Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Marketshare will help, Apple spending cold hard cash for (timed) exclusives and ports will help even more. There are more Apple Silicon Macs than there are PS5's yet devs aren't switching to macOS as a lead development platform.

Bro what? How many of those Apple Silicon Macs match a PS5's horsepower, because there's almost 50 million PS5s out in the wild.

Sony has now sold over 46.6 million PS5 consoles

The company has sold 4.9 million PS5 units in its second financial quarter ending on September 30.

www.engadget.com

 

[diamond.g]

Bro what? How many of those Apple Silicon Macs match a PS5's horsepower, because there's almost 50 million PS5s out in the wild.

Sony has now sold over 46.6 million PS5 consoles

The company has sold 4.9 million PS5 units in its second financial quarter ending on September 30.

www.engadget.com

Matching the horsepower doesn't matter if the games look the same regardless (using RE8/4 & Lies of P as an example).

 

[MRMSFC]

Marketshare will help, Apple spending cold hard cash for (timed) exclusives and ports will help even more. There are more Apple Silicon Macs than there are PS5's yet devs aren't switching to macOS as a lead development platform.

Comparing the PS5 to Macs is fallacious I feel.

I’m not a game developer myself, but I feel it’s a safe assumption that Sony’s development kit is more friendly to game developers than Macs.

There’s also the fact that it’s outright a gaming console, so everyone who buys one is interested in games, versus Macs, who may not be.

 

[diamond.g]

Comparing the PS5 to Macs is fallacious I feel.

I’m not a game developer myself, but I feel it’s a safe assumption that Sony’s development kit is more friendly to game developers than Macs.

There’s also the fact that it’s outright a gaming console, so everyone who buys one is interested in games, versus Macs, who may not be.

I thought Macs were the best development platform?

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Matching the horsepower doesn't matter if the games look the same regardless (using RE8/4 & Lies of P as an example).

They don't look the same. Not even close. Image quality is vastly sharper on PS5 than on macOS since MetalFX is doing most of the work. Not to mention PS5 can get more stable framerate at higher resolutions than macOS can.

Comparing the PS5 to Macs is fallacious I feel.

I’m not a game developer myself, but I feel it’s a safe assumption that Sony’s development kit is more friendly to game developers than Macs.

It's not an assumption it's the truth. Sony is very open about the PS5 SDK. The console's lead architect Mark Cerny (who has a long history in the industry dating all the way back to the days of Atari) wanted the platform to be as easy to develop on as possible, taking into account what developers want since the PS4. It's how PlayStation became the king of consoles again.

This is in stark contrast to the PS3, where Sony made people learn a brand new architecture exclusive to their platform and they thought developers would flock to them because of the name branding alone...yeah that didn't work out how they wanted. A lot of third parties just skipped PS3 and focused on just Xbox 360 since it was a lot easier to develop for, and the ones that did stick around their games ran worse on PS3 than they did on Xbox 360 due to having to work around the complicated Cell architecture versus the 360 that used standard PowerPC with unified memory. Sony eventually managed to turn the PS3 around with a complete rework at a very cheap price and a vast library of quality exclusive games, but it took years and they lost billions on it. They were already giving a Post Mortem on the console just two years into it's life.

 

[quarkysg]

Though, I will say, that Proton has set a precedent for compatibility layers in place of native software.

I would say that “Linux” need compatibility layers such as Proton because I do not think any game developers will be willing to test their games on the multitudes of Linux distributions. That will be a nightmare scenario for them.

 

[MRMSFC]

I thought Macs were the best development platform?

I never said that, and I limited my scope of my argument to game development specifically.

I truthfully don’t know for sure. But there is some limiting factor that exists.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Marketshare will help, Apple spending cold hard cash for (timed) exclusives and ports will help even more. There are more Apple Silicon Macs than there are PS5's yet devs aren't switching to macOS as a lead development platform.

This does have an underlying presupposition that the Apple Silicon Mac owners are gamers in the same percentage as PS5 owners--which we know isn't true. And even among the Apple Silicon Mac gamers, a lot of them are like me. Even though I game, I do zero gaming on a Mac. I have a dedicated gaming laptop (or PC depending on what I have at the time).

So how big is this subset of a subset of gamers that own Apple Silicon Macs?

