More games work on a random linux distro than Mac. Apple doesn't care, or this would have been fixed years ago.
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Counter-Strike 2 Lacks Mac Support, Update Breaks CS:GO for macOS
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So many people concerned with us Mac users and how bad we've got it with games... it's enough to bring a tear to my eye!
No computer or device today is just plain fast.
It all depends on the software it’s running.
Apple Silicon iPhones, iPads and Macs can scream with speed running most software, but can stutter, drop frames and perform not-so-great when running 3D graphics intensive games — where, perhaps, the programmer refuses to use Metal and does all processing on the CPU.
I think Apple’s efforts to ramp up developers for the upcoming Apple Vision Pro may have the side benefit of making Apple’s OS platforms better at running AAA games (on a 2D monitor or display).
Fingers crossed.
Sorry but that doesn't really show how Apple is being serious about the gaming cause Mac and macOS itself is such a terrible platform for gaming.
1. Mac itself is really expensive. One of the biggest problem.
2. And yet, GPU performance sucks. M2 Ultra is barely better than RTX 3060ti.
3. Not many Mac gamers. Another biggest problem.
4. Porting costs time and money which is not profitable.
5. Updating games on different and multiple macOS is already a huge problem.
6. Even iOS game developers hate macOS.
7. macOS has no killer titles to compete with.
8. All games developed from Windows and optimized well on it, not macOS.
9. macOS is such a minor platform for gaming and therefore, the interest is extremely low.
Now, who really wish to support games on Mac? Resident Evil? No man's sky? Baldur's gate 3? Those are only a few example which does NOT represent that Mac is getting a serious interest.
Their desire is still nothing as they focus on iOS gaming, not macOS.
OMG! Thank you for this wonderful insight!
I'm going to run off and go play Baldur's Gate III on my Mac right n... oh... wait...
You’re only forced to run Steam if you expect to play video games. 😆
BOOM HEADSHOT!!
Seriously though wtf Valve? Did they see all that goodwill from Overwatch 2 and think ”hey let’s get gamers pissed at US like that again, it’s been a while!”
Seriously though wtf Valve? Did they see all that goodwill from Overwatch 2 and think ”hey let’s get gamers pissed at US like that again, it’s been a while!”
Or Half-Life 3 at all. And never will. Unless it’s free to play and full of hats and ****.
Baffling to me they would do this after watching what happened to Overwatch.
This is a myth from the Intel era spread by people with no interest in gaming on Mac. At least for the past three years since the switch to Apple Silicon they have actively helped developers in optimizing and bringing their games to Mac and Apple Silicon. Their Metal engineering team has worked with many known developers. They have also added many new gaming features to Macs through both SW and HW. At every WWDC they have dedicated sessions for game developers with news and tutorials.
At WWDC 2021 Apple revealed that 4A and Larian had asked them for help for optimizing Metro Exodus and Baldur’s Gate 3 for Apple Silicon and Metal and Apple had happily helped them for free.
At WWDC 2022 they announced their collaboration with Capcom and Hello games which brought us Resident Evil Village, Winters’ Expansion and No Man’s Sky.
At WWDC 2023 they announced their collaboration with Hideo Kojima Production to bring us Death Stranding DC.
Hello Games worked on NMS a whole year without Apple's involvement. Halfway through Apple got involved and offered great help to bring us 7 years of content free for everybody who already owned it on Steam. Some devs take the easy way. Some like Hello Games love some challenge:
"As a dev team, we watch Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference every year with excitement to see what shiny new tech they're going to unveil. Moving our engine to Vulkan moved us closer to Metal, and when Apple Silicon was announced, the opportunity and challenge was just too tantalizing to pass up. We've been working on this move to Metal for nearly two years now. About halfway through, Apple got involved as a close and very helpful partner, we couldn't have done it without them. It would probably be easier to just do a basic port of a game to a new architecture, but we wanted this to feel like a native game, something built for the hardware. It meant adopting a new rendering pipeline, shifting development to Xcode and Mac machines, and revisiting everything from controls to load times to reimplementing multiplayer. Certainly, it's painstaking and meticulous work, but it wasn't painful, it's the type of challenge we enjoy. I'm excited to see where a move to Metal might lead in future. This is just our next step in a longer journey."
