If Apple was actually serious about gaming and wanted to create it's own version of a Steam Machine how should they do it?

[cjsuk]

Hello, 54 year old gamer here. I've been active in gamer culture for 30+ years, including playing competitively (as in, for money). I've attended 'cons, been in focus groups for game development houses, and spent time as a gaming clan member. I assure you, of the hundreds if not thousands of people I've interacted with about gaming over the years, not once have I met someone disinterested in gaming on the Mac because of any of the reasons you state. You'd be surprised how many I've met who were Mac users for everything other than gaming. Like me.

Similar situation here. I was setting up Netware IPX networks to play Doom back in the day. You'll also actually find me in a BBC news article about LAN party gaming in the UK and photo of a rather embarrassing and frequently reposted LAN party meme no less. I won't say any more than that 🤣.

I have a custom built gaming PC here as well for ref and spend a fair amount of time playing various things on Steam. Plenty of chicken dinners in PUBG: Battlegrounds.

Not sure where you are but at least in the UK it varies, but the majority of gamers these days don't touch a Mac. Hell I've been called all sorts of names for it believe it or not. There are a few slurs.

So what's the problem, then? The long-harbored, Steve Jobs-born dismissal of games, gaming culture, and the power of games as an art form by Apple and its most fervent users has continually poisoned the precious few honest attempts there has been for publishers and developers to embrace the Mac as a platform for AAA games, and I'm convinced the same will keep happening, even as we finally have broad availability of Mac hardware that is well positioned to enable gaming. I cut Apple platforms loose from my gaming needs and wants years ago exactly because of this arrogance and the lack of broader community support. I see no reason to return.

I don't think it's that. They built APIs and software and the hardware is good but no one came because value and customisability are two important things. Apple does not represent value and you can't customise anything. This is what I crudely alluded to earlier.

If being committed to the Apple brand and what it represents is more important to someone than the games they get to play, and that works for them, far be it from me to expect them to change. But that was never going to work for me—the games come first.

Again, then, this brings us back to the idea of an Apple Silicon-based SteamMachine with the same focus on creating broad compatibility with existing game catalogs and alternate storefronts. Does Apple Silicon represent a sea-change in the technical viability of a device like this? Absolutely Yes. Has Apple shown, with Rosetta and the GPT, the engineering expertise and resources to produce cross-platform translation layers that are functional and performant? Also Yes. (Remember, Valve has been working on Proton for over ten years.)

Is Apple willing to take the next step to make these technologies the cornerstone of a new push into gaming availability for Mac users independent of its closed-loop storefronts and singular focus on recurring revenue generation, and are Mac users willing and interested to embrace games and game culture as it exists and on its own terms?

No, to both.

Literally the material is there. No one is coming. Why would they? The hardware is expensive, you can't customise it and you can't upgrade it. If you want that you might as well buy a console with a curated experience.

Or a Steam Machine, which is the real point. And if that's not good enough then perhaps a custom PC is the right answer.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I'm SUPER interested in that Steam Machine.

 

[Charliebird]

They could buy Nintendo.

 

[grammatica]

Apple's failure in gaming has always been in games. The hardware is powerful enough. It needs to invest in games that will bring users.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Hello, 54 year old gamer here. I've been active in gamer culture for 30+ years, including playing competitively (as in, for money). I've attended 'cons, been in focus groups for game development houses, and spent time as a gaming clan member. I assure you, of the hundreds if not thousands of people I've interacted with about gaming over the years, not once have I met someone disinterested in gaming on the Mac because of any of the reasons you state. You'd be surprised how many I've met who were Mac users for everything other than gaming. Like me.

So what's the problem, then? The long-harbored, Steve Jobs-born dismissal of games, gaming culture, and the power of games as an art form by Apple and its most fervent users has continually poisoned the precious few honest attempts there has been for publishers and developers to embrace the Mac as a platform for AAA games, and I'm convinced the same will keep happening, even as we finally have broad availability of Mac hardware that is well positioned to enable gaming. I cut Apple platforms loose from my gaming needs and wants years ago exactly because of this arrogance and the lack of broader community support. I see no reason to return.

If being committed to the Apple brand and what it represents is more important to someone than the games they get to play, and that works for them, far be it from me to expect them to change. But that was never going to work for me—the games come first.