 

[diamond.g]

This does have an underlying presupposition that the Apple Silicon Mac owners are gamers in the same percentage as PS5 owners--which we know isn't true. And even among the Apple Silicon Mac gamers, a lot of them are like me. Even though I game, I do zero gaming on a Mac. I have a dedicated gaming laptop (or PC depending on what I have at the time).

So how big is this subset of a subset of gamers that own Apple Silicon Macs?

I'd assume the percentage of Mac owners that game is the same as the percentage of PC owners that game.

 

[salamanderjuice]

I'd assume the percentage of Mac owners that game is the same as the percentage of PC owners that game.

On Mac? I'd think based off Steam survey results that's a pretty poor assumption. The fact that other OS market share surveys have macOS closer to 10-20% whereas Steam has it at barely 2% suggests that Mac owners are far less likely to game on Mac. And I doubt that difference is explained by Mac gamers only using the MAS or GOG or something.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I'd assume the percentage of Mac owners that game is the same as the percentage of PC owners that game.

Yeah no. Not even close. The amount of gamers on PC is far greater than on Mac. There's a reason Sony started porting their coveted PlayStation exclusives to PC, as the amount of PC gamers is too great to ignore. Brazil for example is PC dominated since gaming PCs are vastly cheaper than game consoles there due to Brazilian Import Taxing. Steam alone has over 120 million monthly active users. And this is just for Steam, this isn't even factoring in games that aren't part of Steam like League of Losers or Escape from Tarkov or Minecraft.

 

[jeanlain]

You don't need Visual Studio. You can build games for Windows without it.

You do need to do a bunch of extra crap on macOS to make sure it's notarized. That's not a requirement of Windows or Linux.

Hardware costs are valid too. You need a Mac to run macOS, otherwise you're breaking Apple's ToS.

If you don't want to buy a Mac to develop a macOS apps, then it means you just don't want to support the Mac. Price is a bad excuse.
Because even if macOS worked in a VM, that's not how you test for compatibility with existing Macs. You'd need actual Mac hardware to make sure the game works, and not just one Mac model, but several (intel iGPUs, AMD GPUs, Apple SoCs).

It's the same for PCs. If you don't want to pay for an AMD card, then it means you're not interested in supporting AMD GPUs.

 

[diamond.g]

On Mac? I'd think based off Steam survey results that's a pretty poor assumption. The fact that other OS market share surveys have macOS closer to 10-20% whereas Steam has it at barely 2% suggests that Mac owners are far less likely to game on Mac. And I doubt that difference is explained by Mac gamers only using the MAS or GOG or something.

I'd assume the Steam survey results are a Chicken and Egg problem. Most of the games on Steam are not on macOS so those gamers are likely to use another system (PC or Console) to play them.

Yeah no. Not even close. The amount of gamers on PC is far greater than on Mac. There's a reason Sony started porting their coveted PlayStation exclusives to PC, as the amount of PC gamers is too great to ignore. Brazil for example is PC dominated since gaming PCs are vastly cheaper than game consoles there due to Brazilian Import Taxing. Steam alone has over 120 million monthly active users. And this is just for Steam, this isn't even factoring in games that aren't part of Steam like League of Losers or Escape from Tarkov or Minecraft.

As a percentage you think the PC has a higher percentage of game players than Mac? I'd guess they were both round 10% or so. Yes there are more PC gamers than Mac gamers but that is because there are more PC's overall than Mac's.



Outside of the Steam survey, we have no other means to glean the share of Mac gamers for games. The companies themselves sure aren't saying.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

I'd assume the percentage of Mac owners that game is the same as the percentage of PC owners that game.

When you factor in all the grandma and grandpa types and couple that with all the corporate PCs and Macs that can't be used at all for gaming, I wouldn't even know how to check the accuracy of that assumption. Looking at Steam percentages seems to indicate that however paltry the number of PC gamers is by percentage, it still overwhelms the percentage of Mac gamers.

 

[Homy]

So here is another opposite case where a small developer is actually working and delivering instead of moaning about Mac gaming. Resolution Games is a smalll Swedish dev that today released their first Mac game Demeo with very positive Steam reviews. The game is also a native port for Apple Silicon but works on Intel Macs too.

They've mostly done VR games and Demeo was also a VR game released first for Oculus Quest in 2021. In Feb 2023 it was released again on PS VR2 and now just 2 years later it's natively on Mac. It is also "in active development for Apple Vision Pro for fully virtual as well as mixed reality gameplay."

