GRID Legends for macOS Released!

[MacsRgr8]

Yes!
Great news from our heroes over at Feral: Grid Legends coming to macOS soon!

Just teased at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference — GRID™ Legends, the latest instalment in Codemasters’ standout racing series, is speeding towards macOS!

Native to Apple Silicon and available exclusively from the Mac App Store later this year, GRID™ Legendstakes advantage of the M1 chipsets that power modern Macs to deliver exhilarating speed, irresistible handling, beautifully realised locations and an expansive roster of renowned vehicles from many disciplines across the racing world.

It's now available at the Mac App Store!

 

[livmatus]

will be an overpriced Mac App Store exclusive ... stripped of multiplayer ... yay...

 

[MacsRgr8]

LOL, thanks for bothering to reply. It does appear not many seem to care about this game coming to Mac. 😁

I do understand what you're on about... Feral raising the price so that Apple can receive their 30% share.

Grid Legends for PC was released in February, and I assume the Mac version will need macOS 13, so expect it late September or in October. It could well be stripped of multiplayer... not sure.

Not wanting to buy a PC just for gaming, I am happy it will arrive for the Mac. At least someone is trying to get these titles ported over...

 

[Colstan]

It does appear not many seem to care about this game coming to Mac.

Hopefully, a wide variety of titles will attract a wide variety of Mac users, but it's always going to be a challenge. I give Feral credit for doing yeoman's work for us Mac users.

While reading the Mac gaming subreddit, somebody asked another poster why they didn't "just build a gaming PC".

He responded: "The real problem is that I'm not rich enough to be able to just buy a gaming PC to run alongside my Mac and I'm not dumb enough to use Windows as a daily driver."

That sentiment perfectly encapsulates my thoughts on the matter.

 

[livmatus]

Didn't want to be that negative, but I got annoyed by their youtube comment replies under the release video. No doubt they are deep in Apple's butter hole with this. I hope it changes with other game developers in the future and they'll eventually start supporting macOS more via Steam, Epic or in best scenario - GOG.

 

[jlm70]

...still waiting...
Apple did push a lot on gaming... they supported RE Village... and everything died... Why? The power of the Silicon chips is evident and real... even the less powerful one is better than a PS4...
Grid Legends and No Man's Sky... missed in action?

 

[maflynn]

even the less powerful one is better than a PS4

I would hope so, since the PS4 is 10 years old.

 

[MacsRgr8]

...still waiting...
Apple did push a lot on gaming... they supported RE Village... and everything died... Why? The power of the Silicon chips is evident and real... even the less powerful one is better than a PS4...
Grid Legends and No Man's Sky... missed in action?

It's just same ol', same ol'...

Apple has "used" gaming more times over the past years to try to prove Macs are for everyone..
I stated these previous pushes here before:

• Introduction iMac (Rev A) : boasting about the gaming titles coming to the Mac like the original Unreal. Great game of course, but in no way could an iMac handle those graphics
• Quake 3 Arena demo during a Mac OS X preview show: the game did not load unfortunately
• Doom 3 "early preview" during the GeForce 3 (?) intro for Power Mac. Came to the Mac much, much later than PC.
• Very recently RE Village, support for wheels natively

The hardware...
Mac Pros and the later Intel-based iMacs had decent gaming hardware when configured with the max grfx hardware available.
Usage of Boot Camp even made these Macs a good choice if you want a Mac, but also like to game a lot (so, on Windows).

With Apple Silicon the M1 Pros and better have surely very, very capable hardware for gaming. Okay, not in the same league as a a PC with GeForce 4090, but certainly good enough. Shared VRAM and RAM is even an advantage for games that eat up VRAM like X-Plane 11 and 12.
Disadvantage though is the need for devs to support Apple Silicon native.

The software....
OpenGL? Good at the start... but Apple was stuck with a very old version for many, many years. Ugh.. and that was a choice made by Apple.
Metal is good, for sure. But.... the "others" are using Vulkan, so that makes Apple kinda the "odd one out". Tough for devs to choose Metal to support.
And, now the issue about native support for racing wheels in this case. The fact that it is unclear, and not many are very worried about it says enough to me. Gaming will stay a niche on macOS.

Apple can (seem to) push gaming as much as they want, but actions speak louder than words: they do not really care.

I still choose to "game" on macOS, as I simply do not want to spend money on Macs and then also a "gaming PC" to suite gaming needs.
I am not a "gamer", but I like to occasionally play some racing games, or FPS and of course my beloved X-Plane flightsim with good performance... even that is not without some caviats.

 

[maflynn]

With Apple Silicon the M1 Pros and better have surely very, very capable hardware for gaming. Okay, not in the same league as a a PC with GeForce 4090

Few people own such a high end card. Its hard to find hard numbers but from what I can observe the RTX 3070 is better then M2 Pro and possibly M2 Max.

I'm also going to say that the Xbox X and PS5 are superior gaming platforms then the M2 (regardless of which variant). As the prior member remarked about the M2's superiority against the PS4. The M2 doesn't hold a candle to the Xbox X and PS5. I don't just mean game inventory, but also game play.

Metal is good, for sure. But.... the "others" are using Vulkan, so that makes Apple kinda the "odd one out". Tough for devs to choose Metal to support.

Agreed, and since Macs are not known for being gaming machines and Mac Owners using it for other then gaming, then there's even less reason to hire or train staff on a technology that will suit a small percentage of the gaming community.

