What does being locked into a platform have to do with Apple investing in gaming?
There are console-exclusive games, e.g., Ghost of Tsushima, too. What's your point?
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M1 Ultra Doesn't Beat Out Nvidia's RTX 3090 GPU Despite Apple's Charts
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There are console-exclusive games, e.g., Ghost of Tsushima, too. What's your point?
I will bite. The value proposition of gaming on a Mac again that you are espousing is simply not there. It makes zero financial sense to bankroll an expensive game that can only run properly on the small number of high-end Macs out there.
People are not buying a Mac to play games on, and they are not going to buy a Mac just to play games on. It’s just one of those things you go in knowing full well what you are getting yourself into. Buy a Mac for the professional work that you do, and offload gaming to another platform (be it your smartphone, PS5, Switch or Windows PC).
I don’t see Apple investing in gaming on the Mac for the simple reason that the ROI simply isn’t there. There are probably a few hundred million Macs in use (and most of them are laptops, and the majority of laptops are comparatively low-spec). The overall number of high-end Macs pales in comparison to the billion+ iPhones in active use today. It stands to reason that Apple will want to focus on the platform with the most number of users, because there are way more iphone users out there, and most of these iphone users have only the iphone as their sole Apple device.
This means that from a business perspective, it makes more sense to focus on building out the Apple ecosystem using the iPhone as your anchor point, because that’s what most people start out with. Then the more entrenched they are in the Apple ecosystem, the more likely they are to buy additional Apple hardware like Macs.
So to sum up, Apple has services like Apple Arcade to add value to iOS devices because it’s more likely that an iPhone user will eventually get a Mac in this way, rather than the other way around (having a AAA game for my Mac Studio is not going to make me want to buy an iphone all of a sudden, because there’s no cross-compatibility).
You are looking at Apple’s business model completely backwards.
I'm not confusing 1080p with GeForce GTX 1080. LOL
My points are:
1. What constitutes "reasonably well" varies by person.
2. You can't extrapolate PC gaming experience on the same title to Mac.
I'm not let down by anything related to gaming on a Mac. I use Boot Camp and I play RDR2 on high. I'm good.
I just find it hard to understand why Apple won't take gaming seriously when it's clearly a profitable venture.
That still shows that gaming on mac is a non-starter. If the game even runs on the base M1 well, then the game would have a $860+ barrier to entry (assuming the game costs $60). And if the game requires a Max or Ultra processor, that means it has a large barrier where a better Windows PC is far cheaper and you get hundreds of more games on Windows.
And just to be clear, I would LOVE...absolutely LOVE all games to be on the Mac. I want to get rid of my Windows PC so bad its not funny. But unfortunately, I don't see Macs and Gaming going together and being a good investment for Apple. I would certainly like this more than a horrible Apple Car.
Like MR didn't cherrypicked when they based their entire article only on Geekbench. If you think Shadow of the Tomb Raider is M1 optimized I'm sorry to say that you don't know much about Mac gaming and certainly not more than Brad Oliver I mentioned. Baldur's Gate 3 is a game that is completely optimized. I'm pointing out facts, I'm not trying to convince you or other hardcore pc gamers.
Rene Ritchie has a more reasonable GPU benchmark in his review that shows the 64-core Ultra getting 1.85-1.9x the performance of the Max. Sure no 3090 killer, but about what I would expect for a double-Max. The GPU benchmarks in this article were pretty dishonest. Tomb Raider isn’t optimized to use all the tile shaders at lower resolutions. The OpenCL benchmark was just a bad example.
Apple beats Apples best speeds. Thats all Apple tries to do. They'll fudge the stats for their competitors. Also, they made comparisons harder by getting rid of windows compatibility. They weren't going to beat dedicated GPU's at every single thing. But if it beats PC's using the same app available in windows then its doing more than enough. Its not going to beat out a gaming PC at all the games because it can't even get off the starting line with some titles. But just like they are not trying to sell all things to all people, they are not making a PC that will beat every PC at everything. If they claim its the worlds best, its marketing. And it also costs you way more than the base price because those claims are usually on highly upgraded built to order systems most people wont own.
If M1 is as powerful as Apple claims it to be, it shouldn't be just "small number of high-end Macs" that can run games. So you started off badly already.
I'm not saying people should buy Mac just to play games, as if Mac is a console, at all. So, not sure why it's even brought up.
