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

[honcho]

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.

You make some good points about Apple being late to the party. Having been a Mac user since the 1980s, it has been interesting (and, at times, frustrating) to see how Apple has approached the market. As others have pointed out, the cost of Apple devices and their lack of upgradeability is a constant stumbling block. Also, Steam has conditioned gamers to expect steep store discounts, something which Apple doesn’t do.

When it comes to being late to the party, I feel that part of the problem was the way the cards fell. As PC gaming started to rise to mainstream popularity (late 90s, early 2000s), Apple was not the earnings juggernaut it is now, far from it. Back then, the company was months way from going out of business. Courting game developers would have rightly been the last thing on its mind. Had it not been for the iMac and iPod, we would not be here, on this forum.

Chip architecture also had a part to play in this. I remember the wild enthusiasm about the PowerPC pipeline following the launch of the G3. That didn’t pan out as expected. The fact that the G4 didn’t scale well was hugely disappointing, especially at a time when Moore’s law was in full effect. Additionally, by the early 2000s, the Megahertz War had started, and the PowerPC couldn’t compete with the Pentium architecture on that front. It didn’t help matters that the G5 was delayed. Apple had to create stopgap measures like the dual-processor Quicksilver G4, a machine so hot and noisy that I got rid of mine after six weeks. Meanwhile, pro users were starting to jump ship. Adobe products for Windows became an option, Steam launched its store, gamers took note, and all the while, Mac users has to make do with bad Aspyr ports of old games.

But I digress, you’re right, Apple has the money to make a push, but it clearly doesn’t think the PC gaming market is worth fighting for. Apple has a huge share of the mobile games market, anyway. Does it really care? It’s a shame because all the pieces are in place, the infrastructure, Apple Silicon, Apple TV, mobile devices, the ecosystem, but it would be a costly and probably fruitless battle. Cheap PCs, convenient consoles, established handhelds have the mindshare now. Ultimately, there is no problem to fix, except for Mac owners, and we are not sufficiently numerous or gaming-focused to count. Still, I’d love to see a Proton-like effort for macOS. That could be transformative.

 

[Happy_John]

You make some good points about Apple being late to the party. Having been a Mac user since the 1980s, it has been interesting (and, at times, frustrating) to see how Apple has approached the market. As others have pointed out, the cost of Apple devices and their lack of upgradeability is a constant stumbling block. Also, Steam has conditioned gamers to expect steep store discounts, something which Apple doesn’t do.

When it comes to being late to the party, I feel that part of the problem was the way the cards fell. As PC gaming started to rise to mainstream popularity (late 90s, early 2000s), Apple was not the earnings juggernaut it is now, far from it. Back then, the company was months way from going out of business. Courting game developers would have rightly been the last thing on its mind. Had it not been for the iMac and iPod, we would not be here, on this forum.

Chip architecture also had a part to play in this. I remember the wild enthusiasm about the PowerPC pipeline following the launch of the G3. That didn’t pan out as expected. The fact that the G4 didn’t scale well was hugely disappointing, especially at a time when Moore’s law was in full effect. Additionally, by the early 2000s, the Megahertz War had started, and the PowerPC couldn’t compete with the Pentium architecture on that front. It didn’t help matters that the G5 was delayed. Apple had to create stopgap measures like the dual-processor Quicksilver G4, a machine so hot and noisy that I got rid of mine after six weeks. Meanwhile, pro users were starting to jump ship. Adobe products for Windows became an option, Steam launched its store, gamers took note, and all the while, Mac users has to make do with bad Aspyr ports of old games.

But I digress, you’re right, Apple has the money to make a push, but it clearly doesn’t think the PC gaming market is worth fighting for. Apple has a huge share of the mobile games market, anyway. Does it really care? It’s a shame because all the pieces are in place, the infrastructure, Apple Silicon, Apple TV, mobile devices, the ecosystem, but it would be a costly and probably fruitless battle. Cheap PCs, convenient consoles, established handhelds have the mindshare now. Ultimately, there is no problem to fix, except for Mac owners, and we are not sufficiently numerous or gaming-focused to count. Still, I’d love to see a Proton-like effort for macOS. That could be transformative.

Yes, I just don’t think Apple want to commit to the level of development a company like Cakve has done and is doing.

Valve started out as a games developer, now they have a huge, stable distribution platform, a solid payment system for the platform, and em Mende set of titles. They create their own peripheral drivers so they don’t have to rely on the game developers’ or peripheral producers’ own drivers for cross platform support. And now they have their own OS and are releasing their own hardware.