Again, then, this brings us back to the idea of an Apple Silicon-based SteamMachine with the same focus on creating broad compatibility with existing game catalogs and alternate storefronts. Does Apple Silicon represent a sea-change in the technical viability of a device like this? Absolutely Yes. Has Apple shown, with Rosetta and the GPT, the engineering expertise and resources to produce cross-platform translation layers that are functional and performant? Also Yes. (Remember, Valve has been working on Proton for over ten years.)

Is Apple willing to take the next step to make these technologies the cornerstone of a new push into gaming availability for Mac users independent of its closed-loop storefronts and singular focus on recurring revenue generation, and are Mac users willing and interested to embrace games and game culture as it exists and on its own terms?

No, to both.

Your comments are accurate, but. The large but is exactly what you stated and emphasized with italics: "...are Mac users willing and interested to embrace games and game culture as it exists and on its own terms?"

Why would Apple want "to embrace games and game culture as it exists and on its own terms?" Use corporate resources and modify product design to fight its way into very competitive AAA markets long dominated by others [with games built from the ground up to run on other than Apple hardware]? That would be nonsensical when Apple has so many [proven] better ways to utilize corporate resources.

Instead what Apple can do is simply build great hardware and support devs of all kinds [including game devs] who work to develop on the Apple hardware/OSs. And build an app store that markets devs' work internationally for a paltry 30% fee.

Have you ever developed anything as a small dev? The 30% is not simply some Apple "give us our cut approach," it is a hella bargain for small shops. The big AAA shops object of course, because they are already big, with big marketing departments already. But why should Apple care about the demands of the big AAA shops?

So we will watch Apple gaming grow organically, primarily from the iOS direction. But Macs are the world's fourth largest personal computer sales, so now that hardware is so strong [and IMO nicer] we will also see growth in games specific for Mac. The old line world of AAA can mostly stay what it always has been; i.e. mostly non-Mac. But note that the success of BG3 on Mac may encourage other big devs.

 

[Siliconguy]

The long-harbored, Steve Jobs-born dismissal of games, gaming culture, and the power of games as an art form by Apple

That goes back to the Apple //GS. There were a lot of games for that, but did Apple play that up? No. Steve wanted the Mac to be a Serious Machine which he could have had while still giving the GS a bump up with a blitter and hardware sprites. But no.

The Mac LC was supposed to take over from the GS but it was too gutless for words. Apple let the CPU do all the graphics work for way too long.

 

[IvyKing]

The long-harbored, Steve Jobs-born dismissal of games, gaming culture, and the power of games as an art form by Apple and its most fervent users has continually poisoned the precious few honest attempts there has been for publishers and developers to embrace the Mac as a platform for AAA games, and I'm convinced the same will keep happening, even as we finally have broad availability of Mac hardware that is well positioned to enable gaming.

This makes me wonder if this was a good portion of the reason why Trip Hawkins left Apple. The tone of his voice when talking about the Lisa and his mentioning that he had sold all of his Apple stock (this was said Aug 1982) left me with impression that he was pretty disgusted with what was going on at Apple then.

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

I don't think that gamers would ever ditch x86/x64

Idk, the potential of the Steam Frame is pretty exciting, and Valve is all in on investing in development for all ARM products. The idea is to compete with Windows by offering a free alternative optimized for gaming.
At the very least Mac users would be able to run SteamOS in virtualization. (Maybe even run it natively if Apple starts officially supporting dual booting Linux)

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

The best things Apple did for gaming was 1. Working with AAA devs to make ports of popular games (No Man's Sky, Cyberpunk) and 2. Releasing GPTK.

 

[cardfan]

I know Apple would never do this but let's just do a theoretical exercise. The Steam machine is said to be stronger than the steam deck which puts it around 9 tflops. If Apple actually wanted to create an Appletv Pro or gaming console hybrid would they need to stick a M2 Max or M3 pro or something similar into this machine? How would the pricing be?

It’d be too high. But why worry about it. Apple isn’t serious about this type of gaming.

 

[cardfan]

I continue to think Apple and gaming is one of the hugest missed opportunities. They have the hardware. They have the operating system, the frameworks, the APIs. They literally have all the pieces to do an amazing console or portable gaming device.

