But it goes back to that same question, why bother at all? They make more money from iOS games and don't have to do anything for it. Casual macOS users don't care about gaming, and if they did they already have consoles for use (or a PC), right?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games
- Thread starter Homy
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Well, nobody is against earning more. Besides, Macs are required to develop for the entire Apple ecosystem.
You are focusing solely on games on Macs. My take is that Apple is trying to grow the Mac base, and using games is one way, but not the only way. Apple is also contributing to the Blender project for example.
Folks are just too impatient and wants Apple to produce results now. Well, Apple likely is playing the long game.
I would buy that if they had gotten all the recent "high profile" games released put on that service.
Yeah is is fairly weird, if you ask me, that MacOS is required to develop any iOS game, yet very few developers bother to let the iOS game run on macOS (or even make a macOS version). There is no technical reason why Genshin Impact, or CoD: Mobile, or Diablo Immortal can have an iOS version but no accompanying macOS version.
Heck even @Ethosik has said they are not making a macOS version not because of technical difficulties, but because they'd make no money from the effort. Even though they are a big proponent of macOS over Windows.
Apple Arcade is the laughing stock of the entire industry. It's a far cry compared to Xbox Game Pass, and all Arcade did was piss everyone else off since Apple held so many games hostage on a timed exclusivity. Shantae and the Seven Sirens and Exit the Gungeon being prime examples as the moment those games got on Nintendo Switch and PC everyone just went there. Another example was the news of a new Platinum Games action game called World of Demons that had people excited, but then that excitement instantly turned into disappointment when they learned it was Apple Arcade exclusive.
Even Nintendo Switch Online is a better service than Apple Arcade, and NSO is also hot garbage.
Yes, for sure the place where things were yesterday is 100% how they will be tomorrow, considering the investment that Apple has put internally recently into development of it.
Apple want to make Apple Arcade real competition to Game Pass/PlayStation Plus.
And they have a cnahnce in succeeding.
No they really don't. Apple doesn't understand why Game Pass is successful. Game Pass succeeds because it's an option, not the only option.
Game Pass is essentially a digital rental service. You're not limited to just Game Pass. But while subscribed to Game Pass if there's a game you really liked on the service or if a game is leaving the service, you get a massive discount to purchase the game outright. On Apple Arcade, you have no choice. If you wanna buy Jetpack Joyride 2 or Oceanhorn 2 to play on your iPhone or Mac, too bad you can't. You have to sub to Apple Arcade.
In fact that segways into the next problem: All of Apple Arcade's games are either "remasters" or adless versions of free mobile games you played 10 years ago, or games available on much better platforms. Meanwhile Game Pass has both quantity and quality in it's catalog with heavy hitters such as but not limited to:
- The entire Bethesda/Zenimax catalog including the most anticipated game of the year: Starfield
- The entire Like a Dragon series
- Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, Persona 5 Royal, and the upcoming remake Persona 3 Reload next year
- Every annual release of MLB The Show
- Every game available in EA Play, including the newest EA Sports releases
- Grand Theft Auto 5
- Insurgency Sandstorm
- Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey
- Monster Hunter Rise
- And so many fantastic indie games to discover
Why do you try to explain to me hopw Game Pass works? I know what are its strenghts and weaknesses.
Do you know where Apple Arcade and Apple One will be in future?
Then why do you judge that based on the past and present, while ignoring what is happening behind the scenes?
There's stuff happening behind the scenes? Could've fooled me since Apple Arcade still has jack in it's service.
Do you think Apple is trying to get No Mans Sky on Apple Arcade? I wonder if that could explain why the MAS version has yet to launch.
The reason why MAS version hasn't launched is because of 30% Apple cut. Its simple as that.
While I‘m not sure what those devs’ specific concerns are, this seems to mirror the early days of the Web. There was a period where standards support was so fragmented that companies effectively would stamp their sites with “Works best in IE6” or would even block all functionality behind a “You need to download the latest version of XYZ to use this site.”
Having been behind the scenes for some of those conversations, it mostly came down to:
1. We want to protect our brand and so while this might work on browser X, we don’t want folks to run into something glitchy and ding us for it. Let’s offer a best-in-class experience on one platform rather than a pretty good but sometimes wonky experience on multiple platforms
2. We have limited dev resources and there are a lot of combinations out there, which blows up our support costs. Most of our users are already on platform X anyway so there’s not much point in us spending the extra money to also offer it on platform Y.
I’d wager both of those reasons still hold true for companies making apps for iPhone/iPad. Plus, they might also have some product folks thinking, “Well, if we’re going to support another platform, is there a better ROI for us by making something that’s actually designed for that platform rather than just releasing something for free that’s compatible with it?” Of course, backlog prioritization becomes a problem since you’re effectively talking about a new product with larger dev effort so it often gets pushed until they do a major revision for the existing implementation.
