I think the answer ultimately is yes. They obviously don't want to do this but I think they will have to in order to highest optimized most cost effective games for iPad, iPhone, Mac. I think that they will also have to do the same thing on the Apple TV side of the business and acquire a studio. Metro Exodus IP and 4A games would be a good entity to acquire because it would have synergies on all Apple platforms. They could make a show for Apple TV and bring the games to iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro.
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If Apple wants to be successful in gaming will they have to acquire a decent sized gaming studio?
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Maybe, but devs won't port their games anyway. Most Unity games don't come to macOS, even though the engine supports the platform.
Same goes for Vulkan support, added to the fact that there are very few Vulkan games. Even if the platform supported D3D, I don't think that would change much.
What dictates the decision to port is the potential user base, user base, and also... user base.
There are too few macOS users interested in gaming. There may be more iPhone users, but the iPhone is not well suited for AAA games. It doesn't have the storage (except for the very top model) and on screen controls are sh*t.
I don't see that changing any time soon.
So yeah, if Apple wanted many more games on their platform, they'd have to either become a porting house or acquire a major game studio.
Which they won't. Their strategy is to shout from the rooftops about how great their SoCs are, but hardly any developer listens.
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Mobile gaming - they're incredibly successful.
I'm not so sure 4A games would be a good purchase for apple. The studio is a one hit wonder, that is they only have one successful IP. Spending hundreds of millions on a studio that just publishes one game will not move the needle for macos gaming. They also have a post-apocolyptic show, that has some similarities to the metro, i.e., the silo. As for iphone/ipad, I'm unsure AAA games are well suited for phones and tablet.
There was some rumors a few months back that they were selling the studio but it was either just that a rumor or the deai fell through. You had mentioned the turmoil in Ukraine, and that might a big reason why buying that studio may not be a great idea. It has largely moved to Malta AFAIK, but there still may be some offices in Kyiv
You can use them to make other games. And to the iPhone iPad point it would be suitable if it was built from the ground up using metal 4 new rendering pipeline that is designed to overcome cpu and gpu bottlenecks. Apple needs a development team to use all of metal 4 and metal fix features to the limit. Metal 4 x even has a feature when you can put machine learning models into the render pipeline and zero current games take advantage of that.
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Yeah I saw a blurb about the Metro Series IP falling under Plion (sub of Embracer) even though 4A "belongs" to Embracer "proper". Which makes it seem like if they sold 4A they would be sans IP. Which probably wouldn't make them a good buy.
But then that means going on a hiring spree, and sort of defeats the purpose of buying a studio. you want a ready-made team to produce the games for you. apple could just go and hire folks to produce games themselves at that point
Apple does not need to acquire either a game studio or a TV studio. If you want to know why Apple acquiring game studios would be bad, look at the Microsoft/Mojang/Bethesda/"Activision/Blizzard" conglomerate and how much junk has come out of that in the last few weeks, let alone the last year. (Fallout 4 remaster, Starfield and the yet to be released DLC, etc.)
Apple has already proven it can make compelling TV series and movies with shows such as Ted Lasso and Severance as well as movies such as F1. Apple doesn't need to acquire a TV or movie studio when they can already attract top talent both in front of and behind the camera as-is.
The comparison does not apply because the product (TV show, movie) is not tied to a particular hardware architecture, as opposed to an app (game). Studios don't develop games for Apple platforms because there are too few people using Apple hardware and willing to play their games.
Apple won't attract talents to develop games for their platforms. I'm not even sure what that means in the context of games. Apple would first need to set up a studio ("Apple games" for instance) before attracting talents to work for them.
It might be that Apple’s short-term goal for the next few years is to simply develop and maintain friendly non-toxic relationships with gaming content providers.
“Is the Mac port of your successful game going to take longer than anticipated? No worries, we got you. In fact we’re just thrilled to have you as part of the extended Apple family.” (See the Apple 3-D rendering software playbook, Otoy Octane X chapters specifically).
Beyond that, Apple’s longer term goal for gaming is probably centered around building the Games app into a bigger and better version of itself.
Apple’s core tenet is to give consumers a simple well-designed way to use their devices.
And I can see Apple thinking most consumers only have one question about playing games on their devices or watching TV on their devices: “Where do I start?”
Apple TV is $12.99 USD per month.
Apple Music is $10.99 USD per month.
Apple Arcade lags way behind both as a service and as a revenue stream. It’s only $6.99 USD per month.