Valve are now a serious threat to PlayStation, who have already do initiated MS XBox.

Apple might be looking at this and just think “we could jump in, but we’ll have to commit too many resources”. Apple, over the past years have committed a lot of resources to both the Vision platform and Apple Intelligence, and have received a lot of criticism in return. Irrespective of whether Vision and AI do evolve to show investing so much resources into them was a good idea or not, Apple might not want to commit resources to gaming, other than casual gaming.

I think your right about how and why Apple lost so much of the gaming sector - both their need to focus after the PPC issues and financial problems, and the switch from PPC.

A lot more games developers developed games for PPC Mac. PPC Mac got all the LucasArts / Atar Wars games for example, and Halo was originally being developed as a Mac PPC game, before it had to switch to being a universal Mac PPC/intel game, before being grabbed by MS as their Killer Title for launching the XBox.

A lot of games developers for Mac didn’t switch from PPC to Intel - they simply stopped developing for Mac. Quite right, if people wanted to game on an Intel Mac, they’d just run games on windows via bootcamp. And Apple, once bringing in the money again, didn’t chase the games market up because they were focused on music and internet, not games. Because music and internet was far “cooler” than games.

 

[maflynn]

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

No question, and no argument. The overhead is noticable, more so then on Linux/proton and/or Steam Deck. Not sure why given that all three are using WINE.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

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?

Make an Intel machine that runs Windows, done.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

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.

And, there’s experience all over the web indicating that Mac users that REALLY want to play their Windows games require zero effort from the devs. Those gamers will just “figure it out” themselves. And, because there’s no official support, they don’t have to field questions from Mac users, either.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

They allegedly do.

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.

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.

People who say that Apple paid for developers to release games for macOS aren’t basing it on anything. There’s no data, in Apple’s financial statements or anywhere else, that supports that Apple are paying any developers other than those that are on Apple Arcade.

And it makes sense. Developers on Apple Arcade are helping to sell a service that makes Apple a significant profit. There are ZERO people that find themselves wanting to play Resident Evil and specifically buys a Mac to do so.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

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.

It’s just talk. Apple provides the same dev support to any company that pays $99 to be a developer. There’s literally no financial benefit to Apple paying for anything other than the developers on Apple Arcade.

 

[Happy_John]

People who say that Apple paid for developers to release games for macOS aren’t basing it on anything. There’s no data, in Apple’s financial statements or anywhere else, that supports that Apple are paying any developers other than those that are on Apple Arcade.

And it makes sense. Developers on Apple Arcade are helping to sell a service that makes Apple a significant profit. There are ZERO people that find themselves wanting to play Resident Evil and specifically buys a Mac to do so.

Hmm.

I’m going to very careful of what I say, but I might have been told from the horses-mouth that this is exactly what happened in the case of a quite prominent game by a European developer.

If you ásk me to prove this I wiłl refuse. take that as you will.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

But I digress, you’re right, Apple has the money to make a push, but it clearly doesn’t think the PC gaming market is worth fighting for. Apple has a huge share of the mobile games market, anyway. Does it really care? It’s a shame because all the pieces are in place, the infrastructure, Apple Silicon, Apple TV, mobile devices, the ecosystem, but it would be a costly and probably fruitless battle. Cheap PCs, convenient consoles, established handhelds have the mindshare now. Ultimately, there is no problem to fix, except for Mac owners, and we are not sufficiently numerous or gaming-focused to count. Still, I’d love to see a Proton-like effort for macOS. That could be transformative.

The PC gaming market, even on Linux, is just the Windows gaming market. While gaming pulls in good revenue, non-gaming revenue for Windows is still much higher. If Apple’s not interested in going for that higher revenue target, then of course they aren’t interested in the sector with lower potential revenues. There’s nothing about gaming that makes it worth their effort to support technologies that doesn’t work well with what they’re building.

And, as you say, developers are releasing content for mobile left and right and it’s not because they prefer that to macOS, it’s because there’s an enormous number of users that have shown they’re willing to pay for digital content. Gamers, especially those with Steam, would prefer not having to pay more for content to be developed for their system of choice. If the current Steam price is $4.99, a Steam Mac user would want to receive any Mac version for the same price (and if they already own it for Windows, they’d want it for free). That makes the profit potential for devs even lower than it already is, and that’s before considering the after sale support and update costs. If anything, that’s likely one of the big barriers to developer support of the Mac, that it’s harder to make a return on what they’ve invested in from those users.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Hmm.

