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Apple Event Next Week Likely to Emphasize High-End Gaming on Mac

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Apple yesterday announced that it will be holding an online event on Monday, October 30 starting at 5 p.m. Pacific Time, and there are several reasons to believe that gaming on the Mac will be one of the major focuses of the event.

Apple-WWDC23-macOS-Sonoma-gaming-230605.jpg

Below, we have recapped Apple's recent gaming-related efforts on the Mac and other clues heading into the event next week.

Hardware-Accelerated Ray Tracing

Apple silicon chips often have architecture similarities. Like the A17 Pro chip in the iPhone 15 Pro, Apple's upcoming M3 series of chips for Macs will likely feature hardware-accelerated ray tracing for significantly improved graphics rendering compared to software-based ray tracing. M3 series chips are also expected to be manufactured with TSMC's 3nm process for faster performance and improved power efficiency compared to M2 series chips. These advancements pave the way for more AAA games to launch on the Mac.

Apple Hints at More AAA Games on Mac

Apple hinted at more AAA games launching on the Mac in a recent interview with gaming publication IGN. When asked if the new games that Apple announced for the iPhone 15 Pro last month would eventually be compatible with Apple silicon Macs, Apple VP Tim Millet said "the developers are going to work with us to do it." These games include a Resident Evil 4 remake, Death Stranding Director's Cut, and Assassin's Creed Mirage.

Capcom and Sony Hints

Japanese game developer Capcom recently announced that Resident Evil Village will be available on the iPhone 15 Pro and on iPad models with the M1 chip and newer starting October 30, which is the same day as Apple's event next week.

It's possible that the release date lining up with the event is merely a coincidence, but it could hint at additional Mac-related gaming news to come from Apple and Capcom, and perhaps other game developers. A source informed us that Apple is holding its online event at the unusual time of 5 p.m. Pacific Time because it will fall during business hours in Japan, and claimed that the event will include a major tie-in with a Japanese game developer, but we have not independently confirmed the accuracy of this information.

While the App Store says the Resident Evil 4 remake is set to launch on Macs with the M1 chip and newer on December 31, this date is a placeholder, and it is possible the release will be pushed up following Apple's event. The game was already released for Windows PCs, the PS4/PS5, and the Xbox Series X/S in March.

As for Sony, it plans to launch cloud streaming for PS5 games in North America on October 30. Could there be a tie-in with Apple?

Game Mode

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.

Game Porting Toolkit

At WWDC 2023 in June, 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.

Article Link: Apple Event Next Week Likely to Emphasize High-End Gaming on Mac
 
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https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/25/apple-event-mac-gaming-focus-likely/
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HobeSoundDarryl

HobeSoundDarryl

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Here's the needed announcements to actually bring AAA gaming to Mac:
  • Apple is allocating an AppleTV+ like budget to a new unit focused on Gaming, like the AppleTV+ unit is focused on original programming... exactly like Microsoft and Sony.
  • Apple has purchased 1+ Game Studios for Exclusive Games only for Mac. Or Apple has purchased Nintendo... or Sony.
  • Apple is actively hiring substantial gaming staff for the gaming division to code games, just like Microsoft and Sony.
In other words, MONEY is the key to AAA gaming on Mac. The competitors put up big money to subsidize AAA game creation, buy major gaming studios, etc. That money buys them AAA games and major exclusives. AAA game developers go where the money is abundant.

If it's a lot of talk about chip POWER but no money, we've seen this same movie many times before. And we know how it ends... over and over again. Apple certainly has the money to do it... IF they will put that money to work on AAA gaming... much like they decided to put substantial money and resources to be Netflix Junior.

Very simply: talk is cheap. Put your money where your mouth is.

Cue the classic line from Jerry Maguire (you know the one).
 
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K

Keymaster

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Dec 15, 2003
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Yes, but will all of this make Safari snappier?

In all seriousness, Apple does seem to be moving towards making gaming easier to develop on the Mac, though the path from iOS to macOS appears to be the one they are focused on. If they are serious about getting top shelf games, they are going to have to work on making Metal easy to port to, as well as supporting gaming hardware (i.e. making drivers easier to build). Some will argue that they need to support graphics cards, though the way the M processors are going that might not be as critical as it used to be. It would be great if Apple really pursues this seriously, but we've been watching them say they wanted to support gaming for decades and failing to, so I guess we'll see.
 
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LogicalApex

LogicalApex

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HobeSoundDarryl said:
Here's the needed announcements to actually bring AAA gaming to Mac:
  • Apple is allocating an AppleTV+ like budget to a new unit focused on Gaming, like the AppleTV+ unit is focused on original programming... exactly like Microsoft and Sony does.
  • Apple has purchased 1+ Game Studios for Exclusive Games only for Mac. Or Apple has purchased Nintendo... or Sony.
  • Apple is actively hiring gaming staff for the gaming division to code games, just like Microsoft and Sony.
In other words, MONEY is the key to AAA gaming on Mac. The competitors put up big money to subsidize AAA game creation, buy major gaming studios, etc. That money buys them AAA games and major exclusives.

If it's a lot of talk about chip POWER but no money, we've seen this same movie many times before. And we know how it ends... over and over again.

Very simply: talk is cheap. Put your money where your mouth is.

Cue the classic line from Jerry Maguire (you know the one).
Click to expand...
Moving to ARM (Apple Silicon) with Metal really made AAA gaming a lost market for Apple. Including the loss of Nvidia and AMD dedicated GPUs.

There is a massive advantage MS has due to Xbox and Windows sharing major tech stacks with DirectX… Apple could have latched on similar to Linux via Steam OS and etc. but they are going in a unique direction with a tiny market share in this space.

I completely fail to see how Apple can make this work. Or even why they are trying.
 
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cateye

cateye

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toobravetosave said:
Guess it’ll be a short one
Click to expand...
Don't worry, there's some True Believers™ in the Mac & PC Games message board here who will absolutely excoriate you with a 10,000 word-vomit about how awesome Mac gaming really is any minute now. The Stockholm syndrome is boggling.

I'd rather pay extra to game on actual gaming platforms than do it for free on the Mac.
 
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LogicalApex

LogicalApex

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Crom! said:
Current apple hardware is good enough for Mid to high settings but many gaming developers are stuck with publishers that are not sold on spending money on porting and developing for mac.
Click to expand...
Honestly, why would they? Genuine question.

Apple is known for being aggressively forward moving. Like when they nuked 32bit support. It was just cut off with 1 year notice. Games don’t get recoded frequently and can live on for a long time. Like GTA 5 or even people playing Quake. Apple likes to deprecate APIs and cull quickly.

I am not really understanding their play here.
 
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S

swiftapplefan

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Aug 25, 2023
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I apologize for my limited knowledge in this area, but I have a genuine question: Could Apple create a tool or something like Wine, but native, to run most, if not all, Windows games? Can they develop software or make programming adjustments to support the languages of those games? Or is it dependent on the hardware architecture?
 
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