Apple wants to create a new Games service to grow that last number for sure. But Apple being highly, highly profitable right now means they also have a really loooooong runway to land that particular plane.
I can see Apple taking multiple years to build Games into a much larger “We want you to Start and Stay Here to Play Games” subscription service to match the scope and scale of Apple TV and Apple Music.
This would parallel how Apple took a minute to grow Apple TV from “a hobby” into a much bigger deal.
I think Apple will apply the same strategy and run it back with (Apple) Games.
“Is the Mac port of your successful game going to take longer than anticipated? No worries, we got you. In fact we’re just thrilled to have you as part of the extended Apple family.” (See the Apple 3-D rendering software playbook, Otoy Octane X chapters specifically).
Beyond that, Apple’s longer term goal for gaming is probably centered around building the Games app into a bigger and better version of itself.
Apple’s core tenet is to give consumers a simple well-designed way to use their devices.
And I can see Apple thinking most consumers only have one question about playing games on their devices or watching TV on their devices: “Where do I start?”
Apple TV is $12.99 USD per month.
Apple Music is $10.99 USD per month.
Apple Arcade lags way behind both as a service and as a revenue stream. It’s only $6.99 USD per month.
Apple wants to create a new Games service to grow that last number for sure. But Apple being highly, highly profitable right now means they also have a really loooooong runway to land that particular plane.
I can see Apple taking multiple years to build Games into a much larger “We want you to Start and Stay Here to Play Games” subscription service to match the scope and scale of Apple TV and Apple Music.
This would parallel how Apple took a minute to grow Apple TV from “a hobby” into a much bigger deal.
I think Apple will apply the same strategy and run it back with (Apple) Games.
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Apple buying an AAA gaming company won't make a difference at all. It would be a drop in the ocean, and not change a single thing.
For game developers, one thing matters: user base. And Apple can do nothing to affect that, other then keep making MacOS a great platform (Which they currently aren't doing with Tahoe!).
Long term, they could do some good by porting select AAA games, but only if they do a substantial amount, and keep doing it. As in, for a decade or so, to really let people see a continuous influx of great major games on the platform, to change public sentiments. But even then, they would need to spend a butt load of money doing this, and supporting the games post release, and Apple has made it very clear they don't care at all about Mac gaming, so chances of that happening is zero. Heck, they clearly don't even care about AppleTV gaming, which is essentially a console already present in a lot of households, with the potential gaming library of all of iOS.
For game developers, one thing matters: user base. And Apple can do nothing to affect that, other then keep making MacOS a great platform (Which they currently aren't doing with Tahoe!).
Long term, they could do some good by porting select AAA games, but only if they do a substantial amount, and keep doing it. As in, for a decade or so, to really let people see a continuous influx of great major games on the platform, to change public sentiments. But even then, they would need to spend a butt load of money doing this, and supporting the games post release, and Apple has made it very clear they don't care at all about Mac gaming, so chances of that happening is zero. Heck, they clearly don't even care about AppleTV gaming, which is essentially a console already present in a lot of households, with the potential gaming library of all of iOS.
Its hard to convince publishers to support the mac when they look at the steam statistics and see 2%
They should be focusing on large/popular multiplayer games (BF6, CoD:whatever version we are on, Arc Raiders, Hell Divers 2, etc). Games like that get folks to stay on a platform and come back to keep playing (fomo and all). It is weird, The engine CoD uses has already been ported to iOS so there is no real reason why macOS version wouldn't work. Same with Arc Raiders. There was a version of Frostbite for ios (BF6), but I dunno if it has been maintained.
Single player games are all fine and well, but (as much as it pains me to say) online multiplayer is how they keep folks in game (and spending money on "loot boxes").
The problem with many multiplayer games you have listed are the anti-cheat measures that will not run on Mac OS. Even if you are running via Crossover or Parallels, many of those games will not run because of those anti-cheat tools. Look at the issues with the latest Battlefield on Windows alone.
Apple should be working with the developers and publishers to overcome that hurdle.
You're making an assumption those developers and publishers are interested in producing a game on the mac.
They could do an end run by getting the games released on iOS or iPadOS and just not allowing the developers to opt out of macOS compatibility.
They could, is there a large demand to play AAA games on iOs and iPadOS? I know there's a handful of games but I don't know how popular AAA gaming is on the iPhone and iPad.
Apple shouldn't be expected to compromise the built in security of its operating systems to accommodate third-party anti-cheat tools which are effectively rootkits. When games are refusing to run unless certain motherboard features are present due to the anticheat measures, something's gone wrong on the studio side.