Time goes by quick, so maybe 5 years is pushing it. But I agree, something along that lines of what you mentioned is most likely to happen in the near future.
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Apple Executives Discuss M2 Chips, Gaming on Mac, Intel and More
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Time goes by quick, so maybe 5 years is pushing it. But I agree, something along that lines of what you mentioned is most likely to happen in the near future.
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User demand
That would be interesting. Apple tax on the TV. ;-)
That's a little short sighted though. Mobile gaming brings in TWICE the revenue as desktop and console combined. Apple makes more money on gaming than anyone else. Apple knows what they are doing. Now they want the money and the cache that comes with traditional AAA gaming.
I have no doubt they will get it right, with the M-series initiative, Apple will need to apply it every use-case it can so that it can afford it's R&D and continued development. Not getting AAA gaming right and not being competitive with PC's with dedicated graphics cards would be detrimental for the M-series chips in the eyes of the consumer in the long run.
And us who love the A series chips and use 3D motion software will also benefit.
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I disagree, back when intel was making their infamous tick-tock schedule with 10% ipc improvement at best, it made perfect sense to stick to one platform. And even today, if you go with 4K resolution, the cpu is hardly the bottleneck. I was able to stretch out my 8600k from gtx 1080 to rtx 3080, that’s 3 iteration for a not so old platform. And my fps remained consistent enough to similarly build spec newer platform. At worst 6-7 fps off
Didn’t say it was, my point is the cpu platform isn’t long in the tooth as you might think, you are mistaken want with need. 8700k is still a very capable chip, my buddy has his with a rtx 3080 and it handles 60fps just fine for every major title except a very few.
I'm lucky that with the exception of Age of Empires 2 (Annoyingly there was Age of Empires II in the PowerPC Mac days) , the games I like to play have Mac versions. Starcraft 2, Open Rollercoaster Tycoon, Cities Skylines, The Sims 2 , 7 Days to Die, Papers Please, Transport Feaver 2, 2 Point Hospital, Command & Conquer, Rust , Civ 5 & 6, Sim Airport, Planet Coaster, Minecraft.
Apple should just throw cash at some gaming studios to make Mac versions of games for a few years to make gaming on Mac more popular. The hardware is there again (after a decade of rubbish Intel HD graphics on most Mac's).
Apple should just throw cash at some gaming studios to make Mac versions of games for a few years to make gaming on Mac more popular. The hardware is there again (after a decade of rubbish Intel HD graphics on most Mac's).
I play AOE2 DE on Parallels on Mac. Plays great and I can do online as well. AOE4 is not yet available on Parallels because of DX12 lacking.
I think that they (Apple) consider PC gaming as very limited as opposed to iPhone and IPad gaming (they may be right, after all). So they put a lot of efforts into iOS gaming. On the other hand, I have a feeling that once VR comes to Mac, M3 and VR/AR is where Apple wants to move Mac gaming and with M chips being good in VR (witness iPhones AR VR) they might have been something onto.
As for gaming on the Mac, Borchers says that Apple feels gaming is getting better with each M-series chip release. He said that Apple is adding in new APIs and expanding Metal with Metal 3, so there's "tremendous opportunity" for game makers.
Apple plans to continue to look at chip configurations and components through a gaming lens, and Millet said that while Apple is taking a "long view" on turning the Mac into a gaming platform, work began with the first days of the Apple silicon transition.According to Millet, Apple is working to build an installed base of strong GPUs. Apple wants the full Mac lineup to have "very capable GPUs," from the MacBook Air to the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra. He also believes that developers haven't yet adapted to M-series chips. "Game developers have never seen 96 gigabytes of graphics memory available to them now, on the M2 Max," said Miller. I think they're trying to get their heads around it, because the possibilities are unusual."
They're not actually serious about turning the Mac into a gaming platform. If they were, they never would've divested OpenGL and would've adopted Vulkan. Game devs have outlined for years what they want and need if they were to bring their games to Mac, and Apple ignored them for years and still ignore them, instead making their platform even more difficult for game development. They're not "trying to get their heads around it" they're ignoring it since developing for PS5 and PC is a lot easier and more profitable, even moreso with the introduction of the Steam Deck.
I grew up gaming on PCs and building my own. No matter if a lot of gamers are on laptops, I would be my yearly salary that most of those laptops are upgradable with both RAM and disk space.
As long as Apple is not delivering enough RAM (16GB minimum) and asking high prices for upgrades, and insane pricing on SSD upgrades with no option adding another drive, they can wave gaming good bye. Another (albeit minor) concern is the lack of backwards compatibility where Windows still goes strong regarding games.
When it comes to desktops an additional factor regarding upgrading GPU exists, along with the same factors that exist in laptops. Lack of upgradable components are still, to this day, something that irks me way more than I want. But disregarding how I feel about it, true gamers as in the old-style PC gaming, would never go for a Mac unless they are much more competitive with pricing out of the box, especially looking at the prices of disk space.
