Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games

[Homy]

Diablo IV now runs in Crossover 23 Beta.

"I’m thrilled to announce the second beta for CrossOver 23! I’m very pleased to report that Diablo IV is working on Mac with the latest beta! A lot of MoltenVK changes were needed to offer support for this game, and so we’d be very grateful if our Mac users could retest all of their favorite games with the second beta. The second beta also includes a translation update, a few vkd3d changes, and a couple more fixes for Quicken."

Double the Diablo, double the fun: Diablo IV now playable on CrossOver 23 beta | CodeWeavers Blog

By Meredith Johnson | We’re now delighted to share the news that Diablo IV is working on macOS with the second CrossOver 23 beta!

www.codeweavers.com

 

[MRMSFC]

It’s marketshare. I’m not spending time on a macos port until I have a large pool of potential buyers. Windows has me covered. Mac does not. Devs feel this way. Devs don’t make the games, gamers won’t buy the platform. It’s basic business. A lot of my favorite Mac games were released much later than their Windows counterpart. I have a Mac build on my list, but it’s low purely due to marketshare.

There is NOTHING apple can do. It won’t overtake Windows overnight. Buying a game Studio would be a death toll and a loss to Shareholders. If Halo remained as a Mac exclusive then we more than likely would not have seen Halo 2 or 3.

Tangentially, this makes me think about the attitude towards games on Mac.

Mac has had lower marketshare since the early 90’s, yet if you go back far enough there’s a plucky solidarity in that attitude. Like being underdogs brought a sense of pride.

The situation really hasn’t changed in a sense, but the attitude has. There’s less of a rebellious tone, and way more whining. It’s less “**** Windows, I’m going to play on Mac even if I have to move heaven and earth to do so!” And more “Apple/Developers pls gib”

 

[Algr]

So you're admitting Apple users don't buy and play games, which in turn leaves developers little to no incentive to port games to Mac. 🤔

This is a vicious cycle - it works equally well the other way: The lack of Mac games results in Mac users being only those people who don't see games as essential.

 

[Algr]

One possibility: Apple wants lots of game programmers, not to make new games, but to port existing ones. Many Mac ports are fairly low effort. They run through emulators and so can never match their PC counterparts, even when the Mac hardware is superior. But if Apple decides to be the one doing the porting, they have extra incentive to assure a high performance result that makes the Mac look good.

 

[Irishman]

It’s marketshare. I’m not spending time on a macos port until I have a large pool of potential buyers. Windows has me covered. Mac does not. Devs feel this way. Devs don’t make the games, gamers won’t buy the platform. It’s basic business. A lot of my favorite Mac games were released much later than their Windows counterpart. I have a Mac build on my list, but it’s low purely due to marketshare.

There is NOTHING apple can do. It won’t overtake Windows overnight. Buying a game Studio would be a death toll and a loss to Shareholders. If Halo remained as a Mac exclusive then we more than likely would not have seen Halo 2 or 3.

Windows has you personally covered, at this point in time. You shouldn’t flirt with speaking for any developers other than yourself.

Hyperbole only serves to promote the status quo.

I do have a couple questions for you:

1. What are your favorite Mac games that were released after their Windows version?

2. How do feel about the status quo in the gaming industry?

 

[MRMSFC]

Windows has you personally covered, at this point in time. You shouldn’t flirt with speaking for any developers other than yourself.

I think it’s reasonable to take his word on this topic, as it’s evident that there’s hardly any Mac ports of games and his assertion is more likely than other explanations.

2. How do feel about the status quo in the gaming industry?

I won’t speak for him, but I want to throw my hat in the ring.

The status quo sucks.

I think it’s a natural progression from the HD era, but I hate that there’s now a huge divide between creative and innovative indie titles and huge, soulless, bottom-denominator AAA titles.

Pre-HD I feel like there were a lot of games that weren’t blockbuster titles that studios would take a chance on. And now it seems like the large studios hyper focus on AAA titles, giant Multiplayer games (with 10 year roadmaps that are abandoned after the players drop off in one year.), or some combination thereof.

And all to funnel players to DLC, microtransactions, or season passes to pressure them into spending even more money.

Not to mention that pirating these games is now a better experience due to intrusive DRM, which also blocks ports to non-Windows platforms.

The indie scene is vibrant, and made by passionate people, but I have to wonder what these people could do with even a modest budget.