That said, I really wish more companies (including folks like Netflix and Hulu) would spend the minimal effort to let their apps run on Apple Silicon Macs. There are plenty of reasons to do so (including better telemetry for insights, “stickier” customer experiences leading to increased retention, etc.), but it also comes with the trade off of Apple’s commission since IAP give a cut to Apple versus in-website-purchases.
It's a nightmare maintaining a mobile game. Mobile developers are expensive, and every update has to go through the tedium of App Review that every developer hates. So with that in mind, along with the smaller userbase of macOS compared to iOS, many developers don't feel the need to do a Mac version, since it means wasting money on a Mac version not many would play compared to the iPhone version. Adding more platforms just adds onto the workload, hiring developers with expertise on those platforms, paying them a salary to support said platforms, and that cost adds up.
Arcade in laughing stock but also holding hostage of desired games shocker. News at ten.
They don't even need to make a Mac version, all they have to do is to allow the iOS app to run macOS. It might require a bit of testing, but not really that much, every low lever system library is mostly the same in macOS and iOS, as those games already run well on macOS using something like PlayCover.
And the "we don't support macOS because people can copy the data inside our app" take is so stupid. It's just as easy to access the content of an app on iOS.
And the "we don't support macOS because people can copy the data inside our app" take is so stupid. It's just as easy to access the content of an app on iOS.
I just tested playing some of my favorite games (RPGs mostly) in Parallels with my M1 Ultra and M2 Ultra Macs. I am going to do as much as possible to limit my gaming PC usage, with my PS5 and Nintendo Switch helping too.
I am quite surprised how well Parallels works on top of Windows on Arm. These aren't the most demanding games, and the latest one has some stutters like its doing shader compilations.
I just got my M2 system set up. So far almost everything is on Apple Silicon native builds now. I just have Steam left to install. I am not going to get Rosetta just for that. Any timeline on the Arm native build of Steam?
I am quite surprised how well Parallels works on top of Windows on Arm. These aren't the most demanding games, and the latest one has some stutters like its doing shader compilations.
I just got my M2 system set up. So far almost everything is on Apple Silicon native builds now. I just have Steam left to install. I am not going to get Rosetta just for that. Any timeline on the Arm native build of Steam?
Shortly before Apple abandons Rosetta 2 support if their x64 version is anything to go by.
Why limit PC gaming usage? Power consumption?
IIRC they don't like Windows and none of the recent games are optimized enough to be worth the effort.
Rosetta 2 ain't getting abandoned for a long long time, if ever. Rosetta 1 was abandoned because PowerPC was a dead architecture. After the transition finished, near the end of the 2000s IBM announced they were ceasing research and development of the PowerPC architecture and processors, with the PlayStation 3's Cell Broadband Engine being the last PPC SoC developed (though the Nintendo Wii U was the last PPC commercial release.)
No one was making PowerPC software anymore, so there was no need to continue to support Rosetta when there was no software for it to translate. Not to mention Rosetta 1 never worked right.
Rosetta 2 is a completely different beast. x86 is still the most used architecture since Windows is the dominant x86 platform, and all game consoles except the Nintendo Switch use it. And despite the transition being complete, half of all Mac users are still on Intel and Intel Mac apps are still being made. Some apps and games still require x86 middleware to run, like Total War Warhammer 3 as it's middleware used for the multiplayer is x86, so multiplayer uses Rosetta while the single player is pure ARM. Not to mention Apple is allowing Linux virtual machines to use Rosetta 2.
Valve is working on an ARM native build of Steam for ChromeOS. Don't expect a arm version of the Mac client until the ChromeOS client is finished.
I don’t know if I would’ve done like you have, and compared XBox Game Pass more favorably than Apple Arcade, especially since this past week, the XBox chief has finally admitted that XBox has come in 3rd place in the console wars, behind Sony and Nintendo.
Further, about platform exclusives: when they’re on platforms that you love and play on, they’re the essential lifeblood of the gaming industry, but if they’re on Apple Arcade, they’re trash!
Your bias is showing, buddy.
You might be painting with too broad a brush.
As a father of twins in college, new computers aren’t in the cards for us, for obvious reasons. With that said, I have long ago chosen the Mac side, because I have always been a creative. I do also have a love of great video games.
Once my sons graduate, I’ll be able to invest in a new computer, and only one. Because my computing needs haven’t changed, I’ll be getting a Mac again.
One last thing that will make a Windows PC a no-go for me is its virus and malware exposure, which hasn’t substantially improved in decades.