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Apple Discusses Push Towards High-End Mac Gaming in New Interview
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This isn't even mentioning the fact Geoff Keighley's The Game Awards now get more viewers than the Oscars do.
That doesn't mean much of anything. Most people watch neither.
I've never even heard of Geoff Keighley.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I'll go further than than you: IMO, THIS (subsidy dollars) is most of the obstacle, assuming Silicon really is as capable as we all sling around to each other for gaming. Apple doesn't put up the money like those serious about gaming do. Instead, Apple seems to think it's a "build it and they will come" proposition. Meanwhile, developers look at very lucrative opportunities to develop for Sony, Microsoft, Windows, etc vs. the all risk proposition to developing for Silicon. Anyone able to step out of their Apple bias should ask themselves: which would I choose? Easier money, less risk, much bigger market vs. no money, all risk, relatively tiny market?
Someone's inevitably going to come back with iPhone-based market size but I'm not talking about phone games. If we want to believe phone games can be the AAA game equivalent of PS5 and PC, then there's merit and market size to that logic... but still not subsidy and developer taking all risk. Or they develop for the other platform and potentially get subsidized while developing to pay their bills and reduce their risk even if the ultimate outcome is poorly received.
Lastly, check the threads when something towards A-quality games ARE rolled out. "WE" consumer in Appleville scoff if they want more than $5 or $10. We also want there to be no in-app purchases and no advertising. Meanwhile, our counterparts in PC-land and Console-ville are accustomed to paying up for the game AND having in-game purchases AND advertising. So again, objectively ask yourself: if you faced the choice of developing for either side, which would you choose?
These are the kinds of issues that would need to be overcome to bring a good volume of big games to Silicon. Sound-bites won't ever do it and neither will "build it and they will come." If the latter worked, we might all be using Amigas instead of Macs or PCs.
Biggest Keys to Brining the Big Games to Silicon
- Show developers big subsidy money (basically BRIBE them to develop for Silicon)
- Buy some major studios for Silicon exclusives
- Stop suing a major player and work to repair the relationship with developers as FRIENDS/partners
Until then, talk is just talk.
I love that Apple is pushing into gaming. I’ve really enjoyed BG3 on my MacBook Pro, and I’ve been shocked by how well the GPTK works for emulating windows games. It doesn’t work for everything perfectly, but I’ve been able to play Ready or Not in emulation at 30-45fps which is incredible.
I would disagree on the eGPU part. Yes, it would be nice to have. Since most games are written for Nvidia or runs well enough on AMD. However, both are more or less locked into D3D or with Nvidia CUDA. Vulkan and or OpenGL both take the power out of Apple's hands to modify and make it work better on Apple Silicon. And it takes away the ability to go between both Mac desktop/laptop and mobile iPhone/iPad.
We now have a unified system architecture with everything running practically the same hardware. With mostly the same capacities (less on the mobile of course but, capable). Being mobile is more popular on the Mac side. Any game that comes to the mobile side can be easily made to work on the desktop.
Give Apple one or two more revisions of the Apple TV, and I think it to will get a more current A chip that can game as well. Vision Pro will have the ability to play games too. Now, at that point there should be no excuse to have a game available on the Mac. Everything can play, and porting is straightforward with GTK.
As mac users however, we have to purchase these games. Anything you like, we should support. We can't let the developers not notice us. If we want more games to be available and native.
I sure am out of touch, and everyone I know, apparently, but it's funny that I know so many console gamers.
I'm good though, thanks for the offer. I quit playing video games during grad school and never had an interest in picking it back up. I have too many expensive hobbies as it is, plus a house and several acres to manage.
And those games are on Mac. I play Minecraft and Stardew Valley all the time on my Mac with Factorio too. I’m pretty sure you can play Roblox on Mac too.
Resident Evil? Death Stranding? Game of the year Baldurs Gate 3? Stray? No Mans Sky? Other than Ixion and Satisfactory the Mac covers most my gaming needs now.
More PR thinly disguised as an interview
Notice how they just had to mention the Game Porting Toolkit even if its usefulness is tenuous at best
If Apple was serious about helping developers port their stuff to the Mac they would drop this “Metal is the only graphics API allowed” nonsense
There’s only so many devs willing to put the effort to add Metal rendering to their engine
None of these surface level concessions address the real issues that are preventing Macs to be seen as viable gaming platforms for developers
Notice how they just had to mention the Game Porting Toolkit even if its usefulness is tenuous at best
If Apple was serious about helping developers port their stuff to the Mac they would drop this “Metal is the only graphics API allowed” nonsense
There’s only so many devs willing to put the effort to add Metal rendering to their engine
None of these surface level concessions address the real issues that are preventing Macs to be seen as viable gaming platforms for developers
Genshin Impact, Minecraft Bedrock Edition…
Unless, of course, the developer doesn’t think there’s enough whales to support development.
Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what the iPad sales look like vs Mac? I’d imagine no one would be surprised to find that they’ve seen more sales on the latter platforms than the former.
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There is nothing Apple can really do. Windows is still the most used operating system around. It gets priority by popularity. It’s why I’m developing my game as Windows only and I’m using Unity. A click of a button and I can generate a macOS version. But I’m not going to re-test my game in its entirety on another platform when its marketshare is so low (relative to Windows). And the current state of my game runs well on integrated graphics in a 2013 laptop. Any Mac can play it just fine.
It will and is getting better on the Mac. But there is a very low ceiling. The fact that most recent titles are covered on the Mac now for me still doesn’t mean I’m getting g rid of my PC. Why? I have 500 other games on Steam. I still play games from the early 2000s on Windows 10 or 11. They are abandoned so nothing Apple can do to get a 2003 game on a modern Mac.
Windows has been the top dog for too long. And at its peak of the 90 percent marketshare, that has effects for decades.
The only solution to this problem is cloud gaming where it doesn’t even matter what device you use.
It will and is getting better on the Mac. But there is a very low ceiling. The fact that most recent titles are covered on the Mac now for me still doesn’t mean I’m getting g rid of my PC. Why? I have 500 other games on Steam. I still play games from the early 2000s on Windows 10 or 11. They are abandoned so nothing Apple can do to get a 2003 game on a modern Mac.
Windows has been the top dog for too long. And at its peak of the 90 percent marketshare, that has effects for decades.
The only solution to this problem is cloud gaming where it doesn’t even matter what device you use.
I mean no disrespect but when’s the last time you attempted to assemble a PC?
Because downloading the right drivers is just a matter of going to your motherboard manufacturer and looking your motherboard model on the support page
And even then you don’t really HAVE to do it because Windows will automatically install the drivers for you as long as you’re connected to the internet
Unknown devices in device manager aren’t really an issue if you know exactly what you installed in your system, and it must be some really obscure piece of tech if it doesn’t have a generic driver at this point
Even niche things like capture cards should work out of the box because they’re essentially just video recording devices
GPU drivers are just a matter of heading to the AMD or nvidia (or Intel!) website and download “the drivers”, they don’t even require separate downloads based on what GPU generation you have, it’s literally one setup program that will detect your GPU and install the appropriate files for you.
I haven’t heard about “drivers conflicting with each something” since the 90’s where you had to manually manage IRQ’s and stuff
I’m not saying nothing can go wrong when you build your own PC, I’m saying that I’ve done it since 2014 and I haven’t had a single one of those issues
I still think Apple will expand the Apple TV into a game console to compete with PlayStation/Xbox.
No it ain't. There's a much easier solution: Make D3DMetal open source and make it like a Mac version of Valve's Proton, allowing developers to focus on Windows and their Windows project will work on Mac with little to no issues. Apple solved the Mac gaming problem overnight and don't even realize it.
Follow Valve's example with Proton, and great success will follow. This would have great benefits for non-gamers too as so much Windows exclusive software would suddenly work on Mac
Media outlets will forever be mad about anything Apple does, it doesn’t mean that what they said wasn’t technically accurate.
Faux rage gets the clicks!You get no support from devs. As proton is horrible with NVIDIA GPUs. I can get 100+ boost in FPS in some games just booting to Windows.
Correction: Linux is horrible with Nvidia GPUs, and that's because Nvidia's graphics cards and drivers are absolutely proprietary and they rarely release drivers for Linux anymore, compared to Intel and AMD who's drivers are crosscompatible between Windows and Linux.
Proton has nothing to do with that. That's all on Nvidia being Nvidia.
The majority of the profit made anywhere is microtransactions, or DLC if you prefer. Continuous PC development is funded from the consumables and the cosmetics.
Regardless where the breakdown is in the chain. Proton doesn’t perform well if you have NVIDIA.
Thus. Support from devs to get a native build.
Again, that's an Nvidia problem, a problem that Intel and AMD GPUs do not have. This wouldn't be an issue with a Mac system wide compatibility layer like D3DMetal since there's only one kind of graphics card macOS has to worry about: The M Series chips' iGPUs.
No it’s not. Even if NVIDIA had great support, Proton is still a layer and causes degradation.
Native build here performs better than Proton. The highest gap is about 30fps.