I’m going to very careful of what I say, but I might have been told from the horses-mouth that this is exactly what happened in the case of a quite prominent game by a European developer.

If you ásk me to prove this I wiłl refuse. take that as you will.

No worries! It’s simple enough to check Apple’s public financial statements as they’d be required to report any large expenditures they’ve made to other companies. Hiding or failing to disclose that information would get them into legal trouble and the gaming market is not that important for Apple to risk their company over.

 

[Happy_John]

No worries! It’s simple enough to check Apple’s public financial statements as they’d be required to report any large expenditures they’ve made to other companies. Hiding or failing to disclose that information would get them into legal trouble and the gaming market is not that important for Apple to risk their company over.

You’re implying illegal activity, which is a strange and irrelevant thing to say. If feel you’re making a drama about something that really isn’t

We t was a big public holiday here on Tuesday. Weather was very grey and a little bit drizzly. Don’t like those red flares :-(

 

[Parowdy]

@cateye nailed the problem, but for the sake of playing your game:

Apple do already have a major gaming platform with lots of games - it’s called iOS. They’ve already got a range of hardware devices you buy to play those games - iPhones & iPads.

So if Apple really wanted a gaming console their best bet would be a handheld with better game-playing ergonomics than an iDevice but still compatible with touch- and gyroscope-based games. Plus, this plays to the strengths of Apple Silicon which is ahead of the game for small/low power/integrated CPU power but struggles when size and power consumption are less important.

They would feel the need for a new kind of OS for such a handheld device, things they aren’t interested in.
They already have a great handheld product with incredible performance, a superb screen, and now even improved cooling.
For everything else there are already docks and PS controller adapters.
Nothing Apple would gain by doing anything else.
Maybe sell an adapter themselves but that’s about it.

 

[modlife]

I mentioned in another post that I think they only need the games, with an Apple TV 4k with a A17 Pro or above they can already run AAA games. Bundle that with a DualSense and strike some game deals and you have yourself the Pippin 2.

 

[maflynn]

they only need the games

This is the pertinent part of your post. It completely sums up the issue

an Apple TV 4k with a A17 Pro

Wouldn't that further fragment the market for Apple? What I mean is, we on Macs want to play games, not buy another piece of hardware, just to play games.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

You’re implying illegal activity, which is a strange and irrelevant thing to say. If feel you’re making a drama about something that really isn’t

We t was a big public holiday here on Tuesday. Weather was very grey and a little bit drizzly. Don’t like those red flares :-(

Yes, publicly traded companies in the US are required to report their earnings and expenditures to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Not reporting can lead to fines and criminal charges, so not reporting is illegal. That’s not drama, that’s what publicly traded companies do in the US.

This is why, IF Apple were paying for games to be made (outside of Apple Arcade) more than just one developer in Europe would know.

 

[modlife]

This is the pertinent part of your post. It completely sums up the issue


Wouldn't that further fragment the market for Apple? What I mean is, we on Macs want to play games, not buy another piece of hardware, just to play games.

Not at all, all their chips run the same hardware at different performance levels, that's why they can wip out a Macbook with a A19 Pro chip next year without breaking a sweat. If it runs on one platform, it can run in any of the other ones with some adjustments. I think that's the main appeal they can sell, buy it on iPhone and play it on your Mac or Apple TV too...

 

[Allen_Wentz]

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.

Lots of folks want more for what they think will be less cost, like "1TB should be base storage now." But that IMO is wrong-headed thinking. If Apple can sell product for a significant number of dollars less by not having "1TB should be base storage" and there are many potential buyers who suffice fine with 512 GB storage, then Apple should make 512 base storage.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Yes, I just don’t think Apple want to commit to the level of development a company like Cakve has done and is doing.

Valve started out as a games developer, now they have a huge, stable distribution platform, a solid payment system for the platform, and em Mende set of titles. They create their own peripheral drivers so they don’t have to rely on the game developers’ or peripheral producers’ own drivers for cross platform support. And now they have their own OS and are releasing their own hardware.

Valve are now a serious threat to PlayStation, who have already do initiated MS XBox.

Apple might be looking at this and just think “we could jump in, but we’ll have to commit too many resources”. Apple, over the past years have committed a lot of resources to both the Vision platform and Apple Intelligence, and have received a lot of criticism in return. Irrespective of whether Vision and AI do evolve to show investing so much resources into them was a good idea or not, Apple might not want to commit resources to gaming, other than casual gaming.

I think your right about how and why Apple lost so much of the gaming sector - both their need to focus after the PPC issues and financial problems, and the switch from PPC.