Just look at this: Crucial P3 4TB SSD costs 3400 NOK, while upgrading a Mac Mini to 4TB costs 15 000 NOK, almost five times as much. Yeah, I don't think Apple and gaming is happening anytime soon.
As long as Apple is not delivering enough RAM (16GB minimum) and asking high prices for upgrades, and insane pricing on SSD upgrades with no option adding another drive, they can wave gaming good bye. Another (albeit minor) concern is the lack of backwards compatibility where Windows still goes strong regarding games.
When it comes to desktops an additional factor regarding upgrading GPU exists, along with the same factors that exist in laptops. Lack of upgradable components are still, to this day, something that irks me way more than I want. But disregarding how I feel about it, true gamers as in the old-style PC gaming, would never go for a Mac unless they are much more competitive with pricing out of the box, especially looking at the prices of disk space.
Just look at this: Crucial P3 4TB SSD costs 3400 NOK, while upgrading a Mac Mini to 4TB costs 15 000 NOK, almost five times as much. Yeah, I don't think Apple and gaming is happening anytime soon.
Hardware ain't the issue anymore. The issue is Metal. Gamedevs do not wanna use Metal, they want OpenGL and Vulkan, two APIs Apple refuses to use. So because Apple won't make macOS easier to gamedev on, the majority of devs ignore the platform and just develop for PS5 and PC instead.
Gaming ≠ AAA gaming.
Apple lost the gaming wars on the API level. The penalty for Apple Silicon is that you've got to use Metal, end of story. OpenGL is deprecated and there's no guarantee it'll still be supported when you release.
The Steam Deck is about compatibility layers on top of Linux, and it can play a surprising breadth of games, including AAA games. Until the Mac can do that -- emulation layers to meet DirectX more than halfway -- the cost of porting games to Mac is too high.
The good news is that Apple has firmly committed itself to a hardware strategy, so the moving target (no eGPU! yes eGPU! no eGPU! OpenGL! not really! yes NVidia! never again NVidia!) has stopped moving.
Buying a studio won't change this problem, and will instead put Apple in the boom-or-bust world of AAA publishing.
Apple lost the gaming wars on the API level. The penalty for Apple Silicon is that you've got to use Metal, end of story. OpenGL is deprecated and there's no guarantee it'll still be supported when you release.
The Steam Deck is about compatibility layers on top of Linux, and it can play a surprising breadth of games, including AAA games. Until the Mac can do that -- emulation layers to meet DirectX more than halfway -- the cost of porting games to Mac is too high.
The good news is that Apple has firmly committed itself to a hardware strategy, so the moving target (no eGPU! yes eGPU! no eGPU! OpenGL! not really! yes NVidia! never again NVidia!) has stopped moving.
Buying a studio won't change this problem, and will instead put Apple in the boom-or-bust world of AAA publishing.
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You neglect to mention cost? What was the total build cost of your PC, how much did the GTX1080 cost and how much then to upgrade to RTX 3080 assuming it was on the same CPU?
You suggest CPU is hardly the bottleneck, but that clearly depends on what you are applying your device to doing.
Often its simply more viable to upgrade to a next generation device, and either sell off the old device or as we do, donate them to local schools, although our tax authorities then complained about us not selling them.
Wow .. if intel is spreading out gain over years and apple still can't keep up with incremental introduction each year, that's scary for apple long term. Hope they made the right choice going proprietary. It's a cut throat market and sucks a lot of resources. One bad year and you can f'up your entire company. No one to blame but yourself.
And that's really too bad, because Valve has shown with its Deck, running Linux and Vulkan with emulation layers for Windows and DirectX, can be a really good gaming experience, and emulating Vulkan and DirectX is the only way to make porting games to Mac make economic sense.
I stopped reading at "Gaming on Mac".
Are they discussing the fact that it’s been over 8 months since they introduced Metal 3 and only a singular developer has released a Metal 3 game… the other two are MIA (Feral at least said, ‘oops, sorry, we’ll release it sometime in 2023’). And since then zero developers have announced any game.
The M1 and M2 are spanking low and mid-range PCs… Apple TV has enough power for some decent games. But iOS developers can’t even be bothered to bring 2D platformers onto a device that is practically perfect for them. They are happy to release their 2D platformers on a device with awkward touch-screen buttons… the worst possible way to play a platformer.
Unless Apple starts begging developers to develop games for Apple TV and macOS, and handing out money to them, there will never be games on two platforms that absolutely trounce the Switch and 90% of the PCs out there in terms of CPU and GPU performance.
It’s absolutely ridiculous that I play games that could be released on iOS, tvOS, or the Mac, except I have to use Riujinx to play them. Full speed… emulated (or using Hypervisor). I’m talking about indie games from indie developers that can’t even be bothered developing a Mac version. The Messenger, River City Girls 2, TMNT Shredder’s Revenge (ok that one is on iOS, but not on tvOS and published by effin’ Netflix, what a slap in the face).