It's made in Unity so if you don't like Xcode there are always cross-platform solutions for "easier" ports.

Demeo on Steam

Adventurers, it’s time to unite! Gather your friends and battle the dark forces that have overtaken the world of Resolution Games' award-winning RPG dungeon crawler, Demeo. The next generation of tabletop adventure has arrived!

store.steampowered.com

 

[jeanlain]

On Mac? I'd think based off Steam survey results that's a pretty poor assumption. The fact that other OS market share surveys have macOS closer to 10-20% whereas Steam has it at barely 2% suggests that Mac owners are far less likely to game on Mac.

Participating to the steam survey is opt-in, not a random sampling. We don't know if Mac users are as likely to participate to the steam survey as PC users are.

 

[Homy]

Outside of the Steam survey, we have no other means to glean the share of Mac gamers for games. The companies themselves sure aren't saying.

One thing is sure. The highly popular Steam Deck which is often advertised here and used by "everybody" has only 0,1% of the user base on Steam at most.

 

[jeanlain]

You do need to do a bunch of extra crap on macOS to make sure it's notarized.

Yes, security is important to Apple.
And is notarization such an hassle? Maybe it didn't work well at the beginning, but for my own app, it's rather painless. It only takes a few extra clics.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I'd assume the Steam survey results are a Chicken and Egg problem. Most of the games on Steam are not on macOS so those gamers are likely to use another system (PC or Console) to play them.


As a percentage you think the PC has a higher percentage of game players than Mac? I'd guess they were both round 10% or so. Yes there are more PC gamers than Mac gamers but that is because there are more PC's overall than Mac's.



Outside of the Steam survey, we have no other means to glean the share of Mac gamers for games. The companies themselves sure aren't saying.

Valve literally said one of the reasons they cancelled support for macOS in Counter Strike 2 was because Mac players were less than 1% of all Counter Strike players, both inactive and active.

There’s no Mac version of Counter-Strike 2 because there are no Mac players

Mac owners make up “less than 1 percent of active CS:GO players.”…

arstechnica.com

 

[salamanderjuice]

Yes, security is important to Apple.
And is notarization such an hassle? Maybe it didn't work well at the beginning, but for my own app, it's rather painless. It only takes a few extra clics.

Is your own app cross-platform (non-Apple platforms) or does it entirely target Apple platforms and is written in Xcode?

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

One thing is sure. The highly popular Steam Deck which is often advertised here and used by "everybody" has only 0,1% of the user base on Steam at most.

You are really insecure about people liking the Steam Deck I noticed. Hell you've been like this ever since Linux overtook macOS in the Steam Hardware Surveys.

 

[salamanderjuice]

One thing is sure. The highly popular Steam Deck which is often advertised here and used by "everybody" has only 0,1% of the user base on Steam at most.

It's already likely higher than 0.1%. The Steam Deck uses a custom APU only used by it, which is recorded as AMD Custom GPU 0405 and currently is 0.59% of the GPUs surveyed on Steam.

 

[salamanderjuice]

Participating to the steam survey is opt-in, not a random sampling. We don't know if Mac users are as likely to participate to the steam survey as PC users are.

It's not really opt-in. You can kinda sorta force it but I doubt that's the main way people are entering. Valve doesn't say exactly how users are selected, so who knows if it's truly random or what the rationale is but I doubt most people are entering "steam://takesurvey/1" into their run box to do so.

EDIT: And it's entirely possible Valve could be flagging and removing these self-reports too.

 

[Homy]

What this guy says is mostly subjective, except perhaps about the yearly $100 cost of the developer program. But is Visual Studio free?
And are their games any good?

Pirate Software doesn’t sound honest in his story. There is no license key for Xcode. It’s free to download and use for anyone. Only if you decide to sign and sell your app on App Store you have to pay $99 a year. So he could make the game in Xcode and sell it on Steam since he has a developer account there. Steam charges $100 for each game as a one-time fee. Once you’ve sold for $1000 you get the fee back.

So they had even a Beta game for Mac which they could have released on Steam without paying for App Store. He should’ve just said the real reason is they only had 0.02% Mac customers instead of complaining about buying a Mac and paying for App Store. Anything for the YT algoritm I guess.

 

[Homy]