diamond.g
macrumors G5
I think the original “vision” was an expandable Mac smaller than the Mac Pro. I think a more powerful Mac that isn’t a Mac Pro would be nice though.
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Apple Silicon Optimized Games - what's in the pipeline?
- Thread starter erkanasu
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I think it’s quite likely that we will see something like a Mac Mini Pro with M1 Pro/Max, but it will still be 2K for the Max model.
Probably, yes. Still, a Pro model would be slightly cheaper - and probably capable of gaming. Provided that the games are native and metal optimised.
What I am trying to say is: this might be a machine not only for professional purposes, the buyers of which are probably not THAT inclined to gaming.
A Mini Pro/Max could attract a different audience...
Queen6
macrumors G5
Let's be honest it's been more of a gradual decline. The simple fact is, irrespective of the hardware and OS there simply isn't enough of us on the platform and fewer again on Apple Silicon to attract many Dev's let alone AAA studios.
Yes you can game via Rosetta2, with obvious penalties. Apple's gaming focus is IOS, macOS may have it's day, one day who knows? TBH it's very much a Chicken & Egg syndrome; no players, no games therefore no games, no players.
Want to game? Buy a PC or a console and be at peace with yourself. It's kind of like expecting Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro to be released on Window/Linux, technically possible yes, likely no.
I too would like it to be different, however it's what it is...
Q-6
Look at it this way: if you are not a professional but still willing to spend close to $2k on a mini-desktop for home use, what kind of use are you actually? Probably a gamer. Why would a gamer spend $2k on a Mac Mini with M1X if they could get a much more capable gaming tower that can actually run all the games they are interested in?
True. OTOH, if am am just a private person preferring Macs and need something more powerful than the M1.
I may get a M1 Pro then. Cannot hurt if the thing can game as well
Where do you see gradual decline? There are more macOS games than ever.
This is very much true — but this is not any different from how things were a year ago or say, five years ago. Mac gaming was always a small niche and only 10-20% games on Steam have a macOS version. This didn't change in the last decade or so, although the number of high-quality games have been steadily increasing.
The difference is that now Apple is offering high-end APIs and tools that they did not offer five years ago, and that now they also ship gaming-grade hardware that's 3x faster on the low end. Whether this will have positive consequences for gaming on Mac will become clear in a couple of years. Not overnight.
Which penalties? I have tried a bunch of x86 games on my new 16", all of them run much better then on my previous Intel laptop. Sure, native ARM version would run better. But that's an academic distinction at best. The bottomline is that practically any game available on Mac the new M1 Macs can run better.
Again, it depends on what games you are interested in. Myself, I am a strategy and RPG fan and almost every title I care about is available on the Mac. The few that are not I can play using GeForce Now. I though about buying a PS5, but there are only one or two games I am interested in in the entirety of PS5 market, so it does not make much financial sense for myself.
Now, if you are into action games or whatever, sure, Mac is a stupid way to go.
Queen6
macrumors G5
Not trying to be the contrarian; Same game will likely play far better on a Windows platform. There is clearly losses via Rosset2 in comparison to W10. I also expect an increase over the Intel Macs. Nor are many games well optimised for macOS.
I very much agree will be dependant of the players interest. My interest is far & wide from FPS, RTS to strategy and many more. Right now I'm deeply engrossed in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly. Could I play on a Mac? Possibly/probably via Wine, M1 I seriously doubt.
Yes there's more games due to time, yet the choice and quality pales compared to the dominant platforms. TBH the performance & hardware is in place, however the cost of game development has spiralled. Similar to films sadly just become a numbers game 🙁
I've posted some links to source ports of old games. If I want to go hard at Doom 3 it would be on the M1 as it excels. More so than my PC can, which is way more than competent. Point being it's again one of few, nor can you or I change that.
As said I wish it was different, it's not...
Q-6
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diamond.g
macrumors G5
It would be cool to get a Doom3RT port/rewrite like we did Quake2RT. This dark hall jump scares!
Queen6
macrumors G5
In the meantime checkout RBDoom-3-BFG, drop the brightness to 25% and go at it hard 🙂 At this level the lighting is convincing and the darkness deep...
Q-6
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As it's often the case with the two of us, I think we are more in agreement than in disagreement 🙂 We just focus on different aspects of the picture. You are completely right that choice and quality of games — on average — is way inferior on macOS than on the dominant platforms. Depending on what games one likes, this might be a big practical problem or a minor one. That much is a hard, irrefutable fact.