All they need to do is build some devices and seriously invest in a few first-party exclusives. Or just buy Nintendo, I guess. All this talk about Linux or Windows is irrelevant. If Apple makes their platform appealing for games, developers will come. They don't need a translation layer to port every Steam game or any of this other nonsense Valve is doing. They just need to create a device that is designed for gaming first and invest in a catalogue of games to support it. It's really that simple.

Apple loves being gatekeepers and taking a cut from software and yet they're totally absent from non-mobile gaming. It's just so bizarre.

Apple hasn’t missed with gaming. They do quite well. Top 5. It’s just not the gaming you’re thinking of. And there’s not much money in “non mobile gaming” for them. Sad to say. If there was they’d be after a slice.

 

[leifp]

Hello, 54 year old gamer here. I've been active in gamer culture for 30+ years, including playing competitively (as in, for money). I've attended 'cons, been in focus groups for game development houses, and spent time as a gaming clan member. I assure you, of the hundreds if not thousands of people I've interacted with about gaming over the years, not once have I met someone disinterested in gaming on the Mac because of any of the reasons you state. You'd be surprised how many I've met who were Mac users for everything other than gaming. Like me.

So what's the problem, then? The long-harbored, Steve Jobs-born dismissal of games, gaming culture, and the power of games as an art form by Apple and its most fervent users has continually poisoned the precious few honest attempts there has been for publishers and developers to embrace the Mac as a platform for AAA games, and I'm convinced the same will keep happening, even as we finally have broad availability of Mac hardware that is well positioned to enable gaming. I cut Apple platforms loose from my gaming needs and wants years ago exactly because of this arrogance and the lack of broader community support. I see no reason to return.

If being committed to the Apple brand and what it represents is more important to someone than the games they get to play, and that works for them, far be it from me to expect them to change. But that was never going to work for me—the games come first.

Again, then, this brings us back to the idea of an Apple Silicon-based SteamMachine with the same focus on creating broad compatibility with existing game catalogs and alternate storefronts. Does Apple Silicon represent a sea-change in the technical viability of a device like this? Absolutely Yes. Has Apple shown, with Rosetta and the GPT, the engineering expertise and resources to produce cross-platform translation layers that are functional and performant? Also Yes. (Remember, Valve has been working on Proton for over ten years.)

Is Apple willing to take the next step to make these technologies the cornerstone of a new push into gaming availability for Mac users independent of its closed-loop storefronts and singular focus on recurring revenue generation, and are Mac users willing and interested to embrace games and game culture as it exists and on its own terms?

No, to both.

In a similar position with similar viewpoints. While I never played competitively (I don’t even enjoy multiplayer games with few exceptions) I did study gaming as a grad student (returning to academe in my late 30s) and got to hang out with some top gamers.

Apple has everything it needs except the desire. That’s a fact, summed up nicely by @cateye.

Here’s the desire according to me (this might be a failure if attempted): if they decided to build their own game studio, dedicated to games much as their TV products are dedicated to film and TV, and produce games along the lines of Journey, Spec Ops: the line, Half Life (Valve is a top notch game developer where it approaches art), The Last of Us and so on solely for Apple hardware they would have their cake and eat it, too. And this would create a perception of Apple as a gaming brand. Would it get developers to offer their games on the App Store (as well as or instead of Steam et al)? I’m doubtful, but the halo effect would likely increase Steam games with Mac compatibility. Two cents deposited in jar

 

[Happy_John]

It isn’t a problem for Apple to build the hardware to run the type of AA/AAA games a steam machine will, it’s the content: having a big enough games library to make the hardware a worthwhile investment. Apple doesn’t have that. Valve already do - the steam machine makes sense as it’s a case of build the hardware abd the OS AFTER we already have a critical mass on content.

A games platform is only as good as the games on that platform.

At this point, it would coat Apple far too much time and money to persuade Aa/Aaa games rebooted to port their products to Apple. As it is, Apple devices get one or two Aa/Aaa titles a year. You can’t build a games platform on that.

 

[maflynn]

I'm SUPER interested in that Steam Machine.

Same, I think it might replace my PS5

 

[honcho]

It isn't Apple that isn't serious about gaming. Development studios, that have to budget time, money and other resources into adding a platform target for their game, aren't serious about the Mac as a platform.

