Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games

[Homy]

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.

No, I didn't. It's just that your "point" is nothing new that we haven't heard before and using Steam stats as some kind of newly discovered evidence doesn't make it more believable. I mean we have all these indie and major titles released and being released and you still say Mac is not big enough market for "ANY" game?

Well, go tell that to all the major devs announcing their games just this year, not to mention all the indie devs. I think Kojima Productions with Death Stranding, Hello Games with No Man’s Sky, Bloober Team with Layers of Fear/The Medium, Fallen Leaf with Fort Solis, BlueTweleve Studio with Stray, Piranha Bytes with ELEX II, Saber Interactive with Snowrunner, SGRA Studio with Dragonheir: Silent Gods, Rockfish Games with Everspace 2, BlackMill Games with Isonzo, Capcom with Resident Evil Village, Feral/Sega/Codemasters with Toal War: Pharaoh/Grid Legends, 4A with Metro Exodus or Larian Studios with Baldur’s Gate 3 would like to hear more about your thoughts.

You missed my point too because I just explained why you shouldn't just look at those Steam numbers.

 

[Ethosik]

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.

Macs have popular games like Fortnite, League of Legends, WoW and Minecraft.

 

[Ethosik]

No, I didn't. It's just that your "point" is nothing new that we haven't heard before and using Steam stats as some kind of newly discovered evidence doesn't make it more believable. I mean we have all these indie and major titles released and being released and you still say Mac is not big enough market for "ANY" game?

Well, go tell that to all the major devs announcing their games just this year, not to mention all the indie devs. I think Kojima Productions with Death Stranding, Hello Games with No Man’s Sky, Bloober Team with Layers of Fear/The Medium, Fallen Leaf with Fort Solis, BlueTweleve Studio with Stray, Piranha Bytes with ELEX II, Saber Interactive with Snowrunner, SGRA Studio with Dragonheir: Silent Gods, Rockfish Games with Everspace 2, BlackMill Games with Isonzo, Capcom with Resident Evil Village, Feral/Sega/Codemasters with Toal War: Pharaoh/Grid Legends, 4A with Metro Exodus or Larian Studios with Baldur’s Gate 3 would like to hear more about your thoughts.

You missed my point too because I just explained why you shouldn't just look at those Steam numbers.

Agreed. And to be fair, how many truly native Linux games are out there? We are going on and on about Mac, but where are the truly native Linux games? Why can't that be a conversation? As I said, I want every platform to be able to play a game. Doesn't have to be immediately, that is completely unrealistic and why I don't mind it when No Mans Sky or Death Stranding comes to Mac now.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Agreed. And to be fair, how many truly native Linux games are out there? We are going on and on about Mac, but where are the truly native Linux games? Why can't that be a conversation?

Because no one really cares about native Linux ports. Native, Proton, Wine, not a single Linux gamer cares. All they want is games, which is what they got with Proton, and because of that they have almost every PC game ever available at their fingertips from their distro of choice or their Steam Deck. If it wasn't for Proton, Linux would not have overtaken macOS in the Steam surveys. Proton is the reason the mainstream are even paying attention to Linux, to the point Microsoft is having to rethink some design languages of Windows.

Besides, native Linux ports ran like ass, not like Proton which in some cases the games run better on that than natively from Windows. It's why I keep saying we need something similar to Proton but for Mac

 

[Ethosik]

Because no one really cares about native Linux ports. Native, Proton, Wine, not a single Linux gamer cares. All they want is games, which is what they got with Proton, and because of that they have almost every PC game ever available at their fingertips from their distro of choice or their Steam Deck. If it wasn't for Proton, Linux would not have overtaken macOS in the Steam surveys. Proton is the reason the mainstream are even paying attention to Linux, to the point Microsoft is having to rethink some design languages of Windows.

Besides, native Linux ports ran like ass, not like Proton which in some cases the games run better on that than natively from Windows.