I like to look at these things from the diachronic perspective. The thing is, none of this is new. Gaming on Mac was always kid of problematic (except long long time ago, before the age of PC gaming, when Classic Mac OS was kind of seen as a platform for gaming). Things improved dramatically with Metal (game performance and stability god better in recent years), and M1 brought a significant performance jump (especially on the baseline) as well as superior driver stability. We are very far from "being there", but let's not forget that Apple plays a long game here. It's not about a forced overnight change. These things are about culture and cultural changes take a while.
JohnHerzog
macrumors member
And so what? That does not mean it is optimized for Apple Silicon or even Maccomputer use vs iPad/iPhone reduced functionality.
diamond.g
macrumors G5
If you optimize for iOS devices wouldn't your performance improve using the same code on a Mx device? Are we saying that Ax and Mx are different enough that what works for one may not work as well for the other?
Fellow S.T.A.L.K.E.R., I’d be happy if they would just release Shadow of Chernobyl for MacOS.
diamond.g
macrumors G5
Seemed to work well enough for Feral Interactive. The biggest downside is they are not currently planning on back porting those optimizations to the macOS version of the game (Alien: Isolation).
Would you call what they have done a compromise?
Video game development cycle is typically 3-5 years.
So assuming game dev buys they Apple TDK on July 2020 then expect any Universal 2 binary game to be out by mid 2023-2025.
I would buy a Apple Silicon Mac the day the game gets released rather buying any Apple Silicon Mac today and wait until the day the game gets reelased to find out that a 2020/2021 Mac with Apple Silicon is considered the minimum specs for it
If you value your time then buy a gaming PC with 2021 parts or a video console released within the last 24 months
Many will quote me and argue something impractical so take your best shot. I can do this all day.
So assuming game dev buys they Apple TDK on July 2020 then expect any Universal 2 binary game to be out by mid 2023-2025.
I would buy a Apple Silicon Mac the day the game gets released rather buying any Apple Silicon Mac today and wait until the day the game gets reelased to find out that a 2020/2021 Mac with Apple Silicon is considered the minimum specs for it
If you value your time then buy a gaming PC with 2021 parts or a video console released within the last 24 months
Many will quote me and argue something impractical so take your best shot. I can do this all day.
I’m not clear what aspect you are saying worked well for Feral? Do you believe Feral just took same Mac code and did not have to reoptimize it for iOS? For high performance apps or games there will be quite different optimization related to different device performance, display rate, yser interface, etc. Yes there will be some porting commonality, but optimized for one device does not mean optimized for another ported device.
diamond.g
macrumors G5
From my understanding the iOS version is actually based on the Switch version not the macOS version.
Queen6
macrumors G5
Shadow of Chernobyl, Call of Pripyat and of course Anomaly 🙂
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly is Windows only, however it's a full game and 100% free 😎 covering all the maps of the three original games...
Q-6
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And that was back when there was something to expand. 🙂 These days, with the M1 architecture, even RAM isn’t expected to be expandable on any future Mac Pro. No graphic cards need apply and no AfterBurner card required.
Take the specs of a Mac Pro, take off everything that’s no longer a “thing” and you end up with a Mini anyway. Maybe a Pro would have far more Thunderbolt ports?
The future of native Mac games MAY tend to zero. If Rosetta 2 is so good that, even if a developer releases an ARM native version, the performance they see won’t be significantly better than Rosetta 2, they just may release Rosetta ports if anything.
Further, if the Crossover tools get better and better, why even release a macOS version at all? If anyone REALLY wants to play your game on a Mac, they’ll buy the Windows version and just do the work to make it work on their own system!
Further, if the Crossover tools get better and better, why even release a macOS version at all? If anyone REALLY wants to play your game on a Mac, they’ll buy the Windows version and just do the work to make it work on their own system!
I am not able to find this list of games marked as Apple Silicon on Steam. How can I filter them?
You can go to Categories -> macOS on the Steam store. It will show you a selection of popular and recently released games on macOS. There are over a thousand games in the "top sellers" category and over four thousand on "currently played" (plus another one thousand in "upcoming"). Sure, it' still a far cry to what is available on Windows and you won't find many of the high-budget mainstream titles there, but it still shows that Mac games are far from non-existent.