That sounds like the same comments about Apple for phones, Apple for Tablets, Apple for music production, Apple for watches, Apple for streaming, Apple for TV. Apple has not been serious about gaming since Pippin and they were half hearted then. While Apple has talked about games available and tools they created, this is the first I have heard Apple say they were working to turn the Mac into a gaming platform and that it became a priority with the first M1 chip design. Apple has never mention looking at development through a gaming lens.
Competitors should be concerned. Apple has yet to fail at any thing they play the long game on. They chose to attack Apple and refused to be true partners and it will not end well for them. AAA game developers have slighted Apple in the same way music production and video editing software vendors did two decades ago.
The result was Logic Pro and GarageBand for music and Final Cut Pro and iMovie for video. Even further back was Microsoft dragging out updated for Office Mac and refusing to really invest in the product. Apple’s response, iWork that continues to expand in capabilities. Apple tries really hard not to do consumer facing software. They are usually forced to do it and suddenly the original partners can improve their Mac version.
Gaming will be the next Software Market they are forced to take over to remain competitive in the computer space and AR with be a key component they will focus on
The difference from the iphone/tablet/etc is that they created the market from nothing. The gaming market exists, is huge, and is on other platforms. Yes, there are games on iOS, but the numbers with massive revenue are few and far between. If you look at the gaming industry overall it's console and Windows PC (with linux still way ahead of mac). Inertia is a powerful thing.
Most of the mac games we have are ones that don't push the edge of technology (e.g. they use a standard, unmodified or lightly modified engine). Those will continue for sure, but the loss of OpenGL makes even those less common, and even then, it still takes development and QA (and marketing, support, etc) costs to port a game. If there's no business case, there's no business case.
Now with their cash pile, could Apple decide to enter the market and fund development of AAA games? Sure. Those take 2-4 years to complete, and apple would have to stand up (or buy) an entire gaming studio. They could also fund ports of existing titles to their platform, which is probably more likely, and would take only 12-18 months. If they did either of those, would Mac be more relevant? Sure. And if they invested in a cloud gaming service, then the whole platform conversation might be largely moot (assuming people have high speed connections).
But for the existing game companies, it's a hard business case to spend limited time and money to port games to a minor platform - especially one that doesn't support top-tier graphics cards and uses a completely different graphics API. It all comes down to return on investment. Ironically, for indie game developers, it's probably more profitable to port to mac because they're all we get!
I've been gaming on Apple computers since the very early 1980's, and honestly hope you're right, because I'd like to be able to play major titles on my mac. But I'm not holding my breath.
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