M-series chips could play games just fine. The users of M-series chips are not gamers. Not enough of them to warrant supporting the Mac as a platform.

Isn’t this a chicken or egg qusrtion, though?

 

[cjsuk]

Apple's failure in gaming has always been in games. The hardware is powerful enough. It needs to invest in games that will bring users.

It is but you're going to get perhaps 1 game and your stuff on a base spec 256Gb machine.

1TB should be base storage now.

 

[Happy_John]

Isn’t this a chicken or egg qusrtion, though?

Yes, but if the eggs are the games/content, and chicken is the hardware, it would take the chicken a hell of a lot of resources (time, Effective and most of all money) to get at stage to compete with the other chickens - valce, microsoft, PlayStation already gave hige catalogues and deals/acquisitions with developers, Apple doesn’t.

The other chickens already have lots of eggs, and already have regular buyers of their eggs

I’m not saying Apple would be TOO late to the party, but they are already VERY, VERY late. They were actualy in a better position at in the last days of PowerPc chip based Macs.

Apple could try doing was MS did - buy games development house wholesale, but they’re be late to that part. Apple already partner with Sony on perioherals, in thar Apple are basicallu adding native support for Playstation controllers, rather than development tyeir own, but I don’t see why Sony would have any interesting in doing a deal with Apple over their games library (although it would be technically possible to develop an eqvivant of Proton from PS4/5 mac0S - side by side a base Mac Mini 4 runs mac-ported games almost as well as their PS5 eqivant ports).

And I think this is why Apple focused on gaming with Casablanca games on iOS - it would cost them too much to catch up to become a serious competitor, so they’re decided motto, and instead just do deals to get 1-33 AA/AAA titles a year for Mac as a token gesture.

 

[maflynn]

The other chickens already have lots of eggs, and already have regular buyers of their eggs

That's it.

I don't believe Apple needs to work with publishers, supposedly they've been trying, they need to pay publishers. AAA games cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and studios don't want to add to the cost and complexity for no return, so apple needs to pony up some of its trillions of dollars.

The other option,those much less likely now that EA has been purchased, is find a larger studio and buy them, but thanks to Sony, Microsoft and Tenecent's buying sprees, I don't believe there's many options at this point

 

[Happy_John]

That's it.

I don't believe Apple needs to work with publishers, supposedly they've been trying, they need to pay publishers. AAA games cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and studios don't want to add to the cost and complexity for no return, so apple needs to pony up some of its trillions of dollars.

The other option,those much less likely now that EA has been purchased, is find a larger studio and buy them, but thanks to Sony, Microsoft and Tenecent's buying sprees, I don't believe there's many options at this point

They allegedly do.

There been a lot of talk that Cuberpunk, Death Standing and the Resident Evil games came to MacOS because Apple paid for them to do so, and paid in excess of the porting costs.

Apple can do that for a a very small number of titles a year (1-3 titles) but I’d guess they don’t think it’s a feasible option for say, 100 titles a years, to get both new releases and also bulk up the back catalogue with quality titles.

 

[Happy_John]

That's it.

I don't believe Apple needs to work with publishers, supposedly they've been trying, they need to pay publishers. AAA games cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and studios don't want to add to the cost and complexity for no return, so apple needs to pony up some of its trillions of dollars.

The other option,those much less likely now that EA has been purchased, is find a larger studio and buy them, but thanks to Sony, Microsoft and Tenecent's buying sprees, I don't believe there's many options at this point

Just for LOLZ, I’d suggest Apple buys Valve. Problem solved.

But Valve would be incredibly stupid to sell to anyone. They’re the one company in the industry that has done almost everything right (bar some delay along the way, but delta are better than absolute mistakes).

 

[maflynn]

There been a lot of talk that Cuberpunk, Death Standing and the Resudent Evil games came to MacOS because Apple paid for them to do so, and paid in excess of the portions costs.

To a point yes, I'm unsure about RE, was it cash or marketing stuff? I think for Resident Evil, its more iOS then macos. As for Cyberpunk, they paid for a 5 year old game, when most people have already played it. They need day 1 releases.

 

[Happy_John]

To a point yes, I'm unsure about RE, was it cash or marketing stuff? I think for Resident Evil, its more iOS then macos. As for Cyberpunk, they paid for a 5 year old game, when most people have already played it. They need day 1 releases.