Your insistence on "high-end Macs" is strange since it was clearly demonstrated that even iPads can run games at a decent resolution. I'm talking graphics-intensive games.
Your arguments are trite and revolve, still, around the classic chicken and egg question. There are so few Mac users so Apple should focus on iOS. Sure, but there WERE very few subscribers on Apple TV+ too.
The problem with people who have this kind of thinking is they want to frame the debate as Mac vs. PC. But it really is not. You said it yourself: "People are not buying a Mac to play games on." You can interpret this statement as saying they buy Macs for more important things than gaming. That's exactly my point, in fact. So Apple's gaming strategy should be: Let's add another reason for people to want to buy Macs (on top of the plethora of reasons that people want to use a Mac rather than a PC). It's not PC vs. Mac. It's about making the Mac experience even better.
You forgot an important variable in the Mac gaming equation, which is VR. Apple is investing heavily in VR and VR won't take off without great games (among other things). It just won't. That's one major reason Apple should get serious about gaming now since they're knee-deep in VR already.
I will say that thinking that AR / VR needs games is the classic “Apple needs to buy netflix” argument that many people get wrong. And you are the one who said that Apple needed to create a few AAA games just to shut you up, and the implication was that these titles would need more than the M1 chip to showcase their graphical prowess. I can assure you that they have bigger things on their plate.
The whole point of AR / VR is to create new experiences for users. Gaming is just one subset of why people may want to invest in a VR ecosystem, but it won’t be the be-all and end-all of what makes for a great VR experience.
My observation over the years is that the best way of covering Apple is still to begin with Apple. You have to focus with Apple, and then you move outwards. You start with Apple, and then you analyse the industry that Apple operates in. Instead, what I see a lot of people still do today (including yourself) is that they just treat Apple as any other company. But Apple does a lot of things differently, and if all you are doing is simply comparing Apple to everyone else and then go “Hey, Apple isn’t following what everyone else is doing, so I don’t think whatever Apple is doing is going to work”, I think they go down the wrong path.
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GB5 Compute scores are not accurate for Apple Silicon:
forums.macrumors.com
Important: Geekbench Compute scores for Apple Silicon are not accurate
According to Anandtech's, Andrei Frumusanu, the GB Compute is too short to ramp up the M1 Max. This means there's zero chance that it'll ramp up the M1 Ultra correctly. Source is in the comments here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/7 GPUs tend to scale...
forums.macrumors.com
What's your hardware? I've got a power hungry 12900K that I've changed PL settings to 175 watts max at only a cost of less than 5% performance, 64gb of DDR5, 3 2TB Samsung 980 Pro SSDs and a 3090 FE. The highest I've seen it pulling at the wall is 450-500 watts when running the CPU/GPU full tilt. In gaming, the majority of the time I'm pulling only max 300 watts from the wall. I've got a Platinum 850 watt power supply in which the fan hardly ever come on. You're either mining, or you've got a crappy Bronze 1000 watt power supply. In other words, a Bronze 1000 watt power supply that's only putting out 200-400 watts at a time will be less efficient than a correctly sized 750 watt power supply and will be putting out more waste heat.
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Based on your logic, people shouldn't even bother starting a business when there are already competitions in the market that they're trying to enter.
If M1 is really as powerful as Apple claims, the barrier of entry with ASi Macs should be significantly lower than Intel Macs. If Intel and dGPU are really hitting a wall, wouldn't Apple stand to gain from that vacuum left by Intel/dGPU after they plateau?
Imagine playing RDR3 in VR in 2026. If Intel/dGPU is already about to hit the wall now and Apple Silicon is still trending upwards Moore's Law style, PC surely won't be able to run RDR3 in VR four years from now. That's a potential market Apple can exploit.
All I'm saying is it's a profitable venture for a company already knee-deep in VR. And the gaming industry is not a static thing, it's evolving too. Mobile gaming now accounts for most of the revenue ($85 billion, 2020, vs. $73 billion for PC + Console). It's not hard to imagine in a few years, VR will take over.
Then which benchmark to test for GPU? Even other GPUs also test in a short term so I dont see anything wrong about it.GB5 Compute scores are not accurate for Apple Silicon:
Important: Geekbench Compute scores for Apple Silicon are not accurate
According to Anandtech's, Andrei Frumusanu, the GB Compute is too short to ramp up the M1 Max. This means there's zero chance that it'll ramp up the M1 Ultra correctly. Source is in the comments here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review/7 GPUs tend to scale...
