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Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games
- Thread starter Homy
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any performance improvements? have they finally started converting RT calls?
I just installed it.
Now...how do I use this? Because there's a game I wanna test but I need to launch the game from a batch file, not from the exe
Either you use Whisky 🥃 or Terminal to launch the command.
No idea. How / where would we check that? There’s no changelog unfortunately.
I feel like I didn’t get my point across.
I said meant “good performance to price” in context, not absolute.
Apple is never going to compete fully in the “Gamer” market, but, if they wanted, could reach across the aisle to get users who want a premium product, with an OS that doesn’t make you want to sound yourself with barbed wire. Ones who may play the occasional game.
Comparing say, a MacBook with the latest “Analienware GameThruster CBT” is never going to get anywhere.
Okay good news, I learned how to use the Game Porting Toolkit fully.
Bad news, the game I wanted to run (FUSER) does not work.
It gets to the main menu but after 20 seconds crashes. This is both from running it as a batch file, and running it through Steam. I checked CodeWeavers and they got the game marked as a 2 star.
Well I tried. This is why I have a Steam Deck as a backup for this very reason. Well since i already went through the trouble of setting up the Game Porting Toolkit I might as well use it.
Bad news, the game I wanted to run (FUSER) does not work.
It gets to the main menu but after 20 seconds crashes. This is both from running it as a batch file, and running it through Steam. I checked CodeWeavers and they got the game marked as a 2 star.
Well I tried. This is why I have a Steam Deck as a backup for this very reason. Well since i already went through the trouble of setting up the Game Porting Toolkit I might as well use it.
For a game that is also supposed to be on Playstation I've not really seen much in the way of advertisement (contrast this with Baldurs Gate 3, everyone is talking about it).
Agreed. And this is where we need to just put attention to developers and marketshare. The MacBook Air pretty much blows away the Nintendo Switch and is better than the PS4. A M2 Pro is reaching console territory. Apple doesn’t need to compete with the 4090 crowd that wants to chase 8k 120fps gaming with max settings. Apple will never compete with this. But their hardware is already competing with consoles. Consoles do just fine even when some of their games on performance mode dips to 720-900p resolution just to maintain 60fps. In fact I find it more enjoyable as the games mostly don’t have constant micro stutters, shader compilation, frame pacing issues etc.
The Nintendo comparison I find most applicable here. (Admittedly I am a huge Nintendo fan)
The most important part of the platform is the games themselves. If the experience is great, then everything else is secondary.
Although, thinking about it, the elephant in the room is cost. Nintendo kept “losing” the console wars even when they had superior hardware (yes, the GameCube and N64 were superior, I will die on this hill). And only found success when offering less costly, less powerful, but still fun hardware.
Needless to say, this won’t be Apple.
So, maybe, strategically speaking, the best course of action is to aggressively court developers, like Sony did in the 90’s with the Playstation. Even if the games aren’t exclusive, just having them removes a barrier that might exist for potential buyers.
The only problem with this strategy I can see, is that Mac users are typically affluent enough to afford a gaming PC alongside their Mac. That doesn’t translate into new sales.
In any case, it’s a severe uphill struggle, even for a company as big as Apple.
Maybe we’re too far into the weeds here, I think first we need to define a goal.
The goal being popular title releases on the Mac, right?
As Homy posts, there are a lot of games being released on the Mac. But clearly there’s still dissatisfaction with what’s not coming to the platform.
The goal being popular title releases on the Mac, right?
As Homy posts, there are a lot of games being released on the Mac. But clearly there’s still dissatisfaction with what’s not coming to the platform.
I think it’s unrealistic to expect everything and everything current to be ported. As someone that is very vocal about wanting to eliminate exclusives (I want PS5 to play Halo and Xbox to play God of War), I understand as a developer porting takes time. So we get some older titles ported and that’s okay. It makes perfect sense with how popular Mac is vs Windows. And even Windows gets ports 18 months or later. So that should tell you something that the biggest platform sometimes gets ports slow.
