Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games

[diamond.g]

Never understand such unrealistic expectations and pessimism. Still Mac gets about 25% of the Windows games only on Steam despite having only 1.39% market share. Three years in a row we've got news after news and nowadays we get AAA titles not only at WWDC but casually spread across the year but we hear the same complaints "too old, too late, too few, too expensive, too weak" etc. Each year we have more Mac games released than Steam Deck Playable and Verified together and that's without counting Crossover/GPTK/Whisky which are equal to Proton and people still complain. Well if you're unhappy there are always consoles and PC.

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I wonder how many Steam games are on PS5/XSX.

When I look at the Steam new release section it feels like 99% of it is indie games.

 

[JouniS]

Never understand such unrealistic expectations and pessimism. Still Mac gets about 25% of the Windows games only on Steam despite having only 1.39% market share. Three years in a row we've got news after news and nowadays we get AAA titles not only at WWDC but casually spread across the year but we hear the same complaints "too old, too late, too few, too expensive, too weak" etc. Each year we have more Mac games released than Steam Deck Playable and Verified together and that's without counting Crossover/GPTK/Whisky which are equal to Proton and people still complain.

It's not about the number of games but the availability of specific games. I buy 2-3 games per year, and the number of new games released on Steam is approaching 15k/year. Which means literally 99.98% of new games are irrelevant to me.

Out of the games I want to play, maybe 1/3 are available on Mac. I haven't seen that number change much in the last 10-15 years. There are always some games I can play on my MBP when I travel, but I still need to have a separate gaming PC for the rest.

 

[OptimusGrime]

It's not about the number of games but the availability of specific games. I buy 2-3 games per year, and the number of new games released on Steam is approaching 15k/year. Which means literally 99.98% of new games are irrelevant to me.

Out of the games I want to play, maybe 1/3 are available on Mac. I haven't seen that number change much in the last 10-15 years. There are always some games I can play on my MBP when I travel, but I still need to have a separate gaming PC for the rest.

Ehhh. That’s true of every platform except perhaps PC and even then not really. If I want to play Astrobot, I need a PS5. Windows doesn’t have it. if I want a Zelda game, I need a Switch. Let’s not pretend any single platform has all the games. Yes the Mac has fewer games than PC, PS etc. it’s also undeniable that the situation is better than it was, which is all people are saying

People love to suck the joy out of everything if they personally don’t like it. They think it’s reality when it’s often their bias.

 

[Homy]

Right, and yet there is still literally a handful of games native on Mac. It’s ridiculous to proclaim native Mac gaming is a thing, it still has an awfully long way to go to be considered on the same level as a console or PC. Hence my comment, it’s the same when Valve brought Steam to the Mac, it had some games but not a lot of interest, then Apple ditched 32 bit support and Valve didn’t update its games for 64 bit only support.
The GPTK seems to be a similar thing, a decent idea, looks like it could be great for devs but its take up is limited. The Apple silicon is pretty good at gaming, but the support is still limited.

Ridiculous to you but the numbers disagree. If almost 6000 Apple Silicon native games are considered as handful then you're right. That's 12% of all the Mac games on Steam ported in just the past 3-4 years, including all the 32-bit or 64-bit x86 games that never will be native. The number is even higher if you include all the native ports on App Store that aren't available on Steam, like Resident Evil series. If gaming through Crossover and GPTK are not considered as Mac gaming then all gaming through Proton on Linux and Steam Deck also have to be taken out of the statistics because they're all compatibility layers.

 

[Pezimak]

Never understand such unrealistic expectations and pessimism. Still Mac gets about 25% of the Windows games only on Steam despite having only 1.39% market share. Three years in a row we've got news after news and nowadays we get AAA titles not only at WWDC but casually spread across the year but we hear the same complaints "too old, too late, too few, too expensive, too weak" etc. Each year we have more Mac games released than Steam Deck Playable and Verified together and that's without counting Crossover/GPTK/Whisky which are equal to Proton and people still complain. Well if you're unhappy there are always consoles and PC.

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Whilst that’s very impressive for the Mac, the Steam Deck will run thousands more games not officially verified for it, potentially any game on the Steam store. But number of games on Mac is a lot more then I thought, however some big games still take a while to come to it, Crossover boosts the games it can run substantially, but that’s separate to my comment on the native games.

