Is gaming officially dead on Macs?

[Realityck]

WC3 Remastered is a one time purchase, not a subscription. The only game in the Blizzard portfolio with a subscription is World of Warcraft.

Note it’s called WC3 Reforged, and you’re correct. That is why it didn’t show on free to play. 😉

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Note it’s called WC3 Reforged, and you’re correct. That is why it didn’t show on free to play. 😉

Wait, I thought it's called WC3 Refunded? 😉

They even have a website for it: https://www.warcraft3refunded.com
A game that is widely considered an absolute dud, gameplay, feature and bug wise.

 

[galad]

One of the weirdest release ever. The first playable alpha version had much better light effects, and better models, and better cut scenes in the campaign. Then they released something with looked nothing like that and was so dull and buggy.

 

[Starfia]

Actually a lot of traditional PC games are on Switch, most notably Factorio.

Thank you – I'll clarify that by "virtually no" I meant "a small fraction of," not "a nonzero number."

Obviously the number of games that support both Windows and Mac is similarly nonzero, and it isn't a prohibitive challenge to emulate DOS games on Apple Silicon either.

 

[Ethosik]

Thank you – I'll clarify that by "virtually no" I meant "a small fraction of," not "a nonzero number."

Obviously the number of games that support both Windows and Mac is similarly nonzero, and it isn't a prohibitive challenge to emulate DOS games on Apple Silicon either.

I recently played Descent on my M1 Mac mini. It was fun! I forgot how horrible the controls were and I think that is the only game I got a joystick for.

People need to realize that gaming is more than just the AAA industry. I have about 150 games on Steam that support Mac. That is a good amount! This is perfectly in line with Mac's marketshare.

Apple gets all or almost all the blame here. When it is up to the developers. I have said so many times but this gets ignored because "let's just blame Apple here". Apple can spend 100 billion to get a few games on Macs. Okay, so what? What about the next games? Marketshare is where it is. Nintendo Switch got some games that required SIGNIFICANT re-work to port it over. But it got it since it is so popular. And Call of Duty isn't even on Switch!

Look at Mortal Kombat 11, and probably will be even funnier is look at 1 when it releases on Switch and compare with other consoles. Look how much effort devs need to do to get a game to work on the Switch. So if they do THAT amount of work on a Switch, they can do that for Macs just as easily (none of this is easy and different issues will be encountered but I said just as easy as its not even easy to make these changes for the switch).

 

[maflynn]

I recently played Descent on my M1 Mac mini. It was fun! I forgot how horrible the controls were and I think that is the only game I got a joystick for.

Oh I remember that game and yeah the controls were the reason why I stopped playing that.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Oh I remember that game and yeah the controls were the reason why I stopped playing that.

The crappy background graphics and motion blur that gave me headaches after 20 minutes of playing were the reason I stopped... only to start again the next day. 😛

 

[dmccloud]

Look at Mortal Kombat 11, and probably will be even funnier is look at 1 when it releases on Switch and compare with other consoles. Look how much effort devs need to do to get a game to work on the Switch. So if they do THAT amount of work on a Switch, they can do that for Macs just as easily (none of this is easy and different issues will be encountered but I said just as easy as its not even easy to make these changes for the switch).

There's one big difference between the Switch and Mac user bases though. While 100% of Switch owners play games on the device, the percentage of Mac users playing games on their machines is significantly lower - definitely under 40%, likely under 25%. There are more potential buyers of any given title within the Switch user base than there is within the Mac user base. That alone gives incentive to develop for the Switch over the Mac, especially when you have limited resources to spread around for your projects in the first place.

 

[Realityck]

I recently played Descent on my M1 Mac mini. It was fun! I forgot how horrible the controls were and I think that is the only game I got a joystick for.

People need to realize that gaming is more than just the AAA industry. I have about 150 games on Steam that support Mac. That is a good amount! This is perfectly in line with Mac's marketshare.

Apple gets all or almost all the blame here. When it is up to the developers. I have said so many times but this gets ignored because "let's just blame Apple here". Apple can spend 100 billion to get a few games on Macs. Okay, so what? What about the next games? Marketshare is where it is. Nintendo Switch got some games that required SIGNIFICANT re-work to port it over. But it got it since it is so popular. And Call of Duty isn't even on Switch!

Descent was differently different as far as first person shooter genre. Actually made you uncomfortable with all the jerky movement you could do piloting the vehicle.

Against the AAA comment, yeah when Mac Gaming first started out there wasn't much in the way of AAA producers. Somehow after so much time after the gaming industry really increased in scope it became an argument that Mac wasn't getting much in the way of AAA productions, especially recently with followup successors to earlier games that already legions of fans waiting for the next one. I looked at most of the call of duty system requirements and the amount of localized storage space is very high. Just to play the most popular Modern Warfare is 175GB of storage space, or BlackOps Cold War is 50GB MP and 175 GB for all game modes - seriously how many can one install. 😀

A lot of the more popular RPG games I see not of the combat genre are way smaller in size. Like the Diablo 3 is 25 GB, Capcoms Village is 34.1GB. Compare that to just wanting to play for free the Warzone 2.0 MP, thats 50 GB they want just to install that piece of this Combat game. Yeah ouch! On CoD showing on switch it would more likely happen if MS deal goes thorough. In case anyone is curious Diablo 4 is only 90 GB. 😱

Is Anyone Even Asking For Call Of Duty On Nintendo Switch?

