New Rumors of Overwatch on Mac Surface, but Blizzard Engineer Says Still 'No Plans' for Launch

[-BigMac-]

Yes it does. Go ask the developers who know their stuff.

Can you prove with stats how ANY game (outside of x-plane which was designed for mac) which uses metal and maintains competitive fps WHILE playing a visually demanding game like BF1, Crysis or any top-tier graphically impressive game compares to its windows counter part? My guess.. it doesnt. Because it gets squashed. every single time.
[doublepost=1509924872][/doublepost]

Yes it does. Go ask the developers who know their stuff.

EDIT: Take a look. This is from someone who probably knows more about Metal than anyone at blizzard.

Screenshot 2017-07-15 13.28.46.JPG

they "meet or exceed Boot Camp performance on several titles."
Those are definitely Metal specific games. They probably dont have Direct X equivalents, so its impossible to compare them to their direct x counterparts.

But im glad Bioshock released 4 years later, on mac, can hit 30fps
[doublepost=1509924959][/doublepost]

Can you prove with stats how ANY game (outside of x-plane which was designed for mac) which uses metal and maintains competitive fps WHILE playing a visually demanding game like BF1, Crysis or any top-tier graphically impressive game compares to its windows counter part? My guess.. it doesnt. Because it gets squashed. every single time.
[doublepost=1509924872][/doublepost]
they "meet or exceed Boot Camp performance on several titles."
Those are definitely Metal specific games. They probably dont have Direct X equivalents, so its impossible to compare them to their direct x counterparts.

But im glad Bioshock released 4 years later, on mac, can hit 30fps

The more i speak the more I know hardware is the limitation here. Bringing me back to my wholistic argument. Mac doesnt care for gaming.

If they did, we would have GTX 10 series in their line ups.
As it so happens to be, they dont. not even close

 

[iReality85]

The same business case that justified the development of all their previous games maybe? Methinks the team developing overwatch is a different one and its manager doesn't care about Macs.

Blizzard don't use Vulkan for their Windows games, so that's not a factor. I don't believe they use OpenGL either. And Apple cannot use DirectX. At least, Metal is modern API that is better suited than openGL for modern games and GPUs.
And BTW, Metal already existed more than a year before Vulkan and preceded DX12.

Blizzard’s legacy properties use off-the-shelf rendering APIs. Both the Starcraft and WoW engines utilize Direct X for PC. I know newer properties like HotS and Hearthstone utilize Unity, much to the Mac’s benefit.

But a new game is a new game, and like any major developer house, Blizzard does create its own custom engines when they feel it bests suits the game, and they did so with Overwatch. You discussed business proposition earlier. Well, if Blizzard were to release Overwatch for Mac, they’d have to rewrite the engine.

 

[Eric5h5]

Well, if Blizzard were to release Overwatch for Mac, they’d have to rewrite the engine.

That's unlikely since it's already cross-platform and runs on PS4. Mostly they'd need to rewrite the renderer to use Metal. Still not trivial, but far more reasonable than rewriting the entire engine.

Can you prove with stats how ANY game (outside of x-plane which was designed for mac) which uses metal and maintains competitive fps WHILE playing a visually demanding game like BF1, Crysis or any top-tier graphically impressive game compares to its windows counter part? My guess.. it doesnt. Because it gets squashed. every single time.

Crysis? You can play Crysis fine on integrated graphics these days; it's 10 years old. The "but will it play Crysis" meme is obsolete now. Anyway, when they ported The Witness to macOS using Metal, they said it outperforms Windows at least for some hardware. It's not the most visually demanding game of all time, but it's more demanding than Crysis. Also, it was one of the first Mac games ever using Metal and there have been improvements since then.

Those are definitely Metal specific games. They probably dont have Direct X equivalents, so its impossible to compare them to their direct x counterparts.

Er, no. Since you don't seem to know who Brad Oliver is, he works for Feral doing ports. (Of Windows games that use Direct3D.)

But im glad Bioshock released 4 years later, on mac, can hit 30fps

Bioshock is from 2016. Perhaps you're using a time machine and are posting from 2020, but where the rest of us are, it's 2017. (This is the remastered version, since that's apparently not obvious.)

The more i speak the more I know hardware is the limitation here.

That's...the exact opposite point you were apparently trying to make earlier, but yes. Hardware, not Metal.