M1 Ultra is manufactured using TSMC 5nm process. RTX 3090 is almost 2 years old now and manufactured using Samsung 8nm. You should compare the upcoming RTX 40 series, which build also using TMSC 5nm, for a fair comparison of architecture design efficiency.
Did you read the text with the graph? They mentioned excessive microstutter which I've also seen on my M1 Max MBP 16 on FFXIV. And gamers also know that 99%tile counts too as you can have 142 fps average, but your 99%tile performance is only 30 fps, it's not going to be smooth gameplay. I'd rather have 100 fps avg with 99%tile at 75fps vs 144 fps avg and 99%tile at 30 fps.
And people also keep quoting cow poop numbers of a 3090 pulling 500 watts which is only true for the overclocked useless AIB cards that are only 5% faster than the 300-350 watt stock 3090 card.
I never said "Apple needed to create a few AAA games just to shut you up." Please go back and re-read what I said. Try to quote people correctly, mate.
For AR/VR to take off, it needs games. Being able to see holograms of your coworkers on a Zoom call won't do it.
Just because everyone is doing it doesn't mean it's bad. That's a fallacy for you.
And that's not the basis of my argument that Apple should take gaming seriously. Apple should take gaming seriously because they've already invested heavily in VR. Now, I agree to disagree with you on what VR/AR's "whole point" is. I maintain that VR/AR needs games to really take off. I just don't see people getting into VR just for a "new experience." And why wouldn't VR gaming constitute a new experience?
All of you dorks seem to forget the fact that the comparison is between an integrated graphic sized chip vs a flagship card the size of a large brick, nevermind the power consumption.
Before apple came along, how come no one ever tried to compare integrated graphic with nvdia flagship desktop cards? Because you get laughed out of the room…now everyone is taking this seriously and debating, how insane is this what apple has achieved.
Before apple came along, how come no one ever tried to compare integrated graphic with nvdia flagship desktop cards? Because you get laughed out of the room…now everyone is taking this seriously and debating, how insane is this what apple has achieved.
Apple Silicon is an SoC/SiP design with Unified Memory. It's not quite the same as iGPU of yore.
LOL! And if you thought that was bad, wait until you see 4x M2 Max Chips “fused together” ?….coming to a store near you this September.
You literally said "Apple really needs to get into gaming. Perhaps commissioning a game studio to make a short but graphics-intensive game for them to demonstrate the power of their chips and to shut critics like me up." in post 225.
I am not saying it's bad. I am saying that it may not necessarily make sense for Apple, because each company is going to focus on their respective strengths and what makes financial and business sense for them. Just because Company A does something doesn't mean that Apple has to copy the exact same thing. Even if Apple does decide to entire that same industry, I expect Apple to add their own twist to it and compete based on their own respective strengths.
For example, Google can afford to make their services available for free worldwide because they earn via ads, and it doesn't cost them anything extra. Apple can afford to take a more privacy-centric stance because they don't rely on ad revenue. Each does what earns them the most brownie points while costing them absolutely nothing. I suspect you want games for the Mac because that's just what you want, and you simply refuse to acknowledge the notion that it simply isn't in Apple's interests to enter the market (and that is why Apple won't, and I maintain that's the right path for them to take because very often, the hardest business decisions is not in what to do, but what not to do because you realise that your limited time and resources are better allocated elsewhere).
I think of experiences like being able to be present at a virtual concert or sporting event and interact with the audience in some way. That's how I see Apple pitching their AR / VR tech, because I doubt Apple isn't going to enter this arena simply to copy what other companies like Meta are already doing.
Apple will only enter a new industry if they feel they have something unique to add to the party that lets them stand out from the rest of the competition. I am willing to bet that if and when this VR headset ever does get released, gaming will not be the primary focus, and it will not be the dealbreaker you are making it out to be.
That may also be due to Rosetta. That makes me wonder if they just had made a fresh install of the game on Mac Studio. First time I installed Tomb Raider I got very bad frame rates. I thought something was wrong with my MBP 14" but when I restarted the game I got smooth gameplay and double the frame rates. The stuttering can be due to new areas loading while Rosetta is translating new maps. It shouldn't occur when you play the same map again.