Going dark

www.thegamer.com

 

[pdoherty]

Jack of all trades, master of none. Use the Mac for what it is good at, which does not include gaming in any serious measure.

Agree on the Mac sentiment, but the full phrase is:

"jack of all trades, master of none, is oftentimes better than a master of one"

The phrase means a generalist is good, not bad like most people think when they use only the first half.

 

[Ethosik]

There's one big difference between the Switch and Mac user bases though. While 100% of Switch owners play games on the device, the percentage of Mac users playing games on their machines is significantly lower - definitely under 40%, likely under 25%. There are more potential buyers of any given title within the Switch user base than there is within the Mac user base. That alone gives incentive to develop for the Switch over the Mac, especially when you have limited resources to spread around for your projects in the first place.

That is why I said and keep saying marketshare matters.

 

[Ethosik]

Against the AAA comment, yeah when Mac Gaming first started out there wasn't much in the way of AAA producers. Somehow after so much time after the gaming industry really increased in scope it became an argument that Mac wasn't getting much in the way of AAA productions, especially recently with followup successors to earlier games that already legions of fans waiting for the next one. I looked at most of the call of duty system requirements and the amount of localized storage space is very high. Just to play the most popular Modern Warfare is 175GB of storage space, or BlackOps Cold War is 50GB MP and 175 GB for all game modes - seriously how many can one install.

Yeah games are ridiculous in size. I have 2x 2TB NVME drives, 3x 4 TB SATA SSDs in my gaming / production system.

 

[dmccloud]

Yeah games are ridiculous in size. I have 2x 2TB NVME drives, 3x 4 TB SATA SSDs in my gaming / production system.

I have 2x 8TB Seagate Barracudas for games, 2x 2 TB NVME SSDs for commonly used apps on my gaming machine, plus a 4TB, 5TB, and 8TB external drives (4TB for my media, 5TB for video/audio production assets, and 8TB just for Steam because the other two 8TBs are almost full).

 

[Huntn]

Descent was differently different as far as first person shooter genre. Actually made you uncomfortable with all the jerky movement you could do piloting the vehicle.

Against the AAA comment, yeah when Mac Gaming first started out there wasn't much in the way of AAA producers. Somehow after so much time after the gaming industry really increased in scope it became an argument that Mac wasn't getting much in the way of AAA productions, especially recently with followup successors to earlier games that already legions of fans waiting for the next one. I looked at most of the call of duty system requirements and the amount of localized storage space is very high. Just to play the most popular Modern Warfare is 175GB of storage space, or BlackOps Cold War is 50GB MP and 175 GB for all game modes - seriously how many can one install. 😀

A lot of the more popular RPG games I see not of the combat genre are way smaller in size. Like the Diablo 3 is 25 GB, Capcoms Village is 34.1GB. Compare that to just wanting to play for free the Warzone 2.0 MP, thats 50 GB they want just to install that piece of this Combat game. Yeah ouch! On CoD showing on switch it would more likely happen if MS deal goes thorough. In case anyone is curious Diablo 4 is only 90 GB. 😱

Is Anyone Even Asking For Call Of Duty On Nintendo Switch?

Going dark

www.thegamer.com

As game engines and graphics have improved, the size of games on all platforms has exploded. When I was gaming on my MBP pre-2016 mostly via Bootcamp, I was using a couple of external TB drives to hold it. The size of my 2016 MBP’s hard drive is pathetic, I’m not even gaming with it and under my desk I have 2-2 TB drives (one for backup) and 3-2TB drives for my PC which is all for games and graphic work.

 

[Ethosik]

I have 2x 8TB Seagate Barracudas for games, 2x 2 TB NVME SSDs for commonly used apps on my gaming machine, plus a 4TB, 5TB, and 8TB external drives (4TB for my media, 5TB for video/audio production assets, and 8TB just for Steam because the other two 8TBs are almost full).

I don't need that much internal. Games is most of my storage. I do have over 150 TB of NAS equipment with 10 Gbe so if I do need to work on something, I can copy it back locally in a short time and copy it back when I am done. I also have many external SSDs minimum of 2TB maximum of 8TB. And several Macs at 4 TB.

 

[cateye]

The phrase means a generalist is good, not bad like most people think when they use only the first half.

Not to go too off-topic here, but I actually love learning about quirks and details of language like this (another good example: "begs the question"), so thank you for the correction. 🙂

 

[dmr727]

I have 2x 8TB Seagate Barracudas for games,

Wow! I'm not a hardcore gamer so I didn't realize the sizes have gotten so big. Do you actively play everything stored across those drives?

 

[mi7chy]

Games are approaching upwards of 100GB each. SSD has dropped in price but still can't compete with HDD with current best HDD bang for the buck at ~$15/TB for 14GB, 16GB and 18GB vs ~$53/TB for 8TB SSD.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-eas...-3-0-hard-drive-black/6425303.p?skuId=6425303

You can shuck these from their enclosures and use as internal SATA HDD. Best to allocate one HDD bandwidth just for games and another for videos, images, misc, archives, etc.