In my opinion, this leaves little room for ports to Mac simply due to economics. After all, if you’re an indie dev on a shoestring budget, why spend valuable time on a small percentage of users? And if you’re a huge company, having a dedicated team of people to port the game is just less money in your pocket.

 

[Ethosik]

Windows has you personally covered, at this point in time. You shouldn’t flirt with speaking for any developers other than yourself.

Hyperbole only serves to promote the status quo.

I do have a couple questions for you:

1. What are your favorite Mac games that were released after their Windows version?

2. How do feel about the status quo in the gaming industry?

I have a group of colleagues that do development. I’m not just speaking about myself. I also know several CEOs of software firms and they all feel the same. Plus it’s just common business sense.

1. Not sure why this is a question. Nearly all Mac games are ports from old games. No Man’s Sky, RE Village, Tomb Raider series, Stardew Valley, Frostpunk. Terraria has a horrible Mac port that will never get fixed as they are priorizing Windows instead of replacing their macOS developer. Cities Skylines was ported but they have no plans for porting it’s sequel. Some Star Wars games were ported later. SWTOR is based on an engine that only supports Windows. Due to Mac popularity they have said they have no plans changing engines in order to get a Mac port. Heck most ports aren’t done by the same devs, they let Feral Interactive do it.

2. I’m not a huge fan of AAA games. Indies are where the good things are right now. I don’t like how the gaming industry seems so incredibly dependent on one freaking game (Call of Duty - all the court hearings and mess Microsoft has been going through). I don’t like the double standards going on. Other than the Metal Gear re-releases and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, I don’t care one bit about any other AAA games.

 

[Ethosik]

In my opinion, this leaves little room for ports to Mac simply due to economics. After all, if you’re an indie dev on a shoestring budget, why spend valuable time on a small percentage of users? And if you’re a huge company, having a dedicated team of people to port the game is just less money in your pocket.

Yep. Even Stardew Valley wasn’t ported by the original dev. They partnered with another studio.

 

[koyoot]

There is 80-100 milion active Macs around the globe. People who play games on a Mac are what? 5% of total installed base?

Thats 4-5 mil users playing games on a Mac.

Thats simply not enough people to make any return on investment from porting game to a Mac.

The only way, how it would be financially feasible, is to scale up mobile games from iOS to Mac, because its extremely simple thing to do.

 

[Ethosik]

There is 80-100 milion active Macs around the globe. People who play games on a Mac are what? 5% of total installed base?

Thats 4-5 mil users playing games on a Mac.

Thats simply not enough people to make any return on investment from porting game to a Mac.

The only way, how it would be financially feasible, is to scale up mobile games from iOS to Mac, because its extremely simple thing to do.

Precisely. Not sure why this is so difficult to understand. I have much more freedom than big companies and I’m still working on a Windows only version. Heck even the engine I’m using (Unity) supports Mac AND just a few clicks here and slight changes there I can quickly have a Mac binary to run. But I can see some bugs so I’m not spending time on it.

And it’s all due to marketshare. I want (as do most businesses and indie devs) the biggest pool of potential buyers as possible. That is the entire reasoning to go into business is to make money.

It’s not just games either. Software parity with Windows is rough too. And the software we do get (cough Office) performs worse than their Windows counterparts.

Visual Studio for Mac is HORRIBLE. Visual Studio for Windows with ReSharper is the best dev experience I have had in my many years of doing this. Rider on Mac is the best choice but it’s not as good as VS.

 

[Ethosik]

No. It was introduced at MacWorld. It was never exclusive. Just like the recent MGS 3 remake was introduced during the PlayStation showcase but isn't exclusive to PlayStation. Halo was supposed to hit PC/Mac before MS bought Bungie and moved it to Xbox.

Hmm. I read a lot of places at the time it was a macos exclusive or a timed exclusive. Regardless, if MS haven’t purchased it I doubt it would have been as popular as it is now. Maybe not even see a sequel.

And regarding MGS it’s not surprising as it was already on Xbox before (and is getting the new one) and PC had some of the games in the series already. The older ones are coming to Switch also.

 

[salamanderjuice]

Hmm. I read a lot of places at the time it was a macos exclusive or a timed exclusive. Regardless, if MS haven’t purchased it I doubt it would have been as popular as it is now. Maybe not even see a sequel.