I still choose to "game" on macOS, as I simply do not want to spend money on Macs and then also a "gaming PC" to suite gaming needs.

I tried for years, but as I kept watching all of the great games being available on windows (or consoles), AND when we did get games, it typically was years after the fact and the buzz for that game died down to the point where I was focusing on newer games that caught people's attention.

I got a PS4 when that came out, and difference was night and day. Just a few years ago, I transitioned to a gaming PC and again, the differences between Macs and PCs shined. I don't knock anyone for sticking with the Mac for gaming, but for me it was a poor fit

 

[Homy]

...still waiting...
Apple did push a lot on gaming... they supported RE Village... and everything died... Why? The power of the Silicon chips is evident and real... even the less powerful one is better than a PS4...
Grid Legends and No Man's Sky... missed in action?

It's just same ol', same ol'...

No, not everything has quite died. They had a new gaming event last month where they presented The Medium for Mac coming this summer and Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile among other titles.

Apple holds press event showing off its ‘latest advances in gaming’

This week, Apple invited various members of the press and influencers to give a closer look at games coming to...

9to5mac.com

 

[diamond.g]

Wait, is Warzone Mobile coming to macOS as well?

 

[Homy]

Wait, is Warzone Mobile coming to macOS as well?

Doesn't appear so.

 

[diamond.g]

Doesn't appear so.

I would say that is a shame, but that is probably par for course on what platforms Microsoft supports for games.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Keeping it alive, as almost a full year has passed after thr original announcement.... see: https://www.feralinteractive.com/en/news/1153/

I wonder if Apple's lack of promised "native" wheel support is postponing this. Maybe for macOS 14..?

 

[dmccloud]

With Apple Silicon the M1 Pros and better have surely very, very capable hardware for gaming. Okay, not in the same league as a a PC with GeForce 4090, but certainly good enough. Shared VRAM and RAM is even an advantage for games that eat up VRAM like X-Plane 11 and 12.
Disadvantage though is the need for devs to support Apple Silicon native.

Yes and no. While older titles such as World of Warcraft run smooth AF on an AS Mac, it was also developed for both Mac and Windows from the start. With newer AAA titles for PC, the focus on Vulkan means that more work would be needed to convert a Windows title to Mac and the Metal API. Unless the Mac gaming base grows significantly, many developers will not see a cost-benefit advantage to cross-platform development.

The other consideration is that even an M1 Ultra or M2 Max (current top SoCs in each generation of Apple Silicon) can not match up to the graphics capabilities of an RTX 30 or 40 series GPU, or Radeon 6600+. With Ray Tracing becoming an even bigger draw for games, Apple would need to do a lot of work on both the silicon and Metal API to approach similar performance levels.

 

[Picklefoot]

Grid Legends isn’t even on the WWDC 2023’s list of upcoming games anymore. What a joke.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Grid Legends isn’t even on the WWDC 2023’s list of upcoming games anymore. What a joke.

Yeah… i wonder what happened?
Does macOS Sonoma support wheels natively this time.. or..?

 

[MacsRgr8]

Grid Legends isn’t even on the WWDC 2023’s list of upcoming games anymore. What a joke.

Well, macOS Sonoma is released now, so a year after the expected initial release..... still nothing...

I wonder what happened? I cannot imagine it's still due to Apple's lack of the promised support of the wheels "natively" as older games seem to support wheels fine "from the app".

 

[Picklefoot]

Well, macOS Sonoma is released now, so a year after the expected initial release..... still nothing...

I wonder what happened? I cannot imagine it's still due to Apple's lack of the promised support of the wheels "natively" as older games seem to support wheels fine "from the app".

Yeah, we’ll neither get answers from Feral nor Apple.

Whatever the case, there will likely never be enough Mac users buying Grid Legends to offset the porting cost if the game took over a year and a half to port. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the game is never released at this point.

 

[Homy]

Well, macOS Sonoma is released now, so a year after the expected initial release..... still nothing...

I wonder what happened? I cannot imagine it's still due to Apple's lack of the promised support of the wheels "natively" as older games seem to support wheels fine "from the app".

Yeah, we’ll neither get answers from Feral nor Apple.

Whatever the case, there will likely never be enough Mac users buying Grid Legends to offset the porting cost if the game took over a year and a half to port. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the game is never released at this point.

They've been porting Warhammer stuff and iOS and Switch games and now at the same time Total War: Pharaoh for Mac. Grid Legends moved down on their radar to "soon" from "quite soon" closer to release but it's embarressing now 16 months later that it's not been released yet.

View attachment 2286897

 

[Feek]

Yeah… i wonder what happened?
Does macOS Sonoma support wheels natively this time.. or..?

No. Despite being promised for Ventura, it was never added and it’s still not there in Sonoma.

 

[Homy]

 

[MacsRgr8]

View attachment 2315977

I wonder what had kept them for 1,5 years…. Oh well… better late than never.

 

[diamond.g]

I wonder what had kept them for 1,5 years…. Oh well… better late than never.

I wonder if they were able to add features that the PC version was missing (MetalFX and RT). Looks like the engine supports upscalers and RT in the F1 series of games.

 

[MacsRgr8]

I wonder if they were able to add features that the PC version was missing (MetalFX and RT). Looks like the engine supports upscalers and RT in the F1 series of games.

That's nice, but why not "update" this game now to a version 1.x with these new features and start collecting the revenue 1,5 years ago?