Wait, I am confused here, we have people demanding ray-tracing on Mac, or 4090 levels of quality and ONLY THEN....ONLY THEN....games will come to mac. But you are saying Linux community doesn't care about that kind of stuff. Is fine to take a hit in performance by not having native games.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Wait, I am confused here, we have people demanding ray-tracing on Mac, or 4090 levels of quality and ONLY THEN....ONLY THEN....games will come to mac. But you are saying Linux community doesn't care about that kind of stuff. Is fine to take a hit in performance by not having native games.

They ain't taking a hit in performance on Proton. Quite the opposite actually. Some games run better through Proton than they do natively on Windows. Hogwarts Legacy was one such game, as Youtuber Mutahar in his benchmarks found he was getting higher framerate on Linux than on Windows

https://twitter.com/x/status/1623140270224072706

There's little to no games that take a hit on performance using Proton. Performance is identical to that on Windows so it's a no brainer to use Proton for everything.

 

[Ethosik]

They ain't taking a hit in performance on Proton. Quite the opposite actually. Some games run better through Proton than they do natively on Windows. Hogwarts Legacy was one such game, as Youtuber Mutahar in his benchmarks found he was getting higher framerate on Linux than on Windows

https://twitter.com/x/status/1623140270224072706

There's little to no games that take a hit on performance using Proton. Performance is identical to that on Windows so it's a no brainer to use Proton for everything.

Not in my experience. I was testing it out for fun and trying to get Ray Tracing on Cyberpunk enabled, there were dozens of solutions in the community and none of them worked for me. But Windows it worked just fine.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Not in my experience. I was testing it out for fun and trying to get Ray Tracing on Cyberpunk enabled, there were dozens of solutions in the community and none of them worked for me. But Windows it worked just fine.

Do you have an Nvidia GPU, an AMD one, or an Intel one?

 

[Ethosik]

Do you have an Nvidia GPU, an AMD one, or an Intel one?

Both NVIDIA and AMD, right now 4090 connected. I gave up on it and just deleted my Linux partition months ago. I want to play games, not diagnose for hours. And I also recall performance being less than Windows, not the same or better as you state.

 

[diamond.g]

Do you have an Nvidia GPU, an AMD one, or an Intel one?

They have a 4090.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

They have a 4090.

Both NVIDIA and AMD, right now 4090 connected. I gave up on it and just deleted my Linux partition months ago. I want to play games, not diagnose for hours.

Then that's why you have been having worse performance on Linux. AMD and Intel's GPU drivers are open source, therefore modifiable to tailor suit the OS, and included in the standard Linux kernel. Nvidia on the other hand uses closed source GPU drivers only updated by them.

So why is that a problem? Because Nvidia dropped Linux support almost a decade ago. The one and only Linux GPU driver they have left is incredibly out of date and does not support any of their modern technologies like raytracing, DLSS, Reflex, and the likes. So modern Nvidia cards are essentially bottlenecked running on Linux due to Nvidia being Nvidia. (Is it any wonder Apple dumped them?)

So if your GPU is an Nvidia card, Linux is not the OS for you. AMD is the optimal GPU for Linux gaming

 

[diamond.g]

Then that's why you have been having worse performance on Linux. AMD and Intel's GPU drivers are open source, therefore modifiable to tailor suit the OS, and included in the standard Linux kernel. Nvidia on the other hand uses closed source GPU drivers only updated by them.

So why is that a problem? Because Nvidia dropped Linux support almost a decade ago. The one and only Linux GPU driver they have left is incredibly out of date and does not support any of their modern technologies like raytracing, DLSS, Reflex, and the likes. So modern Nvidia cards are essentially bottlenecked running on Linux due to Nvidia being Nvidia.

So if your GPU is an Nvidia card, Linux is not the OS for you. AMD is the optimal GPU for Linux gaming, and it's why the Xbox Series X and PS5 use AMD GPUs as well, since both those consoles essentially run a proprietary Linux OS designed for that game console.