A lot more games developers developed games for PPC Mac. PPC Mac got all the LucasArts / Atar Wars games for example, and Halo was originally being developed as a Mac PPC game, before it had to switch to being a universal Mac PPC/intel game, before being grabbed by MS as their Killer Title for launching the XBox.

A lot of games developers for Mac didn’t switch from PPC to Intel - they simply stopped developing for Mac. Quite right, if people wanted to game on an Intel Mac, they’d just run games on windows via bootcamp. And Apple, once bringing in the money again, didn’t chase the games market up because they were focused on music and internet, not games. Because music and internet was far “cooler” than games.

Not because "music and internet was far “cooler” than games," but rather because music was wide open underserved and internet was a necessity, while gaming was a highly competitive space being served by others.

 

[maflynn]

Not at all, all their chips run the same hardware at different performance levels,

I understand that, but your missing the fact that studios are not producing AAA games for the Mac, and if apple pushes for an apple-tv like gaming console it will not mean that we'll see those same games on macos. There's already tons of games on ios that are not on macos. With all due respect, you're assumption is flawed in that regards

 

[AlaskaMoose]

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?

The answer to your question is very simple: Apple nor any other company would produce anything unless there is a profit to be made.

In fact, building products that are thinner, lighter, more compact, lower quality materials that still meet the product's specifications, the absence of standard accessories (chargers, longer cables) "inside the box," even the tune about being good for the environment, all is done for profit. Without profit there cannot be investors or shareholders.

 

[Happy_John]

Not because "music and internet was far “cooler” than games," but rather because music was wide open underserved and internet was a necessity, while gaming was a highly competitive space being served by others.

True enough, but I also think it was Jobs very much pushing for Apple to be mainstream / lifestyle, rather than niche, and gaming was still pretty niche. A lot of people see the PS one as what brought gaming into the mainstream, but the hugs PlayStation only started when Sony dropped the price of the ps2 in 2004. And honest, I think Jobs wanted to keep Apple as far away from the image of the beige//Black pc tower as possible, which was synonymous with sweaty teenage boy gaming.

I know it’s an unfair image, but I think that, for Jobs, Apple was going to be a “lifestyle” tech brand, and that was the opposite of gaming. Even now, Apple’s aesthetic is the opposite of RGB lighting and neon graphics.

To be crass about it, I think that, in the intel dats but before the iOS App Store, Apple looked down their noses at gaming and gamer culture, they thought Apple products should be “more elevated”. The problem was that a lot more people liked games than fit the gamer stereotype.

 

[GioGiusi]

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

It absolutely is, but whoever makes the first move loses money. So no one is making a move.

 

[sublunar]

I understand that, but your missing the fact that studios are not producing AAA games for the Mac, and if apple pushes for an apple-tv like gaming console it will not mean that we'll see those same games on macos. There's already tons of games on ios that are not on macos. With all due respect, you're assumption is flawed in that regards

Let’s also remember that it’s not simply a case of hitting recompile on a windows project and expecting it work well on iOS or macOS with commensurate performance increase. The way windows pcs and apple devices handle graphics is certainly different and needs expertise to make sure games are optimised for each platform.

The market is untested at the moment but Apple have a habit of killing off products and tech that developers might want to rely on without any notice. And this may be a factor in developers being cautious about investing in the platform.

They certainly wouldn’t follow a console style plan of introducing subsidised hardware with a known long shelf life.

I think Apple might be better off investing in the iOS iPadOS and TvOS platforms rather than MacOS.

Lots of games are already being made for that platform and standardised hardware like AppleTV or iPhones/iPads present a good known market for developers to aim at.

I don’t think there should be any shame in Apple using the Apple Arcade budget to keep a good supply of games coming for those platforms but they need to look at the variety of games available - not all of us want to play kids games that might only last a day.

 

[JouniS]

Lots of folks want more for what they think will be less cost, like "1TB should be base storage now." But that IMO is wrong-headed thinking. If Apple can sell product for a significant number of dollars less by not having "1TB should be base storage" and there are many potential buyers who suffice fine with 512 GB storage, then Apple should make 512 base storage.

Many companies try to sell the worst products people are still willing to buy, but nothing good comes from attempts do defend the practice.

1 TB was the base storage for a certain kind of gaming in 2020, because that's what the consoles released in that year shipped with. The next generation will probably up the base storage to 2 TB in a couple of years. You can of course play games on less capable devices, but the experience will not be as good as with adequate hardware.

 

[max2]

Will not happen ever. Not impossible just not needed and no market for it currently.