For years, the Mac was underpowered but some games were being released for macOS. But now, ever since Macs have become good enough for AAA titles, there has been, relatively speaking, zero games released (at least when you compare it to the early 2000s when a decent amount of AAA titles made it to Macs.)
The M1 and M2 are spanking low and mid-range PCs… Apple TV has enough power for some decent games. But iOS developers can’t even be bothered to bring 2D platformers onto a device that is practically perfect for them. They are happy to release their 2D platformers on a device with awkward touch-screen buttons… the worst possible way to play a platformer.
Unless Apple starts begging developers to develop games for Apple TV and macOS, and handing out money to them, there will never be games on two platforms that absolutely trounce the Switch and 90% of the PCs out there in terms of CPU and GPU performance.
It’s absolutely ridiculous that I play games that could be released on iOS, tvOS, or the Mac, except I have to use Riujinx to play them. Full speed… emulated (or using Hypervisor). I’m talking about indie games from indie developers that can’t even be bothered developing a Mac version. The Messenger, River City Girls 2, TMNT Shredder’s Revenge (ok that one is on iOS, but not on tvOS and published by effin’ Netflix, what a slap in the face).
For years, the Mac was underpowered but some games were being released for macOS. But now, ever since Macs have become good enough for AAA titles, there has been, relatively speaking, zero games released (at least when you compare it to the early 2000s when a decent amount of AAA titles made it to Macs.)
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VR gaming has zero money in it. Sony sold 5 million VR headsets for the 100+ million PS4's sold. They just cut their order of the new VR headsets in half from 2 million to 1 million. Hardly any new games being developed for VR. Mostly just regular games being adapted for it and that has its plus and minuses.
sure, my 8600k was 199, mobo was 120ish, ram was 200 cause i wanted 64gb of ram, gtx 1080 costed me 600 at the time, sold it for 650 during the mining boom, then got the rtx 2080 for 800, and most recently got a 3080 for 800, threw the 2080 into a media box for living room. all in all with case(50 bucks) psu(60 bucks) samsung 980 nvme 1tb (80 bucks)and other miscellaneous parts i would say around 600 bucks without GPU, reason i'm leaving gpu out of equation cause i wanna give a base figure that does not need to be replaced anytime soon, now if you factor in gpu cost that literally doubles in performance every generation. the overall cost is around 2k for the past 6 years.
since we are discussing gaming here, i'm going to use gaming as the applied method of usage.
upgrading to the next generation everytime a new platform comes out is not a more viable solution, in fact the opposite, if you swap platform every new gen comes out you have to reinstall windows, rip out the entire board, re-doing the wiring harness. all that for marginal 10-15% marginal gain on the ipc. the way you handle upgrading your pc is definitely not the norm in the pc building community.
Gaming on the Mac is an after thought and no serious game developers care about Mac gaming. I recently ditched my gaming PC in favor of a PS5. Might get a Xbox Series X as well, both combined are cheaper than my gaming PC. I simply can't use Windows anymore, even for just gaming.
Yeah for me on my gaming PC, it was every other for GPU and every 3rd or 4th for CPU. I just gave my son my gaming PC, 11700k, 3070, 64gig of DDR4 3200. Had I kept it, I would have probably gotten a 5070 at some point and maybe a new CPU at the same time.
Quest 2 has sold 30 million units in the span of two years. There are as many Quest 2s as there are PS5s. There's money in VR lmao.
Apple needs to work with Valve to get Proton to macOS.
It's getting pretty absurd how Linux is now in a position where it can almost completely replace Windows for gaming purposes thanks to Proton, while macOS is being completely left out of that major breakthrough.
And even as far as native Mac games goes, things are only getting worse. The rapid-fire combination of throwing away 32-bit support, the migration to ARM, and the notarization requirements have completely alienated many game developers who used to support Macs but now don't want to bother anymore.
And as this interview shows, Apple is still completely oblivious to these issues, continuing to talk about Metal, which absolutely NOBODY in the game industry wants to even look at. Support Vulkan as a native-tier API or shut up!!
Sigh...
It's getting pretty absurd how Linux is now in a position where it can almost completely replace Windows for gaming purposes thanks to Proton, while macOS is being completely left out of that major breakthrough.
And even as far as native Mac games goes, things are only getting worse. The rapid-fire combination of throwing away 32-bit support, the migration to ARM, and the notarization requirements have completely alienated many game developers who used to support Macs but now don't want to bother anymore.
And as this interview shows, Apple is still completely oblivious to these issues, continuing to talk about Metal, which absolutely NOBODY in the game industry wants to even look at. Support Vulkan as a native-tier API or shut up!!
Sigh...
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