Uh, nah. The Xbox uses a Windows Kernel. (It even runs HyperV for sandbox)

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Uh, nah. The Xbox uses a Windows Kernel. (It even runs HyperV for sandbox)

Okay disregard that bit but my point still stands, Nvidia's proprietary shenanigans are awful which is why their GPUs run worse on Linux than on Windows.

As a sidenote, I just learned Sony made official Linux drivers for the PS5 Dualsense. Neato right?

 

[Ethosik]

Then that's why you have been having worse performance on Linux. AMD and Intel's GPU drivers are open source, therefore modifiable to tailor suit the OS, and included in the standard Linux kernel. Nvidia on the other hand uses closed source GPU drivers only updated by them.

So why is that a problem? Because Nvidia dropped Linux support almost a decade ago. The one and only Linux GPU driver they have left is incredibly out of date and does not support any of their modern technologies like raytracing, DLSS, Reflex, and the likes. So modern Nvidia cards are essentially bottlenecked running on Linux due to Nvidia being Nvidia. (Is it any wonder Apple dumped them?)

So if your GPU is an Nvidia card, Linux is not the OS for you. AMD is the optimal GPU for Linux gaming, and it's why the Xbox Series X and PS5 use AMD GPUs as well, since both those consoles essentially run a proprietary Linux OS designed for that game console.

Right so Linux is not the same or better than Windows like you state, only in some cases.

Regardless, "nobody wants native linux gaming" are you sure about that? There is ZERO POSSIBLE WAY a native game with enough attention can perform better than through Proton? Native would offer ZERO benefits?

We see it on the mac. Native builds most of the time improve performance vs the x86 builds through Rosetta. A native game on the mac would not suffer as much as we are seeing Game Porting Toolkit in some scenarios.

This is all taken into account that native ports are done properly and not half-***. Just like Windows is not immune to bad console ports. Doesn't inherently mean nobody wants a native Windows game.

And Xbox runs Windows Core....not Linux.

And I agree with you in regards to NVIDIA. I think they are toxic and I REALLY do not like the "performance monopoly" NVIDIA has. We need to keep up the pressure with Apple Silicon and AMD to de-throne the NVIDIA ONLY or NOTHING approach. Especially with CUDA-only work. And I really don't like all the blame put to Apple for not having NVIDIA GPUs.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Right so Linux is not the same or better than Windows like you state, only in some cases.

Regardless, "nobody wants native linux gaming" are you sure about that? There is ZERO POSSIBLE WAY a native game with enough attention can perform better than through Proton? Native would offer ZERO benefits?

I'm guessing you don't play much on Linux or are in any Linux circles huh? Every Linux gamer I have ever talked to had nothing but horror stories about bad Linux ports. Linux ports were always a gamble. Even the hundreds of games that got Linux ports for the failed Steam Machine project even they ran horribly. Serious Sam 3 was a good example as it froze a lot.

We see it on the mac. Native builds most of the time improve performance vs the x86 builds through Rosetta. A native game on the mac would not suffer as much as we are seeing Game Porting Toolkit in some scenarios.

But that's the thing: Game Porting Toolkit takes such a hit since it's having to translate a game three times, while Proton just has to translate it once. Plus Proton didn't become the magic it is now. For the first few years yeah Proton had a big hit in performance. But years of optimization from Valve and the Linux community and Proton is the magic "make game work" tool it is now that has essentially made native Linux ports obsolete.

Mac could have that too if Apple put the effort in, which of course it's Apple so of course they won't put the effort in.

 

[Ethosik]

I'm guessing you don't play much on Linux or are in any Linux circles huh? Every Linux gamer I have ever talked to had nothing but horror stories about bad Linux ports. Linux ports were always a gamble. Even the hundreds of games that got Linux ports for the failed Steam Machine project even they ran horribly. Serious Sam 3 was a good example as it froze a lot.

