Once again, we seem to have this delusion of "if you make it, they will come"... as in "if you make a super-powerful chip suitable for AAA games, they will come."
However, what the makers of such games want is not great/fantastic/superior/best ever hardware but
MONEY. If the Amiga crowd could summon up a huge amount of money, they could motivate an AAA gaming studio to convert a modern wonder game for Amiga. If the Commodore 64 crowd could pull together enough money, IT could get an AAA game. If the Atari 2600 crowd could...
This- the money part- is what inhibits big games on Mac. Sony & Microsoft spend BIG on subsidizing the development of games, buying major game exclusives if not outright buying whole gaming studios. Apple does not.
Show the big game makers the money in Mac and they will come. Until then, rolling out the M20 isn't going to make it rain AAA games. Why? Because there's no subsidy or sale to Apple potential... and the market that might pay up for that M20 is relatively tiny vs. the other markets- even with inferior chips- where much more revenue can be made.
Look at AppleTV+ as an example. There are a few good original shows on there that pretty much compete with anything offered by other tv and movie makers. How do those shows get made for Apple? Apple put up big money to fund them. AppleTV existed for about 12 years with no such Apple investment in programming. How many big originals exclusive for AppleTV were created in the 12 years?
This whole gaming thing is the same. Show AAA game makers more money to develop for Apple and they will develop for Apple. Else, it's simply more profitable to develop for PC, PS5, Xbox, etc. Just like Apple, they go where they can realize "another quarter of record revenue & profit" NOT where they could put in about the same amount of work to then make relatively pennies on the dollar.
I'm sure there are
plenty of big game programmers who would
love to develop fantastic games for Mac Silicon. But then there's that pesky "how do we make equivalent money for the same time investment?" problem. Sony is offering $X to develop the new one for them. Microsoft is countering with $Y. What's Apple's bid? Apple offers $0 but catchy spin about how great the new chips are? Let's meet with Sony & Microsoft
so we can get paid well for the hard work involved.
When we see an AppleTV+-type structure-
AND BUDGET- for AAA game dev on Silicon, get excited... because the big games will certainly come. Until then, Apple could put Star Trek holographic projectors into Silicon branded M20 PRO MAX Mach II Turbo and AAA games will still get made for other platforms that yield big revenue.
Lip service has NEVER worked... including all of the years where Macs were basically PC tech and thus easiest to port the AAA games over.
The key part that is missing... the part that has always made big games on the Mac a rarity/afterthought is the part that both Sony & Microsoft do... but Apple doesn't. I expect no change until Apple finds some spare cash somewhere to make it worth more to developers to develop for Mac. Maybe they can get a loan or something to come up with the cash???
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