Graphically and performance intensive comparatively
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Five Games Worth Firing Up to Show Off Your New MacBook Pro
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Am I in the minority wishing games didn't exist for Mac at all?
Well, to be fair, that's only because you're running it under Windows... running on a VM written in Cobol... with the Cobol interpreter written in Basic, running on a Commodore 64 emulator, running on the Mac.
I had a heck of a lot of fun with with Unreal Tournament 2004, on my Mac, back in the day.
I also remember Halo being promoted like a big Mac exclusive... right before Microsoft bought it.
These days, if I want to play games, I use a PS5. Absolutely nothing to configure - just choose a game and go.
I heard the reason no other games are native Apple Silicon yet is because Duke Nukem Forever has the exclusive for the first title. Can't wait for 2036!
I keep seeing “don’t buy a Mac to play games” but who said that was anywhere near people’s main reasons to buy a Mac? maybe people would just like to know what they can fill some time with that isn’t work on a long journey for upcoming holidays, or any other time they just want a break from work.
Except
1. They aren’t testing in 4K ultra settings.
2. A 3080 is getting 80+ fps at 4k.
3. Wasting resources on wrappers isn’t a compelling point.
4. Average fps is mostly marketing. 1% low is far more relevant for gameplay.
Hey guys, I have an idea: how about running Commodore 64 games? Those won’t eat hardware at all and surely can run smoothly. ?
Jokes aside, sensible people should NEVER buy Mac for gaming. Apple doesn’t even care about gaming on Mac. On the other hand, if Mac hardware is good enough, one can install QEMU and Windows XP/7/10 x86 version on it to run windows games. That should be what Mac gaming is.
Jokes aside, sensible people should NEVER buy Mac for gaming. Apple doesn’t even care about gaming on Mac. On the other hand, if Mac hardware is good enough, one can install QEMU and Windows XP/7/10 x86 version on it to run windows games. That should be what Mac gaming is.
That Switcher port was a masterclass in tasteful optimisation for less powerful hardware. It’s a shame other publishers simply published a cloud streaming client for their titles instead of similar optimisations.
You’re missing the fact that these are being run through a translation layer — native performance would surely be much, much better.
Apple: don’t wait for other developers — create your own gaming division and develop your own franchise that pushes the boundaries of your silicon.
How does a lack of native games make the poor performance better? It doesn’t matter if they have a translation layer or not. All that matters is the gameplay experience.
Yes, it’s weird to wish for someone to not have something just because you don’t like it or wouldn’t use.
I’d be surprised if there’s much change from today. Writing games for Mac is risky, there isn’t the user base. Unlike PCs, people aren’t buying Macs just to play games. So, the user base for gaming isn’t going to increase by a large amount, gamers will still go to PCs or Consoles.
Reviewers who show this obviously don’t actually play this game. I always see them showing off level 1 characters out in the world where graphics are not remotely challenging. The low frame rates tend to be in the max level areas such as Oribos or the covenant halls. There, you can still get an excellent 80-100 fps at high graphics detail. In instances, I’ve gotten upwards of 200 fps. I have mine set to 8 (max is 10). Compare this to the older M1 machines where you might get 30 fps on graphics detail 4.
I’m surprised MacRumors didn’t mention this game since it was the first AAA title released specifically for M1.
I think it’s because it’s one of the few games that actually has a benchmarking tool built in that shows off the frame rates it can get on the spot and on average.
your post count number, nice!
Also, awesome to see that some of these games can take advantage of the increased performance
Apple doesn’t help matters. They started by cutting off the legs of Nvidia because they wanted Mac graphics to be CUDA-focused, so Apple booted them. Then they wrote Metal, which lacks key features DirectX has which limits what game devs can do, while stopping development of OpenGL. Then they don’t bother evangelizing. They concentrated on lackluster small screen games for iPhone. I can understand why since there are 1.5 billion iPhones versus probably fewer than 100 million Macs. But Apple needs to step up their push for real gaming on a Mac. It doesn’t happen by itself without lots of support.
I actually saw a video in which they were doing actual demanding things and it was still holding up amazingly well. Activision/Blizzard makes other native M1 games for Mac as well so I don't know why they aren't covering them. Kind of ridiculous.
Activision Blizzard? The one company that literally abandons the entire StarCraft franchise? I’d be hard pressed to see they update all of their own “supported” game into something that can run natively on M1, let alone optimizing them.
It’s just sad that apple completely ignores what desktop gaming market is before kicking NVIDIA and OpenGL outside of their system. Metal has been for how long now, and nothing changes for Mac gaming. At this point I can only say apple simply doesn’t want their MacBook Pro to be a part time gaming machine.