They need quality releases. Cyberpunk is an old game, but Mac got the full, almost bug-free version, it didn’t get the day one version. And it is a very good game.

People don’t buy Macs for gaming, but it’s nice to have the option. Having quality games is important to get people to game more on Macs.

In my case, for a long while I used my Mac Pro 5.1 with a VEGA 56 gpu running window10 as my main gaming machine. As a rough benchmark, RDR2 GTA5 ran very well (they’re well known games, so..)

I’ve also got a Mac Mini M2 Pro - it runs the „new” AAA titles on MacOS well. So I only fire up the Mac Pro for titles not in MaCOS.

It’s a bit like Apple TV and Netflix, in the beginning, Apple TV wasn’t an alternative to Netflix, it was an extra to Netflix.

Play the same games you love playing without having to switch machine. That is a small, but significant angle for Apple when they have such small presents in the gaming market.

The trouble with Apple now is they’re largely forgotten how to be a small player in a market . They’re used to being the dominant player. Their current way of selling products and Services doesn’t work well when applied to the „serious games” market.


Apple won’t make much money from paying Rockstar to port games ,ile RDR2 or GTA5 to Mac, but it will build up gaming awareness on MC.

Right now that’s important, not just Day 1 titles. Because, to be honest, there are not that many Day1 titles that are actually good in a year. Building up a ctalogue of slighter older, but high quality games, is equally as important.

 

[TumbleDryer]

To get Apple gaming off the ground properly with native triple AAA titles on Macs and a true gaming community with momentum behind it Apple needs to subsidise developers/publishers by offering to help developers in any way they can be it with costs or free technical help so the developers are not hit with huge costs producing for a tiny market share. Once the library of games and market is established Apple can reduce/end the support.

Apple ignored gaming in the past, if they want to take advantage of this MASSIVE market they need to spend some money to catch up. Only thing is they just aren't bothered which is surprising because Tim Apple is in charge and it's a massive market. Think how many more Macs would get sold if there was a proper gaming culture around Apple.

I have an Xbox Series X and some games I have for it that I also have on my Mac actually look FAR better on my Mac than they do the Xbox. The technology has always been there plus its just taken a massive leap forward too with Apple Silicon but still no real movement.

Apple gave a half arsed attempt with CyberPunk and I think it was TombRaider but they need to keep following it up with these developers to keep producing and building the library. One or two game collaborations is not going cut it.

 

[maflynn]

I’ve also got a Mac Mini M2 Pro - it runs the „new” AAA titles on MacOS well. So I only fire up the Mac Pro for titles not in MaCOS.

The problem is, and I touched upon it earlier is that if a publisher releases a windows game. That covers, all three platforms, windows, linux and yes macos because of crossover (or Geforce Now). If they produced the game for the mac, how many net sales would they garner, i.e., not those that would have bought it and played via crossover?

I use crossover and I needed to go with a M4 Extreme Studio, partly because of overhead of Crossover, and partly because its the equivalent to a 4070 (I think, its been while since I did the comparison). That potentially limits the pool of mac users. With that said Cyberpunk seems to play ok on lower end macs, though 30FPS is not what many people call "ok" in 2025

 

[Happy_John]

The problem is, and I touched upon it earlier is that if a publisher releases a windows game. That covers, all three platforms, windows, linux and yes macos because of crossover (or Geforce Now). If they produced the game for the mac, how many net sales would they garner, i.e., not those that would have bought it and played via crossover?

I use crossover and I needed to go with a M4 Extreme Studio, partly because of overhead of Crossover, and partly because its the equivalent to a 4070 (I think, its been while since I did the comparison). That potentially limits the pool of mac users. With that said Cyberpunk seems to play ok on lower end macs, though 30FPS is not what many people call "ok" in 2025

Yes crossover is OK”, but not optimized, it’s generals going to be slower than an “official” optimists port of a game.

That’s why, hypethically, a deal between Sony and Apple, where a more optimisted Proton-like later, specfically from PS or Ps 5 hardware to Apple M chips, and then a testing stage, would be more Effective, but I don’t see any motivation for Sony PS to do so.

Or just buy Valve, like they did Beats