Gaming is the last reason to upgrade any of my Macs, but that's just me ...
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Apple Event Next Week Likely to Emphasize High-End Gaming on Mac
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Laugh or not, it's good to see more competition into the market! Intel / Nvidia is just price gouging at this point.
That's what the Game Porting Toolkit is, actually, and yes, it leverages Wine for some of its functions.
Just based on the size of the existing consumer base, Apple would have a much better chance of sell the new iPhones as an alternative portable gaming console than Mac as competitive AAA gaming platform. Game developers are primarily concerned with a number of potential customers.
"High-end gaming"....unless they come out with something more than an M* Ultra SoC that is essentially two mobile chips together, they shouldn't mentioned "high-end" here.
And once again they are gonna tell us the computers we just bought are total junk and to buy a brand new one just for ray tracing.
This is an aspect of gaming they will have to be careful about. PC gamers can just upgrade their video cards. Consoles release games targeting the same hardware for a decade. Apple cannot have it both ways but I get the feeling they are gonna try.
This is an aspect of gaming they will have to be careful about. PC gamers can just upgrade their video cards. Consoles release games targeting the same hardware for a decade. Apple cannot have it both ways but I get the feeling they are gonna try.
I can build a $2000 Windows PC that will outperform any Mac at gaming, including the highest-end M2, which starts at $5000.
I wouldn't mind paying a small premium for equivalent performance in a nicer package, but a huge premium for less performance? No way. I doubt the M3 will change the equation.
This esentially already exists with solutions like Apple's GPT, or Crossover, among others. There are problems with this approach, however:
1. The translation layer imposes a performance penalty. That penalty can range from inconsequential to rendering the game unplayable. It's going to vary from game to game, and vary even within the game itself, with some portions playing fine, and some not working at all.
2. The translation layer often needs to be tweaked for individual games. There is no one blanket solution because games use a variety of under-the-hood technologies and optimizations, some that map cleanly to Apple technologies, and many which do not.
It's an interesting solution in a fun-to-tinker-with kind of way, but it's not a way to take a wide swath of PC games and make them instantly or easily playable on the Mac.
They need more than that which is the real challenge.
Wine is a translation layer for Windows API calls. So it allows Windows API calls to run natively on Linux. But the graphics cards still use Linux GPU drivers and are still the Nvidia or AMD (or now Intel) chips used normally. Apple lacks all of this. So they’d need to translate Windows API calls AND the calls for Nvidia et al driver code into Metal. Drivers in gaming now are extremely complex and proprietary with per game adjustments so this isn’t an easy task. I would say it isn’t possible.
If I had the necessary experience in the field, without a doubt, I would have opened a gaming studio focused on Mac.
“There exists several hundred million potential customers of a specific performance level”
Nothing else needed
Digital Extremes is getting ready to release Warframe on iOS and iPadOS early next year. There isn't much stopping them from offering a macOS version too at some point.
lol. You should talk to the hard working folks at places like Aspyr who have been thanklessly porting games to the Mac since the PPC days. At best, it's a difficult job chasing the ever-shifting-sands of Apple's technology platforms, all for a "reward" of sales that are the tiniest fraction of any other gaming platform.
They do make a game controller, it's called a mouse and keyboard.
Call of Duty or bust![]()
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.
Resident Evil Hint
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.
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
I get game mode in desktop. I cant work with aurpods because of the lag and audio out of sync, very important in my work, doubling ampl frecuency consume more power? Ok im on a mac studio, im willing to pay higher bill.
And what hapends to cpu and gpu? Shouldnt be ready to give it all at any time? Or does it close all background precesses?
And what hapends to cpu and gpu? Shouldnt be ready to give it all at any time? Or does it close all background precesses?
How many in the customer base don’t already own more capable gaming hardware tied to ecosystems they are deeply ingrained with?
Gaming is not just “can the game run?” It has the community aspect. The game library aspect. Etc etc.
Apple Game Center sucks...
No Mario or Pokémon, don’t care
(I know this is on Nintendo)
(I know this is on Nintendo)
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
This is a story about “high end” gaming on Macs, not about phones. And not one Mac owned by any phone owner now has Ray Tracing or M3.
If everyone with an iPhone buys a new, super powerful M3 Mac together, including those in that “hundreds of millions” who own multiple phones getting counted multiple times buying multiple Macs so that there are hundreds of millions of powerful M3 Macs with Ray Tracing suddenly in the market, that very likely will wake up some opportunistic developers.
But that seems like a lot of high expectations to me. I'd love to see it though, so I'll hope hundreds of millions of loaded M3s are about to sell very quickly.
I own a bunch of Apple stuff and like it all just fine. However, I also just purchased a PC for certainty "bootcamp" instead of ARM Windows via emulation. For much less than I paid for Mac (for less than only the 8TB SSD upgrade via Apple), it's basically a pretty good gaming PC too. It already has abundant AAA games for it... competitive market places for games driving prices down... and Microsoft isn't actively suing major game developers over first-in-line 30% cuts right off the top. In fact, it's the other way: Microsoft puts their wealth INTO subsidizing game development so that they can get those AAA games and exclusives on their platform.
I don't think the strength of iPhone directly translates into making "high end" gaming fly easily on Macs that nobody owns yet. But I'll be happy to see every phone in the wild suddenly paired with a powerful M3 Mac... which means many people will need to buy a few Macs because they own a few active iPhones in the impressive tally.
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if you mean the CS2 statement then you have zero understanding of gaming industry and apple ambitions.
CS2 crowd is in hardcore gaming market. flashy RGB LEDs, windows in side panel, cool looking GPUs, overclocking, displays with ridiculous refresh rates, water cooling, game mods and so on.
apple isnt going after hardcore gaming market.
apple is going after casual/console gamers.
intel? INTEL? they're cheap AF right now after AMD whooped their asses in CPU market.
nvidia is overpriced but for completely different reasons: AI accelerators boom.