 

[Homy]

It's not about the number of games but the availability of specific games. I buy 2-3 games per year, and the number of new games released on Steam is approaching 15k/year. Which means literally 99.98% of new games are irrelevant to me.

Out of the games I want to play, maybe 1/3 are available on Mac. I haven't seen that number change much in the last 10-15 years. There are always some games I can play on my MBP when I travel, but I still need to have a separate gaming PC for the rest.

That's true but also a subjective matter because you say yourself "it's about availability of specific games" or the latest AAA games. With only 25% of the Windows games ported to Mac and small market share you won't ever find every game you want on Mac. Still we get some simultaneous releases like Lies of P, Frostpunk 2 and AC Shadows.

 

[Homy]

Whilst that’s very impressive for the Mac, the Steam Deck will run thousands more games not officially verified for it. But number in Mac is a lot more then I thought, however some big games still take a while to come to it, Crossover boosts the games it can run substantially, but that’s separate to my comment on the native games.

A while ago I checked the Top 100 list of popular games on ProtonDB and about 79 of them either had native Mac port or run well in Crossover which is not surprising considering the many similarities between Proton and Crossover. The number could be even higher now with GPTK 2 and Crossover 25 which add support for many more games.

The bottom line is that Steam Deck is not more dominant than Mac in a particular today, neither by the number of players nor the number of compatible games. Most AAA Windows games that can be played on Steam Deck can be played on Mac, all with the help of Wine. In October survey Linux has 2% and macOS 1.39% but 36.79% av Linux consists of Steam Deck so desktop Linux has only 1.26% and Steam Deck has 0,74%. Mac has still a larger market share on Steam.

 

[Pezimak]

It's not about the number of games but the availability of specific games. I buy 2-3 games per year, and the number of new games released on Steam is approaching 15k/year. Which means literally 99.98% of new games are irrelevant to me.

Out of the games I want to play, maybe 1/3 are available on Mac. I haven't seen that number change much in the last 10-15 years. There are always some games I can play on my MBP when I travel, but I still need to have a separate gaming PC for the rest.

THIS. This is my perspective, Crossover changes that a LOT though but natively this is where I was coming from. I am looking forward to Cyberpunk though, that’s a game that should push the Max and Ultra chips.

 

[Pezimak]

A while ago I checked the Top 100 list of popular games on ProtonDB and about 79 of them either had native Mac port or run well in Crossover which is not surprising considering the many similarities between Proton and Crossover. The number could be even higher now with GPTK 2 and Crossover 25 which add support for many more games.

The bottom line is that Steam Deck is not more dominant than Mac in a particular today, neither by the number of players nor the number of compatible games. Most AAA Windows games that can be played on Steam Deck can be played on Mac, all with the help of Wine. In October survey Linux has 2% and macOS 1.39% but 36.79% av Linux consists of Steam Deck so desktop Linux has only 1.26% and Steam Deck has 0,74%. Mac has still a larger market share on Steam.

I would say that’s wrong on the AAA games. As stated the Deck can run ANY game on the Steam store in theory, many do try a game not verified or playable and find it works fine. That makes a difference, and it runs many games not native on Mac. Now that’s where Crossover does come into it but that is a different argument then.

I’ll ignore the Deck, say the Mac runs many more games then I thought natively, but still to get the big AAA games running on it requires Crossover a lot of the time. It SHOULD get more games native on it, the power of Apple silicon is silly. Look at the M4 Max chips, very capable. Give it another 3 years and they’ll be at what 4090 levels? Which for an all in one SOC would be a stunning feat of engineering.

 

[Homy]

I would say that’s wrong on the AAA games. As stated the Deck can run ANY game on the Steam store in theory, many do try a game not verified or playable and find it works fine. That makes a difference, and it runs many games not native on Mac. Now that’s where Crossover does come into it but that is a different argument then.

I’ll ignore the Deck, say the Mac runs many more games then I thought natively, but still to get the big AAA games running on it requires Crossover a lot of the time. It SHOULD get more games native on it, the power of Apple silicon is silly. Look at the M4 Max chips, very capable. Give it another 3 years and they’ll be at what 4090 levels? Which fir an all in one SOC would be a stunning feat of engineering.