Anyway. Publicly saying "no plans" despite some evidence to the contrary is standard PR stuff. I wouldn't read anything into it one way or another. But I also wouldn't get my hopes up too much.

--Eric

 

[-BigMac-]

That's unlikely since it's already cross-platform and runs on PS4. Mostly they'd need to rewrite the renderer to use Metal. Still not trivial, but far more reasonable than rewriting the entire engine.


Crysis? You can play Crysis fine on integrated graphics these days; it's 10 years old. The "but will it play Crysis" meme is obsolete now. Anyway, when they ported The Witness to macOS using Metal, they said it outperforms Windows at least for some hardware. It's not the most visually demanding game of all time, but it's more demanding than Crysis. Also, it was one of the first Mac games ever using Metal and there have been improvements since then.


Er, no. Since you don't seem to know who Brad Oliver is, he works for Feral doing ports. (Of Windows games that use Direct3D.)


Bioshock is from 2016. Perhaps you're using a time machine and are posting from 2020, but where the rest of us are, it's 2017. (This is the remastered version, since that's apparently not obvious.)


That's...the exact opposite point you were apparently trying to make earlier, but yes. Hardware, not Metal.

Anyway. Publicly saying "no plans" despite some evidence to the contrary is standard PR stuff. I wouldn't read anything into it one way or another. But I also wouldn't get my hopes up too much.

--Eric

- Crysis can be played on integrated graphics. Im talking ultra at 100fps. Can Metal do that? Who cares about ultra low settings. We're talking AAA maxed titles, not 480p AOE
- still underperforms compared to boot camp on res and fps.
- Metal doesnt have the resources and attention it needs to catch up to directX, and the gaming specific hardware of macs is years behind anything competitors are doing.

 

[Bustycat]

Metal has already been the priority for World of Warcraft, as bugs related to OpenGL are not getting fixed soon. I don't think Blizzard really does not care about macOS users.

 

[Fender2112]

The Overwatch icon has always been on the Mac version of the Battle.net app. It's been there since Overwatch was in beta. I don't why Blizzard put it there. But they have never had intentions of releasing a Mac version.

This old news....very old news.

 

[Eric5h5]

- Crysis can be played on integrated graphics. Im talking ultra at 100fps. Can Metal do that?

No reason why it wouldn't, given the same hardware required to do so that Windows requires. Again, 10-year-old tech.

still underperforms compared to boot camp on res and fps.

Except it evidently doesn't.

Metal doesnt have the resources and attention it needs to catch up to directX

That doesn't actually seem to be true, though. Remember that Metal isn't limited to macOS, it's also on iOS. Also there's been quite a bit of grumbling about DX12, though I don't know what the state of that is lately.

Edit: since Total War: Warhammer has a benchmark, I ran it with the 1920x1080 Ultra settings as detailed here. I have a R9 280x; the DX12 fps for that card is 24.1fps. My Metal fps is...er, 37.4, ran it several times to be sure. Which makes me suspect that maybe they changed the benchmark at some point, since it doesn't seem possible that Metal could be that much faster, especially since they're using a much newer CPU. This is the "dwarfs vs. greenskins" built-in benchmark for what it's worth. Still, it suggests Metal is quite competitive.

--Eric

 

[Stella]

Buy a gaming PC or an external GPU for your Mac and use boot camp.

Mac gaming is crap. Better performance and a lot more games under windows and apps such to enhance game play such as voice attack, for example.

Windows offers a far better gaming experience than a Mac could ever do.

( IMO - consoles suck )

 

[Regime2008]

Again, no. It doesn't have to be this way. Metal can compete with other APIs. Those who know how to port a game (i.e., Feral) have done an amazing job with Metal, and regularly port the most demanding games to the Mac.

I don't know about that... Looking at the list of supported games, is extremely anemic compared to PC.
https://www.feralinteractive.com/en/mac-games/alphabetical/
https://www.feralinteractive.com/en/mac-games/alphabetical/
Not only that but the most demanding games on there are Batman Arkham Asylum and Hitman, and those games aren't even what you would consider "optimized", even on PC. Even if Apple could get the library of games that PC has, it still wouldn't be considered a platform acceptable for gaming, due to the GPU's Apple uses in their extremely high priced Mac's.

 

[littyboy]

Why would you game on a MacOS? The only reason why I hackintosh.