 

[Ethosik]

Games are approaching upwards of 100GB each. SSD has dropped in price but still can't compete with HDD with current best HDD bang for the buck at ~$15/TB for 14GB, 16GB and 18GB vs ~$53/TB for 8TB SSD.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-eas...-3-0-hard-drive-black/6425303.p?skuId=6425303

You can shuck these from their enclosures and use as internal SATA HDD. Best to allocate one HDD bandwidth just for games and another for videos, images, misc, archives, etc.

I just can't use a single hard drive anymore, too slow for me. This is why I prefer RAID arrays and my NAS setups. 10Gb/s speeds with traditional spinning hard drives is nice. With massive storage too.

 

[mi7chy]

Going from single spindle to multi-spindle isn't worth gloating over. Different story if we're gloating about PureStorage. Or, maybe consumer Asus FLASHSTOR 12 Pro 12-bay NVMe solution but with more PCIe lanes. For gaming, single large spindle does the job, is cheap and easy.

 

[Ethosik]

Going from single spindle to multi-spindle isn't worth gloating over. Different story if we're gloating about PureStorage. Or, maybe consumer Asus FLASHSTOR 12 Pro 12-bay NVMe solution but with more PCIe lanes. For gaming, single large spindle does the job, is cheap and easy.

I wasn't gloating? Just saying I don't do single hard drives anymore. ~150-200 MB/s is far far FAR too slow for me. That is why I said I have 12 TB of internal storage of SSDs in my computer for my games with some spare for some internal work. But everything else is on my NAS. I don't need hundreds of TB internal storage even for games especially with 10 Gbe and will be upgrading to 25 Gb in a year or two.

My work requires a lot of storage, my 150 TB is about 70% full and filling up fast.

 

[diamond.g]

I wasn't gloating? Just saying I don't do single hard drives anymore. ~150-200 MB/s is far far FAR too slow for me. That is why I said I have 12 TB of internal storage of SSDs in my computer for my games with some spare for some internal work. But everything else is on my NAS. I don't need hundreds of TB internal storage even for games especially with 10 Gbe and will be upgrading to 25 Gb in a year or two.

My work requires a lot of storage, my 150 TB is about 70% full and filling up fast.

Does the data you store qualify as a good candidate for deduplication and compression? Pure Storage has fast storage but most of their capacity quotes are not raw storage. If you want speed with some affordability they are a good choice.

 

[Realityck]

Another reason why Mac gaming is dead since you have to pay for whatever old games that do get released.

On PC it's often free so over the long run cost of ownership is lower.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/fallout-new-vegas--ultimate-edition

I was looking to see if Epic had changed its Mac stance, so far before WWDC its like the Berlin Wall. 😛

You Can Play Fortnite on a Mac, But There’s a Big Catch

Even if your Mac can run Fortnite natively, you should think twice before installing it.

www.makeuseof.com

Will Epic Games Compromise?​

There doesn’t seem to be any obvious evidence that Epic Games will compromise and let Mac users play along with everyone else again. It looks like the company has taken a stubborn stance and is waiting for a shift before taking decisive action.

However, this is mostly a bummer for gamers who just want to have some good old battle royale action without getting another device. Since it’s less likely Apple will change its App Store policies, we hope that Epic Games makes a compromise soon.

 

[Ethosik]

Does the data you store qualify as a good candidate for deduplication and compression? Pure Storage has fast storage but most of their capacity quotes are not raw storage. If you want speed with some affordability they are a good choice.

Unfortunately no. Most of my 150 TB are not suited for that. I only reserve about 20 TB for my "user" storage and leave the rest for my work files. User storage includes anything along with archives of Games so I don't need to re-download every time.

 

[Realityck]

As game engines and graphics have improved, the size of games on all platforms has exploded. When I was gaming on my MBP pre-2016 mostly via Bootcamp, I was using a couple of external TB drives to hold it. The size of my 2016 MBP’s hard drive is pathetic, I’m not even gaming with it and under my desk I have 2-2 TB drives (one for backup) and 3-2TB drives for my PC which is all for games and graphic work.

The storage requirements of games that I found via Activision/Blizzard site were large for sure. The below article shows that games made by Activison (Call of Duty series) is actually the worst offender. But the installer sizes very by platform/OS.

25 Of The Biggest PC Games By File Size, Ranked

Which PC game is going to take up the biggest slice of your hard drive? These are. Here are the ten biggest PC games according to their file size.

gamerant.com

It was only a matter of time before another Call of Duty game would make its way into this list. After all, each and every game in the series is notorious for having an unrealistically massive download size.

This is the case for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War as well. The entire game takes a whopping 250 GB on a person's hard drive, which is simply ridiculous since developers should be responsible for optimizing their games on PC.

Bigger Than Godzilla: Why Are Games Using So Many Gigabytes?

Do all the latest big budget games require over 100 GB of drive space? What's the average size of a AAA game today? We've investigated the figures...

www.techspot.com