You're either misremembering or read terrible journalism. IGN reported it back the day it was announced as simultaneous PC/Mac exclusive:

Heavenly Halo Announced from Bungie - PC News at IGN

web.archive.org

The game had hype and Bungie's previous Myth games did well. I still remember watching the trailer on some PC gamer demo discs and being excited. Perhaps it wouldn't have been as cared about on PC as Xbox true. A lot of it's impact came from being a great console FPS and the PC version was planned to be a 3rd person shooter.

 

[Homy]

Thats 4-5 mil users playing games on a Mac.

Thats simply not enough people to make any return on investment from porting game to a Mac.

If it was a Mac exclusive AAA title you could maybe say that but when it comes to Mac it's almost always about ports and it's not like inventing the wheel again. When you port a game at least half of the work in the different production stages is already done. It's not as if you have to start from scratch and work for 3-5 years like a new AAA title to bring the game to Mac. Piranha Bytes ported ELEX II in about 8 months. In many cases game devs have also already sold enough copies to cover their costs and make profit before they do a Mac port so the porting costs are not as high as the original game. Many also can get free technical help from Apple.

A profitable port doesn't either need 4-5 million sold copies. 200-300 thousands can be enough depending on the title. It's not as if the Mac port alone has to cover the entire development and production cost of the game.

 

[Homy]

The Elder Scrolls Online for Mac is free on Epic.

 

[Pressure]

The Elder Scrolls Online for Mac is free on Epic.

Does it really use OpenGL? 😂

 

[Homy]

Does it really use OpenGL? 😂

No, they switched to Metal/MoltenVK in 2018.

 

[MRMSFC]

Cities Skylines was ported but they have no plans for porting it’s sequel.

****, I was hoping to pick that up. Cities Skylines is like crack to me.

2. I’m not a huge fan of AAA games. Indies are where the good things are right now. I don’t like how the gaming industry seems so incredibly dependent on one freaking game (Call of Duty - all the court hearings and mess Microsoft has been going through). I don’t like the double standards going on. Other than the Metal Gear re-releases and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, I don’t care one bit about any other AAA games.

The irony of that is I feel like the popularity of Call of Duty is waning. Sports titles strictly make more money in sales, and the more hardcore crowd seems to be excited for other titles right now.

I’m in the same boat honestly. The last game I played was Tears of the Kingdom, and that was on the Switch.

Many also can get free technical help from Apple.

I feel like this is the only way forward for Apple in terms of games.

The economic reality is that Mac is too small a market to have exclusives, and not profitable enough to port to for most. So Apple’s best course is to make porting easier.

 

[BenRacicot]

It’s marketshare. I’m not spending time on a macOS port until I have a large pool of potential buyers. Windows has me covered. Mac does not. Devs feel this way. Devs don’t make the games, gamers won’t buy the platform. It’s basic business. A lot of my favorite Mac games were released much later than their Windows counterpart. I have a Mac build on my list, but it’s low purely due to marketshare.

There is NOTHING apple can do. It won’t overtake Windows overnight. Buying a game Studio would be a death toll and a loss to Shareholders. If Halo remained as a Mac exclusive then we more than likely would not have seen Halo 2 or 3.

Why do people keep saying there's no Mac market for gaming? The market absolutely exists, its massive and second only to Windows. I don't understand the ignorance to the sway that is currently happening.

Everything now exists to tap Apple's gaming market and its actively improving:

1. What's the Total Addressable Market (TAM)?
   1. global gaming market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.1% from 2023 to 2030
   2. slowing PC market: 28.5 percent year-over-year drop in Q4 — the largest quarterly shipment decline
   3. increasing popularity of gaming on tablets and smartphones (Ahem: M3 on iPad?!)
   4. Gaming on Mac has been growing organically WITHOUT Apple's help
   5. Apple ships ~7 MILLION MBPs per quarter
2. hardware (M-series GPUs far outpace the average GPU used on steam)
   1. Rumors of incoming RT cores
3. software
   1. Rosetta has existed for almost 3 years
   2. building native software was always an option since ARM
   3. An actual porting kit exists
   4. a very capable Metal 3
4. Gaming PC builders are tiring of building and maintaining
5. No one wants to buy/build a PC just for gaming when they have a MBP
6. Devs: they've already built the game... 10% more effort gets you access to a 200 Million device market with 100M active users.
7. precedent: Games on MacOS exist and its getting easier for them
8. Indie development is expected to reach $4.2 billion by 2025 driven by cross-platform development

 

[Ethosik]

Bottom line is to take it up with the developers. There is nothing Apple can do from the core business model side by making me target a platform with less marketshare than Windows. Apple won’t overtake Windows overnight. Even in 5-10 years. Marketshare shift is what is required. Otherwise the situation might get better, but not to what some people are wanting here. And as I said, it’s not just games. I still use Windows for Windows-only software or software that got more development resources for the Windows version (office). This is why I don’t use Linux much either. Same situation. But Mac has better software so I use Mac more than Windows.