 

[-BigMac-]

No reason why it wouldn't, given the same hardware required to do so that Windows requires. Again, 10-year-old tech.


Except it evidently doesn't.


That doesn't actually seem to be true, though. Remember that Metal isn't limited to macOS, it's also on iOS. Also there's been quite a bit of grumbling about DX12, though I don't know what the state of that is lately.

Edit: since Total War: Warhammer has a benchmark, I ran it with the 1920x1080 Ultra settings as detailed here. I have a R9 280x; the DX12 fps for that card is 24.1fps. My Metal fps is...er, 37.4, ran it several times to be sure. Which makes me suspect that maybe they changed the benchmark at some point, since it doesn't seem possible that Metal could be that much faster, especially since they're using a much newer CPU. This is the "dwarfs vs. greenskins" built-in benchmark for what it's worth. Still, it suggests Metal is quite competitive.

--Eric

- The same hardware doesnt perform better on mac. This is evidenced daily with bootcamp on macs. DirectX/Windows crush Metal minus a handful of optimized mac games.

- i think it does? refer to previous point

- Having a gaming platform share resources with iOS just lends credit to the fact, mac gaming is designed for Angry birds and highly optimized, dummed down versions of actual fledged games from Windows.

- I think for those benchmarks, the mac game came out later than the windows title. As such was heavily dumbed down, and I think you will find the graphics are nowhere near as flattering. (Looking to be proven wrong here though?).

 

[expiredyogurt]

man i am in the process of getting rid of windows from my daily use due to the shady practices of MS and this game is the only thing that is preventing me from fully migrating to mac.

if i get a full refund on this game then i have no issue moving. i just cant justify stop playing this game after spending 60$ for this.

just port it to mac already. i can't stand using windows and i want to get rid of my desktop due to me travelling and moving so often

 

[Eric5h5]

- The same hardware doesnt perform better on mac. This is evidenced daily with bootcamp on macs. DirectX/Windows crush Metal minus a handful of optimized mac games.

You haven't demonstrated how Metal gets "crushed," you're just saying it like it's supposed to be self-evident with no evidence. There aren't even a whole lot of Metal games yet; perhaps you're getting it confused with OpenGL. Did you just not bother reading the link I provided direct from a developer working on The Witness, saying how the Metal version was faster on the same hardware?

- Having a gaming platform share resources with iOS just lends credit to the fact, mac gaming is designed for Angry birds and highly optimized, dummed down versions of actual fledged games from Windows.

The Witness on iOS isn't dumbed down, Rome Total War isn't dumbed down, The Talos Principle isn't dumbed down, etc. Sorry, but recent iOS hardware is very capable and runs full games. I think the main issue at this point is squeezing content into the 4GB file size limit. Do you actually know anything at all about the Metal API? With Metal 2 I can't think of anything important that's missing offhand.

By the way, you're saying "highly optimized" like it's a bad thing, which is pretty funny. That's actually one of the main reasons for Metal in the first place, to be more optimized and have higher framerates. Just so you're aware, optimization is good and in general developers spend a lot of time doing that.

- I think for those benchmarks, the mac game came out later than the windows title. As such was heavily dumbed down, and I think you will find the graphics are nowhere near as flattering.

It's the exact same game and isn't "dumbed down" in any way. Occasionally Mac ports have had an option or two disabled if OpenGL didn't support them, but no options are disabled in TW: Warhammer. By now it's obvious you're just grasping at straws and ignoring anything that goes against your narrative...kinda hard to have a realistic discussion this way. If I post screenshots demonstrating that nothing's missing, what excuse will you come up with then?

--Eric

 

[rtomyj]

- The same hardware doesnt perform better on mac. This is evidenced daily with bootcamp on macs. DirectX/Windows crush Metal minus a handful of optimized mac games.

- i think it does? refer to previous point

- Having a gaming platform share resources with iOS just lends credit to the fact, mac gaming is designed for Angry birds and highly optimized, dummed down versions of actual fledged games from Windows.

- I think for those benchmarks, the mac game came out later than the windows title. As such was heavily dumbed down, and I think you will find the graphics are nowhere near as flattering. (Looking to be proven wrong here though?).

I think your posts are the biggest reason why Mac shouldn't be serious about gaming... or at least not like Windows. Like The Android camp, gamers care way too much about specs while neglecting anything else. We get it, the amount of polygons make your gameplay so much better. Except, it might not. Or not for everyone.