Any game in theory? So now we’re speaking theoretically? Then Crossover and GPTK can also in theory run any games because new working games are discovered and added to the compatibility database every day. You just have to take a look at the list of ”Fixed wanted” or ”Borked” games on Protondb to find 1000 games that either can’t be installed, don’t run, run poorly or have bugs and glitches. Then you have all the games that require anti-cheat but that’s the case with Crossover too. So no, ANY game can’t run on Proton.

The problem here is also that you like others seem to think that gaming is only about AAA titles. Those games require a lot of investments and the developers/publishers want obviously to earn their money back. That’s only quickly possible on Windows. That’s also why Mac games can be released years later when they’ve earned enough money that profit is not a major question. Many devs do release their games on different platforms simply because they want everyone to enjoy their games. Others just want to make money. macOS will never get every new Windows title due to its gaming market share but it doesn’t mean Mac gaming is dead. Obviously the devs that port 25% of their games for 1.39% of the market know better than us and have their valid reasons for doing so.

 

[JouniS]

Ehhh. That’s true of every platform except perhaps PC and even then not really. If I want to play Astrobot, I need a PS5. Windows doesn’t have it. if I want a Zelda game, I need a Switch. Let’s not pretend any single platform has all the games. Yes the Mac has fewer games than PC, PS etc. it’s also undeniable that the situation is better than it was, which is all people are saying

The most important question has always been "which platforms do I need to play the games I want to play?" For me the answer has been PC since the early 90s, as I've never liked the gameplay in console-style games.

Mac's problem as a gaming platform is that the PC makes it rendundant. Almost every game available on Mac is also available on PC. And if you like the kind of games available on Mac, the chances are many of the games you would like to play are available on PC but not on Mac.

Maybe the Mac is viable for gaming, if you have it anyway and are not that much into games. Or you don't have that much time for them. Or maybe it can supplement the consoles you have as the primary platform. But when the discussion is about the fraction of PC/Steam games that are also available on Mac, you are starting from the assumption that the Mac is like the PC, but worse. And the discussion is just about measuring how much worse the Mac is.

 

[Homy]

The most important question has always been "which platforms do I need to play the games I want to play?" For me the answer has been PC since the early 90s, as I've never liked the gameplay in console-style games.

Mac's problem as a gaming platform is that the PC makes it rendundant. Almost every game available on Mac is also available on PC. And if you like the kind of games available on Mac, the chances are many of the games you would like to play are available on PC but not on Mac.

Maybe the Mac is viable for gaming, if you have it anyway and are not that much into games. Or you don't have that much time for them. Or maybe it can supplement the consoles you have as the primary platform. But when the discussion is about the fraction of PC/Steam games that are also available on Mac, you are starting from the assumption that the Mac is like the PC, but worse. And the discussion is just about measuring how much worse the Mac is.

That has always been the case, to get the right tool for the job. On the contrary I have always played games on my Mac since the 90s when I bought my first Mac, a Performa 6200 PPC just to play Marathon. I've played AAA and AA titles all my life only on Mac and never felt the need for consoles or PC. I’m not a hardcore gamer that needs every new title every month and have a large backlog with little time to play so my strategy has been to finish my backlog before buying new games. The benefit is that I can always play my games at almost max settings since my Macs have been newer than the games. I’ve never liked either to pay for other gaming devices and don’t have the room either. That’s why I put the extra money on a better Mac with better GPU so I can enjoy my games better. Then I got involved in beta testing Crossover and don’t have to pay for it for the rest of my life so I can play many games that are not on Mac with Crossover/GPTK if I wanted. So for me playing games or Windows games is a non-issue. I can do it all on my Mac and as we know hardcore gamers are in minority.

 

[jeanlain]

I would love to play the recent doom games on my Mac, but it's currently impossible.

 

[Homy]

I would love to play the recent doom games on my Mac, but it's currently impossible.