Apple engineers worked also with Piranha Bytes on ELEX II for a native port. It only took about 8 months to port a DX12 open world game to Mac with all the bells and whistles. "Piranha Bytes always strives to deliver more complex and enhanced games, and bringing ELEX II to Mac was no exception. ELEX II takes advantage of the Metal shading language to tap into Apple silicon performance. With Metal's Indirect Command Buffer (ICB) approach on Mac, the game also fully embraces GPU driven pipelines. In a little over eight months, a team specializing in GPU and Metal ported the DX12 version of ELEX II to Mac. ELEX II worked closely with Metal engineers to take full advantage of the many powerful features and tools to deliver a truly wonderful game."
They also have worked with Bloober Team on Layers of Fear and The Medium. Apple even showcased The Medium during the session about Game Porting Toolkit. “Apple silicon has transformed gaming on Mac — delivering incredible graphics performance, new capabilities, along with extraordinary battery life,” said Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno."
They’re also working with the devs to bring their mobile games even to Mac and iPad, like Resident Evil 4 and Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Another example is Warframe coming Feb 2024 which will be playable on Mac and iPad too.
Metal 3 is closer to Vulkan and DX 12 than ever before. It has almost all of Vulkan’s features and like DX 12 it has Mesh Shaders now. We also got MetalFX upscaling, Fast resource loading, Game Mode in Sonoma and Apple Game Porting Toolkit. Even Crossover 23.5 now offers support for DirectX 12 games using components from the Apple game porting toolkit through D3DMetal, all thanks to Apple.
Games like Stray are coming to Mac thanks to Metal 3.
Finally this year we got HW Ray tracing at last. In this interview with Tsuyoshi Kanda, a Capcom producer who was in charge of developing Resident Evil Village for Macs, he said that the porting process went surprisingly smoothly but they haven’t been able to figure out how to incorporate ray-tracing technology into the Mac version of the game yet. But that’s something his team is working on. Now with HW RT the final piece of the puzzle is in place.
So you see lot has happened and is happening when it comes to Apple and gaming on Apple Silicon since 2020.
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There was also a decent portion of Capcom's stream at TGS dedicated to Resident Evil on iOS a few days ago. Timestamp at 12:15, and the Apple Design Award received at WWDC appears at 14:45.
16:45, RE4 being played on an iPad, prerecorded demo showing off touch controls.
17:30, RE8 on iPad Pro as a playable demo at TGS
18:30, RE8 on iPad Pro played on stage
26:00, RE4 on iPad Pro played on stage
32:30, segment ends
(No subtitles, but autotranslate does a decent enough job.)
And we shouldn't forget to mention the surprise announcement of Lies of P, which was announced at the end of August, and released on September 19.
Yes, there are of course more great games like Lies of P released or in development. I just mentioned the collabs I know of. Don’t know if or how NEOWIZ has worked with Apple on Lies of P but it sure was a great surprise to see such a soulslike game on Mac.
They should be playing the long game, imagine a box the size of the Apple TV with super low power consumption playing AAA titles and costing less than an xbox series s but with comparable performance and superior upscaling tech. This and iOS devices are the target and macOS is just a bonus platform. Now, do Apple have the appetite and drive to pull it off? Doubtful, they would need to hire in talent to push this seriously. Until then it’s just money left on the table.
I would suggest many of the issues you have listed are not directly connected to Apple's willingness or desire to see more games come to their platform. For example you state 'Porting costs time and money which is not profitable', and this will mostly always be the case until such point that there are sufficient gamers on Mac to make it profitable. Most game engines, including Source 2, are already ported to the Mac platform, and with the introduction of the Game Porting Toolkit, Apple is actually working to reduce the cost of porting.
It's the same with your last point, yes MacOS is a minor platform for games, I don't think anyone is disputing that. I really don't see what else Apple can do to address this except continue to lower the barriers of porting games. I've developed for iOS and Mac and found Mac development a lot easier because the system is less firewalled than iOS. I now develop cross platform on Windows, Linux and Mac and honestly bringing applications to Mac is really not that difficult, certainly no more challenging than supporting Linux for example.