Anywho;

- Since when is optimization a bad thing? All games SHOULD be optimized. Games are software, good software runs better, better means good. Don't know how recent you jumped on the gamer bandwagon, but games used to be so optimized they literally pushed the boundary of the limitations their consoles had AND were amazing in their own rights at their time. Nowadays games are too focused on the wrong things pleasing people chasing numbers. Chase the dream in Windows, you'll have company.

- Portable software is good software. Writing once and not hard coding yourself into a corner is what the epitome of computer science (algorithms). Again, how is that bad? How does it limit one platform? You do know you can target only one platform if necessary, right?

- yea don't want those 'gamers' on Mac. Do I want a good looking game? Sure. Is that gonna make the story good? Is that going to make the gameplay intuitive? Is that going to make me want to buy a game? Naw.

And to another one of your points. Metal came out about 3 years ago and it's made some serious strides. To ignore Metals gains is foolish.

Many types of gamers and from experience, the stereotypical once are not really those who play for enjoyment and escape. Rather, they actually believe a computer needs to be top of the line and don't demand more of the studios making bank while not investing enough into optimization and actually good developers. I wouldn't want them on a platform I get behind. So you're right, gaming on Mac shouldn't be a priority but making games should.

 

[jeanlain]

Those are definitely Metal specific games. They probably dont have Direct X equivalents, so its impossible to compare them to their direct x counterparts.

Your reply makes no sense and proves you don't know what you're talking about.
Bootcamp = directX.
And Feral specialises in porting DX games.
[doublepost=1509951427][/doublepost]

I don't know about that... Looking at the list of supported games, is extremely anemic compared to PC.
https://www.feralinteractive.com/en/mac-games/alphabetical/

Duh. Feral is a single company. Where did I say Feral ported most PC game releases? Of course they can't. But among the games they ported, there are some that were quite demanding at the time of release, including Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor, Tomb Raider, and they're working on the last Deus Ex and most probably Rise of the tomb Raider.
And no, they aren't working on EA, Ubisoft or Bethesda games because those apparently don't want to have anything to do with Macs.
[doublepost=1509953092][/doublepost]

- The same hardware doesnt perform better on mac. This is evidenced daily with bootcamp on macs. DirectX/Windows crush Metal minus a handful of optimized mac games.

Where's that evidence?
Plus, this argument is bunk as you're basically saying that a game that is not optimised would run more poorly on the Mac. Of course if will. Virtually all Mac games are Windows port. They were coded with Windows in mind and then ported to the Mac, which often requires workarounds to make them work.
If they were first coded with Metal in mind, the situation would be opposite.

Anyway, performance of Metal games is fairly descent, according to reports:
https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/683elm/list_of_macos_games_that_use_the_metal_api_for/
Blizzard games= basically as fast as on Windows (YMMV, because ars technical posted benchmarks where DX was well ahead).
The Witness: faster on Metal for integrated graphics (no report on other systems)

F1 2016: faster on Metal than DX (on MacBook Pros).
F1 2017 has been tested here (on Macrumors) as being slower on Metal, but not that much (it's far from being "crushed"). This was tested by someone who had F1 2016 running slower that the DX version as well, so possibly the game can be faster on other Macs.
Total war: warhammer has been reported as being only slightly slower that the DX version, on an AMD GPU (it appears to perform poorly on nVidia, but nVidia cards don't support Metal well anyway).
I tested Hitman myself and it's 10-15% slower than the DX 11 version at lower resolution, and just as fast at very high resolution.
I tested War thunder, and it's quite a bit slower than the DX version, while being much faster than the openGL version. But it's hard to compare because fps are capped at 60 for the Metal version and results make little sense (greater performance difference between OSes at high resolution), so I suppose the game is not well optimised for Metal.

Finally, Feral interactive (Brad Oliver) say themselves that their Metal games run 80%-110% as fast as their Windows counterparts.

And remember that Metal is still fairly new so performance differences with DX should decrease as drivers and game engines get optimised.