There will ALWAYS be delays for platforms. Things come out on consoles first. Heck here I have a top of the line Windows system and can’t play Final Fantasy 16 on it. They have AT LEAST a year. 15 and 7 remake were a year or 18 months before WINDOWS got it. Things used to be much worse on Windows too. It was far more common to NOT get a port from a game than it is now. I mean we just got some of my favorites the Persona games within the last few years. Something I had a PlayStation TV or Vita TV or whatever For to play P4 Golden.

So the other attitude I have seen lately is when Death Stranding was announced some of the responses were “yeah but it’s an old game”. You don’t say! Because of Marketshare macos ports are LOW on the list of priorities. There will never be parity across the board to get a macos port NOW.

And as I mentioned earlier, the older ports we have gotten were from a different company than the devs. Even an indie Stardew Valley was ported by someone else.

It’s up to the developers what platform to develop their game. Consoles are the most common for the AAA games. Non techies that are PC gamers that I know are playing mostly off their Dell they got and don’t even have a 30 or 40 series NVIDIA. Highest one is a 2060. Now people like you and me here? Yeah I got the top end. I got the consoles too.

 

[Ethosik]

Why do people keep saying there's no Mac market for gaming? The market absolutely exists, it’s massive and second only to Windows. I don't understand the ignorance to the sway that is currently happening.

No it’s not. Consoles first then PC for AAA. Android and iPhone for mobile. Mac has very low marketshare.

And with three platforms, it doesn’t matter if you are second if Windows has a PC user base of 80 to 90 percent and macs have 10 or 20. But some are Linux so the distribution is a bit off. You get my point though. Yeah Apple can be second but if Windows in general has/had 90 percent marketshare that a lot. So yeah second but only 8 percent. Being second doesn’t matter. Percentage does.

 

[Ethosik]

Devs: they've already built the game... 10% more effort gets you access to a 200 Million device market with 100M active users.

As a dev. You vastly underestimate this effort. As I said there are games that don’t support macos at all - SWTOR for example. Engine they used doesn’t support macos. They would need to re-write the entire engine. More than 10% the effort.

Even from a dev side, if 10% were true in some cases it would be a 100% effort on QA and play testing to ensure it runs well.

Simply getting a macos binary for my game and it already shows some issues and bugs I need to sort out. Stuff not present in the windows build. And my game isn’t finished yet with the most complex parts of it. I anticipate it to be about 40% the effort.

 

[Nugat Trailers]

A dumb question, but logically speaking, wouldn't it be expected for a quick macos binary to have issues and bugs not present in the windows build?

You know, it's like translating a 300 page operating manual and instructions through DeepL and wondering why there's issues with how it's worded.

 

[Ethosik]

A dumb question, but logically speaking, wouldn't it be expected for a quick macos binary to have issues and bugs not present in the windows build?

You know, it's like translating a 300 page operating manual and instructions through DeepL and wondering why there's issues with how it's worded.

Yep. Which is why 10% effort is largely underestimated. Even on the low budgeted and lesser complex Indie games like mine. Now compare that with AAA games? Yes, it makes complete sense that macOS gets ignored.

 

[Romain_H]

Yep. Which is why 10% effort is largely underestimated. Even on the low budgeted and lesser complex Indie games like mine. Now compare that with AAA games? Yes, it makes complete sense that macOS gets ignored.

Just out of curiosity: May I ask what engine you use?

 

[MRMSFC]

Yep. Which is why 10% effort is largely underestimated. Even on the low budgeted and lesser complex Indie games like mine. Now compare that with AAA games? Yes, it makes complete sense that macOS gets ignored.

Do you think you could estimate a marketshare percentage where a Mac port would at least be worth some time?

Strategically speaking, Apple has an excellent opportunity to grow marketshare with MacBook Airs, Mac Minis, and lower end MacBook Pros right now, since they’re roughly in a good spot for price and performance. (Because even though capital-G Gamers like to benchrace 13000k, 4090 machines, the mass market is far under that)

Again, I feel like the only way Apple will dig themselves out of this situation is by aggressively increasing marketshare and throwing money at quality ports.