphics card, install the Moonlight app on your AppleTV to do exactly this TODAY.
Basically, let the PC do the game processing heavy lifting and stream the video output to AppleTV much like steaming a movie. I was pessimistic about this working well but it is dazzling that it works as great as it does.
Enjoy any PC game on your TV via AppleTV today.
Last edited:
and apple messed up with the hardware for gameing.
back the in ppc days they pushed the mini as good as it had an dedicated video ram but when they went to intel they when to the low end igpu.
the mac pro could game but it was priced and build as an workstation and the base system system only had lower video cards as base.
the imacs where ok but big screens with lower-end mid range video chips to some what high end but not really good for the screen size video.
they needed an mini tower with an desktop cpu and video card in an pci-e slot but they did not make one.
with there own cpus storage pricing and ram pricing is way to high to be good for gameing.
Just support cloud gaming, devs aren't going to want to port games to a product with such a low marketshare.
No it is not lmao. Building a PC is literally just adult Lego. All you're doing is inserting pieces into predesignated slots. You can build a very nice midrange system for under $1000, and using sources like PC Part Picker you can find what works and what doesn't, as well as finding where the best prices are. https://pcpartpicker.com/
So long as you don't do what the Verge did, you'll be fine. You have to actually try to screw up building a PC nowadays.
If Henry Cavill can do it, you can too.