I think it would help to clarify exactly what we mean by being 'serious about gaming'. For some, that means being able to compete at the bleeding edge of gaming tech with the highest possible resolutions, frame rates and graphic complexities. For others, including myself, it means being able to play more AAA games on the Mac. I certainly don't think that a game like CS2 should only be available to 'serious gamers' with 144hz gaming monitors and twin water cooled graphics cards, there is no technical reason why this game shouldn't play very well on a stock M1 air.
If I was going to throw spears at Apple for the state of gaming on its platform it would be the fact they keep changing the architecture of Mac. This for me as a developer is a pain in the proverbial. When I first started developing for Mac it was on PowerPC, so I experienced the transition to Intel (and saw many apps break when Rosetta was removed), the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit, and I'm also living in the current hodge podge world where we have Intel and AS, no doubt soon to be only AS. Each time Apple transition to a new architecture developers must update their apps otherwise they will eventually stop working. There are many great Mac games that I've purchased over the years that I cannot play anymore because its too much time and effort to update a game and as everyone has already purchased it there is no financial reason either.
Contrast that with Windows, where the architecture still maintains almost complete compatibility with the instruction set from the 8086 from 1978 and Windows still provides a translation service for 32-bit apps. Games developed for Windows have a level of longevity that we will never see on Apple.
These kinds of comments are just ridiculous when there is the Nintendo Switch out there that was worse than any M1+ generation Mac and a half-way decent Intel Mac already.
Take it from me, a game developer, the hardware is there. But the marketshare is not. I am making my game on Windows because it has more people on the platform than a Mac.
Vulkan isn't as widely supported and its not an immediate fix as people on this site try to say it is.
YEP!!!! Agree with you on this part. I will reply to your post a bit but most of this is just overall thoughts.
And this is precisely why I am not a fan of these gaming threads with Macs. EVERYTHING applied to Macs and Gaming can be applied to Nintendo Switch. Yet the only reason why the Switch gets more games than the Mac is because of popularity. THIS IS THE KEY FACTOR.....Not missing out on 4090s, not because DirectX is unavailable....it's how many people are using a platform. And comparatively speaking, Macs have so little customers it's pointless for most developers.
I can still play recent games on my old PC with a GTX 1080 in it
Nintendo Switch gets ports that have A LOT...A LOT of work to it in order to make it run since the hardware is so crappy (seriously we should have had a new switch 3 years ago it's so bad).
Most popular GPUs on Steam are the following:
1. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
2. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
3. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
4. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU
5. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
To your point above, not every single game and not every deciding factor of a "good gaming system" must mean it needs to achieve 8k resolution, 144Hz, ray-tracing, extreme realism, etc.
Name one game.....ONE GAME that REQUIRES a 4090 to even FUNCTION.....because if you can name one game, you don't even get those top 5 consumers on Steam that don't even have a 4xxx series GPU. 4090 has 0.78% on Steam. If there is a game that runs ONLY ON a 4090, then it won't sell very well. Not requiring a 4090, but a recent example of chasing graphics and requiring the top end GPUs is Immortals of Aveum....and we know how well that turned out. You can't just focus on graphics alone.
Frankly, I am so sick of all these conversations about "But Apple needs a 4090....THEN gaming will SUCCEED on a Mac!" or "Apple needs Vulkan before gaming truly kicks off".
Let me tell you the hard reality.....Gaming will NEVER....no matter what....NEVER be truly in parity with Windows. EVER. No matter what Apple does, no matter if the bring NVIDIA GPUs back and add Direct X support.....it will NEVER be parity with Windows. And the reason is quite simple - the amount of people that use a Mac is so small devs don't care. Devs re-architect and implement new graphics pipelines to get games on a Nintendo Switch for goodness sake, they put A LOT of effort into Switch ports. They could very well do the same for Macs to lower the graphical fidelity. You all with your 4090 can achieve those amazing visuals and high frame rates, while us on Nintendo Switch and Mac can enjoy the games for the gameplay over graphics.