Doom Eternal is a Vulkan game and neither Crossover nor GPTK supports Vulkan games. Crossover has DXVK to translate DirectX to Vulkan but oddly enough Vulkan games don't work. It's the same thing with Detroit: Becoming Human but there are only about 200 games that use Vulkan natively.

It’s unclear which API Doom: Dark Ages will use. Almost all the other older titles except Doom 2016 work in Crossover or have Mac Source ports.

It’s the same thing with OpenGL games. Crossover supports only up to 2.1 so games like Wolfenstein The Old Blood and New Order which use 3.2 don’t work despite macOS still supporting 4.1 and existing solutions for 4.5 and 4.6. Doom 2016 also uses Vulkan or OpenGL 4.2 or newer.

 

[jeanlain]

Doom Eternal is a Vulkan game and neither Crossover nor GPTK supports Vulkan games. Crossover has DXVK to translate DirectX to Vulkan but oddly enough Vulkan games don't work.

Why would you translate directX to Vulkan to plan a Vulkan game? Don't you mean moltenVK?

It's the same thing with Detroit: Becoming Human but there are only about 200 games that use Vulkan natively.

Some are great games, like the recent Doom games.

It’s unclear which API Doom: Dark Ages will use. Almost all the other older titles except Doom 2016 work in Crossover or have Mac Source ports.

Doom Eternal doesn't work either.

It’s the same thing with OpenGL games. Crossover supports only up to 2.1 so games like Wolfenstein The Old Blood and New Order which use 3.2 don’t work despite macOS still supporting 4.1 and existing solutions for 4.5 and 4.6. Doom 2016 also uses Vulkan or OpenGL 4.2 or newer.

I've seen Wolftenstein the New Order run on Apple Silicon.

 

[Pezimak]

Any game in theory? So now we’re speaking theoretically? Then Crossover and GPTK can also in theory run any games because new working games are discovered and added to the compatibility database every day. You just have to take a look at the list of ”Fixed wanted” or ”Borked” games on Protondb to find 1000 games that either can’t be installed, don’t run, run poorly or have bugs and glitches. Then you have all the games that require anti-cheat but that’s the case with Crossover too. So no, ANY game can’t run on Proton.

The problem here is also that you like others seem to think that gaming is only about AAA titles. Those games require a lot of investments and the developers/publishers want obviously to earn their money back. That’s only quickly possible on Windows. That’s also why Mac games can be released years later when they’ve earned enough money that profit is not a major question. Many devs do release their games on different platforms simply because they want everyone to enjoy their games. Others just want to make money. macOS will never get every new Windows title due to its gaming market share but it doesn’t mean Mac gaming is dead. Obviously the devs that port 25% of their games for 1.39% of the market know better than us and have their valid reasons for doing so.

It’ll run all the DOOM games on Steam, and compared to the Mac it’ll run a lot more natively. You can’t make an argument and then dismiss the biggest games as though they don’t matter. Running thousands of indie games is not what people want, yes many do play them, but natively the Mac IS still stuck in the past with the big titles. Apart from Cyberpunk, Resident Evil and Death Standing I’m not sure what other recent big games are native on it? If 24% of that 25% are indie titles, ignoring the 1% of AAA games is dismissing the argument.

Anyway Cyberpunk is coming over, hopefully it’ll work with cross platform saving so I can play if on Mac and Steam Deck. But I’ll be pushing my Mac to see what it can do with it for sure.

EDIT: Ok having a browse of Steam native on my Mac, I see Lies Of P is on it, forgot about that one, I'll grab that when it's on sale and give it a go.

Perhaps my comments are bared out of frustration? I've tried to game for years on Mac, but it never seems to go anywhere. If Valve can make a device with a system to run the majority of games on Steam, it would be great if Apple could do the same, but they won't. But I imagine that would then mean having to natively support Wine and fund it, apparently it gets a lot of it's funding from Crossover sales.

I do think Apple has made more of an attempt recently then before, but it never seems to be fully committed, neither are big name devs and that's with a system now of Apple Silicon so relatively similar hardware across the board?

 

[thenewperson]

Right, and yet there is still literally a handful of games native on Mac. It’s ridiculous to proclaim native Mac gaming is a thing, it still has an awfully long way to go to be considered on the same level as a console or PC.