Which is why I said

"This is all taken into account that native ports are done properly and not half-***. Just like Windows is not immune to bad console ports. Doesn't inherently mean nobody wants a native Windows game."

 

[koyoot]

So if your GPU is an Nvidia card, Linux is not the OS for you. AMD is the optimal GPU for Linux gaming, and it's why the Xbox Series X and PS5 use AMD GPUs as well, since both those consoles essentially run a proprietary Linux OS designed for that game console.

One correction.

The reason why both consoles are fully AMD based is because AMD was the only company until just recently that had both CPU and GPU IP. Intel became second one, just recently.

 

[diamond.g]

One correction.

The reason why both consoles are fully AMD based is because AMD was the only company until just recently that had both CPU and GPU IP. Intel became second one, just recently.

Hasn’t Intel pretty much always had iGPU’s since Core i? Not saying it has been a good GPU arch, but from my understanding Alchemist isn’t wildly different from their later iGPU’s though. Battlemage is supposed to be quite different though.

 

[Ethosik]

Hasn’t Intel pretty much always had iGPU’s since Core i? Not saying it has been a good GPU arch, but from my understanding Alchemist isn’t wildly different from their later iGPU’s though. Battlemage is supposed to be quite different though.

I don't think they all have iGPUs. I don't know the strategy and rules, but I recall having a 3rd and 5th gen Intel that did not have an iGPU. Which was a shame since that is the way to get QuickSync and it resulted in not being able to do some type of video work at the time.

 

[Pressure]

Hasn’t Intel pretty much always had iGPU’s since Core i? Not saying it has been a good GPU arch, but from my understanding Alchemist isn’t wildly different from their later iGPU’s though. Battlemage is supposed to be quite different though.

Intel released the i740 in 1998 and have had integrated solutions since 1999.

 

[salamanderjuice]

I don't think they all have iGPUs. I don't know the strategy and rules, but I recall having a 3rd and 5th gen Intel that did not have an iGPU. Which was a shame since that is the way to get QuickSync and it resulted in not being able to do some type of video work at the time.

They only don't have iGPUs when the GPU part of the chip fails and so they bin it as an F SKU and make it a smidge cheaper than the non-F model. AMD until recently with the 7000 would still design CPUs entirely without iGPUs while every Intel design for the past decade+ has included one.

And recently with the console APUs that have failed GPU components AMD has slapped them on a board and sold them.

AMD 4800S Desktop Kit review: playing PC games on the Xbox Series X CPU

What if you transplant the CPU from the Xbox Series X into a Windows gaming PC? AMD’s 4800S Desktop Kit allows just that - and we've tested it extensively!

www.eurogamer.net

 

[Ethosik]

They only don't have iGPUs when the GPU part of the chip fails and so they bin it as an F SKU and make it a smidge cheaper than the non-F model. AMD until recently with the 7000 would still design CPUs entirely without iGPUs while every Intel design for the past decade+ has included one.

And recently with the console APUs that have failed GPU components AMD has slapped them on a board and sold them.

AMD 4800S Desktop Kit review: playing PC games on the Xbox Series X CPU

What if you transplant the CPU from the Xbox Series X into a Windows gaming PC? AMD’s 4800S Desktop Kit allows just that - and we've tested it extensively!

www.eurogamer.net

I think that is new because my 5th gen is not a F series. Its i7-5820K

 

[salamanderjuice]

I think that is new because my 5th gen is not a F series. Its i7-5820K

Oh right. The absolute top end models (Intel Extreme) lacked them too sometimes. But they've been putting iGPUs in most chips for years.

 

[Irishman]

Either you use Whisky 🥃 or Terminal to launch the command.

Have you tried Capsule as an alternative to Whisky? Or is it not ready for the public yet?

 

[orionquest]

Whoa, checking out Steam today because Baldur's Gate III was just released and low and behold there is a Mac version!

Baldur's Gate 3 on Steam

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power.

store.steampowered.com

That's pretty good!