 

[Regime2008]

[doublepost=1509951427][/doublepost]
Duh. Feral is a single company. Where did I say Feral ported most PC game releases? Of course they can't. But among the games they ported, there are some that were quite demanding at the time of release, including Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor, Tomb Raider, and they're working on the last Deus Ex and most probably Rise of the tomb Raider.
And no, they aren't working on EA, Ubisoft or Bethesda games because those apparently don't want to have anything to do with Macs.
[doublepost=1509953092][/doublepost]

Which goes back to my original point of having a small library. You mentioned Feral as if they were going to have a plethora of games, and more or less some actual DEMANDING games. So I checked them out, and we vastly different opinions on what demanding means. If developers and publishers don't care to work on Mac titles, then gaming on a Mac could never be something feasible. Not only that but there are no Macs that really have hardware to really play games on. And no, I am not talking about turning all sliders in the graphic settings to low, and decreasing resolution, etc. I mean like maxing out all settings, running at 2k resolution with over 100fps. This will never happen on Mac. Apple has no intention on this, and you should be able to see it with their lackluster of options in their desktop/laptop lineups.

 

[Janichsan]

Basically Blizzard is saying the time and talent investment is not worth it compared to the return on that investment.

And yet, Blizzard found it worthwhile to port all others of their games to the Mac.

Metal? None of the major houses care about Metal. Aspyr and Feral care about Metal and that's about it.

And Epic, who adapted UE4 to support Metal. And Blizzard, who currently use Metal in WoW, StarCraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm.

Who cares at this stage though tbh. Nearly 2018 already and mac is MAYBE getting a 2016 game. Lel.

A game that Blizzard keeps supporting, constantly updates, and for which they obviously have long-term plans.

Edit: since Total War: Warhammer has a benchmark, I ran it with the 1920x1080 Ultra settings as detailed here. I have a R9 280x; the DX12 fps for that card is 24.1fps. My Metal fps is...er, 37.4, ran it several times to be sure.

Well, in all fairness, DX12 is still regularly found to be outperformed by the older DX11. So that might be a better comparison.

 

[-BigMac-]

Your reply makes no sense and proves you don't know what you're talking about.
Bootcamp = directX.
And Feral specialises in porting DX games.
[doublepost=1509951427][/doublepost]
Duh. Feral is a single company. Where did I say Feral ported most PC game releases? Of course they can't. But among the games they ported, there are some that were quite demanding at the time of release, including Mad Max, Shadow of Mordor, Tomb Raider, and they're working on the last Deus Ex and most probably Rise of the tomb Raider.
And no, they aren't working on EA, Ubisoft or Bethesda games because those apparently don't want to have anything to do with Macs.
[doublepost=1509953092][/doublepost]
Where's that evidence?
Plus, this argument is bunk as you're basically saying that a game that is not optimised would run more poorly on the Mac. Of course if will. Virtually all Mac games are Windows port. They were coded with Windows in mind and then ported to the Mac, which often requires workarounds to make them work.
If they were first coded with Metal in mind, the situation would be opposite.

Anyway, performance of Metal games is fairly descent, according to reports:
https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/683elm/list_of_macos_games_that_use_the_metal_api_for/
Blizzard games= basically as fast as on Windows (YMMV, because ars technical posted benchmarks where DX was well ahead).
The Witness: faster on Metal for integrated graphics (no report on other systems)

F1 2016: faster on Metal than DX (on MacBook Pros).
F1 2017 has been tested here (on Macrumors) as being slower on Metal, but not that much (it's far from being "crushed"). This was tested by someone who had F1 2016 running slower that the DX version as well, so possibly the game can be faster on other Macs.
Total war: warhammer has been reported as being only slightly slower that the DX version, on an AMD GPU (it appears to perform poorly on nVidia, but nVidia cards don't support Metal well anyway).
I tested Hitman myself and it's 10-15% slower than the DX 11 version at lower resolution, and just as fast at very high resolution.
I tested War thunder, and it's quite a bit slower than the DX version, while being much faster than the openGL version. But it's hard to compare because fps are capped at 60 for the Metal version and results make little sense (greater performance difference between OSes at high resolution), so I suppose the game is not well optimised for Metal.

Finally, Feral interactive (Brad Oliver) say themselves that their Metal games run 80%-110% as fast as their Windows counterparts.

And remember that Metal is still fairly new so performance differences with DX should decrease as drivers and game engines get optimised.

Who cares about Integrated graphics in gaming? LOL do you also do your Final Cut editing on your Pentium 2?

3 of your 4 examples, are faster on Direct X.

Thanks for proving my point?