Windows has actually been the root cause here. It has caused irreparable harm to the software (less so) and gaming (more so) environments. Windows has been at the top of the food chain to FAR TOO LONG. Where even if....IF....gaming becomes more and more available on Macs it will take DECADES before it gets any traction anyway. Some people might be okay with it, but the VAST majority of gamers will not want to get rid of their 500+ game library on Windows for a few new games on a Mac. And to play those 500+ games they still need a Windows system. So why not just keep buying your new games on Windows anyway?
I will buy a few games here and there on Mac ONLY to support the platform growth. I will also be buying (when necessary) on Steam to have a single gaming library for my Windows system. I will never be okay with having 500+ Steam games on Windows-only, 5 games on Mac. Why? I'll just keep building my Windows library so I don't have to be permanently tied to multiple devices.
Ultimately, the level of commitment we are seeing from developers is probably as best as we can get. It might get slightly better, but it is nearly impossible for the gaming scene on a Mac to achieve what most of the constant complainers that hop into every gaming topic.
It will literally take decades for things to improve to the level of even parity with Windows. Like I said, when I already have a 500+ gaming library on Windows, I would prefer to keep building my Windows library vs having multiple libraries in multiple devices. Even with Steam with the "same" library, I will NEVER have access to the majority of those 500+ games on Mac as they are long passed its development cycles and will never be ported. So if I am in a gaming mood, truly a dedicated space to game, I will just continue to fire up my Windows computer for all time. If I want a quick break while working and want to work on Factorio for a bit, I can use my Mac for that. That is precisely what the Mac is and will always be....like a Nintendo Switch. Like an "add-on" for gaming. Main Windows system for the hardcore (hardcore here means a dedicated space several hours most likely where I will game and might play multiple games) gaming sessions, but Macs for short sessions while taking breaks from work. Like how the Nintendo Switch can be a compliment to a Windows gamer by having some nice games on the go.
And just to be clear, I am an advocate for every single game should be available everywhere. I think PS5 should have the ability to play Halo, and Xbox should have the ability to play Horizon Zero Dawn for example. I think PC should be able to play Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and Macs should be able to play Diablo 4. However, this will never happen. I fully understand why, heck as a game developer myself I am making my game exclusive on Windows (backlog item for a Mac version but it's very low priority). You go where your contracts are, your own platform, or the place that has the most users. It is generally VERY bad if you start to target exclusively to the top of the top GPU lines.
Also, keep in mind that developers these days use FSR/DLSS/etc as crutches for their optimizations. Games like Starfield where Todd Howard was questioned in an interview why they didn't optimize it for PC so even PC users get frustrated with the performance. However, while not a great experience and low settings, you do get the same FPS on average as the console version does with a GTX 1080 Windows system.
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I found this the other day and found it interesting. As a software engineer, I have seen the same things he has. We need to get back to accountability and people being passionate. And it's not just game development, but software development as a whole is in this state as well.
I agree, people don't switch to Mac because they want to play games, and they are unlikely to any time soon for the reasons you have already mentioned. Windows market share is in decline though, and sits at around the 57% mark now, with Mac at 29%, so although there are roughly twice as many Windows users as Mac, the Mac marketshare is significant and a potential untapped source of new gamers.
Its a chicken and egg situation, people won't play more games on the Mac until there are more games, but you can't have more games until gaming studios feel there are enough people playing games on Mac to make it worth the investment.
I think the solution is better cross platform development tool chains, so that the effort developers need to go to in order to bring their titles to Mac is significantly reduced. I also think that Apple is taking steps to try to help with things like Mac Catalyst and the Game Porting Toolkit, and there does appear to be more AAA games appearing on Mac now, this is why I challenged a previous posters assertion that 'Apple not only does not help developers but makes extra effort to impede development'.
I am not sure cross development toolchains are helpful. Seems to lead to a lot of "developer didn't optimize for macOS" complaints.
It's not the ultimate solution. For example, my game is Unity based (yeah I know I am keeping it on Unity though)....and I can by just a few clicks generate a macOS version of my game and play it. However, I experience bugs and graphical issues that aren't present on my Windows system. And that is with VERY light testing. So it will need to be quite thoroughly tested. And it seems a lot of companies don't do this.