With how popular Mac is, I’m surprised about the stuff we are getting
No one's expecting literally every PC game to be available on Mac, but the current library is abysmal and that number needs to get higher. There's so many games perfect for macOS that it's mindboggling they're not there. Here's some examples:
- Diablo 4: One of the first games tested with the Game Porting Toolkit, a series that has historically always been on Mac yet the latest entry isn't here. Even celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg ranted about why isn't the game on Mac
- Overwatch 2: Game's on Nintendo Switch. C'mon Blizzard
- Call of Duty Warzone: CoD is another series that had always been on Mac, yet the last game to get a Mac port was Black Ops 3. The Apple Silicon chips are more than capable of running the newer games, and with Microsoft bringing Call of Duty back to Nintendo systems, Mac should be on that list too.
- The Like a Dragon Franchise: We saw from Parallels that the series is more than capable of running on Apple Silicon
- The Persona series: So many Mac users wanna play these legendary RPGs, to the point I had to guide so many how to install Windows via Boot Camp when Persona 4 Golden got a PC port back in 2020
- Witcher 3: The game can run on a Nintendo Switch, so get it on Mac CDPR
- Command & Conquer Remastered: The original games had Mac ports yet the 4K remaster isn't on Mac, with the only way to play it being the Vanilla Conquer source port
- Red Dead Redemption 2: Now this is a game that would really show the power of Apple Silicon. With how demanding the game is if they contracted Rockstar to port it to Mac that would get eyes on the platform.
Absolutely agree! What I do not agree with are statements like “Apple needs NVIDIA then games will come” or “we need 4090 levels of performance then games will come” or “porting to Mac is such a simple thing”
It takes a long time for things to change. Like I said earlier, game porting toolkit did not exist when I set up my business plan for the next few years. I’m not changing course for my business for a beta feature on a low popular platform comparatively speaking.
I want Legend of Heroes on Mac too. Games that a base PS4 can play would be no problem for the Mac. So the hardware is there. Just user base and developer focus is not there.
So let’s try to keep our expectations realistic. I expect things to improve once GPT matures (it’s what I might use in a few years) and more and more Apple Silicon is used. It will take a few years. As I said we are getting more and more games than we had 5 years ago.
A good example of how long things take - Persona 4 Golden came to PC years after it came out. Was stuck on PS TV forever. I actually bought one just for that one game. And FFXIV making its way to Xbox. Been in the works since 2021 at least. These things aren’t quick.
The switch gets WAY MORE games than the Mac combined. Which is the most frustrating part. As the Switch was outdated even when it launched. Nintendo won’t do this, but like I said I want more options to play games. Legally and natively playing Tears of the Kingdom at 4K (or at the very least 1080 60) on a Mac would be amazing.
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Well, RDR 2 is from 2018 and even when Apple announces newer games like Death Stranding from 2020, RE Village from 2021 and Stray from 2022 people, many in this thread and forum, complain time after time about Mac getting "old" games so to say "No one's expecting literally every PC game to be available on Mac" is an understatement.
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Oh good so I was right with the timing it takes the porting house... I wonder if MetalFX will be added the same time FSR2 is. (Which is also supposed to come in September).
Yep I heard so many people respond with Death Stranding simply “it’s an old game”. So Apple can’t win no matter what.
Actually it took so long for P4G to get on PC because Atlus was being Atlus. Atlus is infamous for doing things that don't make sense at all. Hell it wasn't until P4G released that they realized "oh crap people want our games outside of Playstation?!"
Maybe a realistic goal to shoot for is popular multiplayer games to get a port?
With multiplayer games being a social event, having the current and enduring titles would be very beneficial I suspect. Moreso than even big singleplayer titles.
At the very least, the meme about Macs not having any games needs to be alleviated.
That’s not the whole picture. We know that Steam stats can vary much each month so you have to wait a few months to see if the trend remains. That number shows most likely the increasing number of Steam deck owners, not desktop Linux gamers. ”Arch Linux” is the variant that has increased most and that’s what Steam deck uses now. The fact is that game developers are actually abandoning desktop Linux because of the success of Proton on Steam deck so the more correct conclusion is ”Steam deck gamers now outnumber Mac gamers on Steam”.
This also doesn’t mean that the number of Mac gamers has decreased on Steam. In fact that number had a small increase last month. The increase of ”Linux” gamers is thanks to people abandoning Windows. Windows lost about 0.5% to Linux. So game developers still haven’t lost any Mac gamers. The whole increase could also be because of Windows gamers being on vacation and not playing so there are many reasons for these stats changes.
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You completely missed the point.
Look at the numbers. Mac is not big enough a gaming platform for it to be financialy feasible releasing any game.