Was anyone claiming otherwise? Not sure where you got that from.

 

[Pezimak]

Was anyone claiming otherwise? Not sure where you got that from.

You should read the thread then as that's the impression I got?

 

[ProQuiz]

Just completed Return to Castle Wolfenstein on my MacBook Pro 14" using the Mac Source Port. Great game and it ran perfectly. First game I've played on my Mac.

 

[Homy]

Why would you translate directX to Vulkan to plan a Vulkan game? Don't you mean moltenVK?

Have you ever used Crossover? There are three graphics APIs/settings that can be used for translating games from DirectX/Direct3D. D3DMetal for DX11-12 to Metal, DXVK for DX10-11 to Vulkan and Default/WineD3D for DX1-11 to OpenGL for older games.

There are games that work with all three APIs and some don’t and work better with certain API. DXVK works only on Wine64, not 32-bit. New DX12 games work only with D3DMetal. Bioshock Infinite has best performance with DXVK. Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor works only with WineD3D. Crossover has problem to translate games that only support Vulkan to MoltenVK.

Doom Eternal doesn't work either.

I mentioned it already.

I've seen Wolftenstein the New Order run on Apple Silicon.

Yes, but how? Not with Crossover. You can run OpenGL games with Parallels.

 

[Homy]

It’ll run all the DOOM games on Steam, and compared to the Mac it’ll run a lot more natively. You can’t make an argument and then dismiss the biggest games as though they don’t matter. Running thousands of indie games is not what people want, yes many do play them, but natively the Mac IS still stuck in the past with the big titles. Apart from Cyberpunk, Resident Evil and Death Standing I’m not sure what other recent big games are native on it? If 24% of that 25% are indie titles, ignoring the 1% of AAA games is dismissing the argument.

Anyway Cyberpunk is coming over, hopefully it’ll work with cross platform saving so I can play if on Mac and Steam Deck. But I’ll be pushing my Mac to see what it can do with it for sure.

EDIT: Ok having a browse of Steam native on my Mac, I see Lies Of P is on it, forgot about that one, I'll grab that when it's on sale and give it a go.

Perhaps my comments are bared out of frustration? I've tried to game for years on Mac, but it never seems to go anywhere. If Valve can make a device with a system to run the majority of games on Steam, it would be great if Apple could do the same, but they won't. But I imagine that would then mean having to natively support Wine and fund it, apparently it gets a lot of it's funding from Crossover sales.

I do think Apple has made more of an attempt recently then before, but it never seems to be fully committed, neither are big name devs and that's with a system now of Apple Silicon so relatively similar hardware across the board?

Of course it does because Proton is built upon Vulkan so no surprise there which takes us back to your original claim that there are only a handful native Mac games and Steam Deck can run any game. Yes Steam Deck can run more games but still not natively. Proton is still a compatibility layer and the main reason for creating it was to make Windows games to run on Linux/SteamOS. So as I said before if you consider games running through a compatibility layer as native games then all games that run through Crossover/GPTK are also native games. There’s no difference. Codeweavers created both Crossover and Proton (with Valve). Only games ported directly to Linux can be considered as native.

I’m not dismissing the big games but again it’s a subjective matter. You can argue that Mac doesn’t get the latest big titles which is true but I already explained the reasons for that so no surprise there either. That wasn’t your first claim though. It was ”there is still literally a handful of games native on Mac”. That is literally not true. You could say ”there is still literally a handful of latest AAA games native on Mac”. You mentioned three titles and didn’t know about Lies of P. Here is a list of some popular Mac games.

Arctic Awakening
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Baldur’s Gate 3
Borderlands 3
Civ VII
Combat Master
Control Ultimate Edition
Cyberpunk 2077/PhantomLiberty
Dead Island 2
Death Stranding
Disney Dreamlight Valley
Elex II
EVE Online Equinox
Everspace 2
Farming Simulator 25
Firmament
Football Manager 2024/25
Fort Solis
Frostpunk 2
Grid Legends
Hades II
Honkai Impact 3rd
Humankind
Isonzo
Layers of Fear
Lies of P
Metro Exodus
Myst Remake
No Man’s Sky
Old World
Palworld
Path of Exile 2
Prince of Persia: Lost Crown
Prodeus
Psychonauts 2
Resident Evil 2
Resident Evil 4 Remake
Resident Evil 7
Resident Evil Village Gold
Return to Monkey Island
Riven Remake
Robocop Rogue City
Sniper Elite 4
Snowrunner
Stranded Deep
Stray
Tennis Manager
The Medium
Total War: Pharaoh
Total War: Warhammer III
Valheim
Where Winds Met
World of GOO
Wuthering Waves
X-plane 12

 

[Homy]

Death Stranding is on sale on MAS for $19.99. Metro Exodus Gold Edition is on sale on Steam for only $3.99, 90% off.

 

[Pezimak]

Of course it does because Proton is built upon Vulkan so no surprise there which takes us back to your original claim that there are only a handful native Mac games and Steam Deck can run any game. Yes Steam Deck can run more games but still not natively. Proton is still a compatibility layer and the main reason for creating it was to make Windows games to run on Linux/SteamOS. So as I said before if you consider games running through a compatibility layer as native games then all games that run through Crossover/GPTK are also native games. There’s no difference. Codeweavers created both Crossover and Proton (with Valve). Only games ported directly to Linux can be considered as native.

I’m not dismissing the big games but again it’s a subjective matter. You can argue that Mac doesn’t get the latest big titles which is true but I already explained the reasons for that so no surprise there either. That wasn’t your first claim though. It was ”there is still literally a handful of games native on Mac”. That is literally not true. You could say ”there is still literally a handful of latest AAA games native on Mac”. You mentioned three titles and didn’t know about Lies of P. Here is a list of some popular Mac games.

Arctic Awakening
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Baldur’s Gate 3
Borderlands 3
Civ VII
Combat Master
Control Ultimate Edition
Cyberpunk 2077/PhantomLiberty
Dead Island 2
Death Stranding
Disney Dreamlight Valley
Elex II
EVE Online Equinox
Everspace 2
Farming Simulator 25
Firmament
Football Manager 2024/25
Fort Solis
Frostpunk 2
Grid Legends
Hades II
Honkai Impact 3rd
Humankind
Isonzo
Layers of Fear
Lies of P
Metro Exodus
Myst Remake
No Man’s Sky
Old World
Palworld
Path of Exile 2
Prince of Persia: Lost Crown
Prodeus
Psychonauts 2
Resident Evil 2
Resident Evil 4 Remake
Resident Evil 7
Resident Evil Village Gold
Return to Monkey Island
Riven Remake
Robocop Rogue City
Sniper Elite 4
Snowrunner
Stranded Deep
Stray
Tennis Manager
The Medium
Total War: Pharaoh
Total War: Warhammer III
Valheim
Where Winds Met
World of GOO
Wuthering Waves
X-plane 12

I think even though the Deck uses a emulation layer, it doesn't seem like it because you just install and go on the device, where as Cross Over requires a bit of fiddling and the tool kit a lot of fiddling. So that may be where my head is at.

Personally I thought the tool kit would allow developers to convert their games to the Mac, but it seems not many do.

A few noticeable names in that list for sure. But I think developers could be trying much harder especially with the tool kit being a thing now.

 

[galad]

GPTK has got a DirectX 12 to Metal shaders converter, and it's the only thing usable for an actual port.
The Wine + D3D-Metal isn't much help in the actual porting, but it can be use as a minimum performance test, if your ported game is slower than the Windows version running in GPTK then you surely did something wrong.

 

[Homy]

I think even though the Deck uses a emulation layer, it doesn't seem like it because you just install and go on the device, where as Cross Over requires a bit of fiddling and the tool kit a lot of fiddling. So that may be where my head is at.

Personally I thought the tool kit would allow developers to convert their games to the Mac, but it seems not many do.

A few noticeable names in that list for sure. But I think developers could be trying much harder especially with the tool kit being a thing now.

I agree about GPTK but Whisky makes it easier. Crossover and Proton is basically the same so I don't think there's more tweaking with Crossover than Proton. Even in Proton you have to sometimes choose different versions for different games and use environmental variables and launch options to make some games work so it’s not always as straight forward.