[doublepost=1509959426][/doublepost]

I think your posts are the biggest reason why Mac shouldn't be serious about gaming... or at least not like Windows. Like The Android camp, gamers care way too much about specs while neglecting anything else. We get it, the amount of polygons make your gameplay so much better. Except, it might not. Or not for everyone.

Anywho;

- Since when is optimization a bad thing? All games SHOULD be optimized. Games are software, good software runs better, better means good. Don't know how recent you jumped on the gamer bandwagon, but games used to be so optimized they literally pushed the boundary of the limitations their consoles had AND were amazing in their own rights at their time. Nowadays games are too focused on the wrong things pleasing people chasing numbers. Chase the dream in Windows, you'll have company.

- Portable software is good software. Writing once and not hard coding yourself into a corner is what the epitome of computer science (algorithms). Again, how is that bad? How does it limit one platform? You do know you can target only one platform if necessary, right?

- yea don't want those 'gamers' on Mac. Do I want a good looking game? Sure. Is that gonna make the story good? Is that going to make the gameplay intuitive? Is that going to make me want to buy a game? Naw.

And to another one of your points. Metal came out about 3 years ago and it's made some serious strides. To ignore Metals gains is foolish.

Many types of gamers and from experience, the stereotypical once are not really those who play for enjoyment and escape. Rather, they actually believe a computer needs to be top of the line and don't demand more of the studios making bank while not investing enough into optimization and actually good developers. I wouldn't want them on a platform I get behind. So you're right, gaming on Mac shouldn't be a priority but making games should.

I agree with most of your points. Theyre accurate.
Where I dont agree 100% is saying good story and gameplay is at question here.
We're not questioning whether a good story is more important than graphics.
We are discussing whether metal is anywhere near as good as direct x.
Limited to a few outliers, no its not. Even when asked for examples, the examples lose out to DirectX vast majority of the time.

Story line is definitely a huge part of a game.. but for the amount apple charges for their hardware, and how much they hype metal.. its a no contest. Until Apple lifts its hardware gaming game, and focus more on it. this is a walk over, unfortunately.



Bring out a Metal timeline which proves to me Apple are taking it seriously, with ongoing support for AAA titles, bring out an expandable Mac Pro with next years GTX 20 series, and I will line up for a week.

 

[chucker23n1]

Blizzard don't use Vulkan for their Windows games, so that's not a factor. I don't believe they use OpenGL either.

What do they use on their PS4 port of Overwatch? Probably OpenGL or Vulkan?
[doublepost=1509959726][/doublepost]

Yes it does. Go ask the developers who know their stuff.

EDIT: Take a look. This is from someone who probably knows more about Metal than anyone at blizzard.

Screenshot 2017-07-15 13.28.46.JPG

Did they lock their account after you posted this (are they being flooded because of the Overwatch story?), or did you just post a screenshot from a locked account?

 

[Janichsan]

What do they use on their PS4 port of Overwatch? Probably OpenGL or Vulkan?

GNM or GNMX, like almost everyone else. Vulkan isn't even an option on the PS4 (or the Xbox One, for that matter).

Did they lock their account after you posted this (are they being flooded because of the Overwatch story?), or did you just post a screenshot from a locked account?

Neither, nor: Brad Oliver's Twitter account is set to protected, i.e. you can only see the tweets when you are one of his followers.

 

[jeanlain]

And Epic, who adapted UE4 to support Metal. And Blizzard, who currently use Metal in WoW, StarCraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm.

Not to mention Unity, which produces one of the most widely used game engine out there.
And if you count iOS, virtually all major game developers use Metal.
[doublepost=1509964942][/doublepost]

Well, in all fairness, DX12 is still regularly found to be outperformed by the older DX11. So that might be a better comparison.

Not in this game, DX12 is quite a bit faster than DX11 on AMD GPUs. I'm still surprised by Eric's results though.

Some here have to admit the facts. Metal works and is more than adequate for a game like overwatch. And it's not as if blizzard absolutely needed OpenGL. Recent Macs also have the guts to run this game.
I'm inclined to think that the reason given for not porting overwatch is not the actual reason, but one that is easier to provide. Put the blame on Apple instead of admitting that you don't care.
[doublepost=1509965470][/doublepost]

Remember that Metal isn't limited to macOS, it's also on iOS. Also there's been quite a bit of grumbling about DX12, though I don't know what the state of that is lately.

There are more Metal games on the Mac than DX12 games on Windows. The number of releases in 2017 far exceeded that of DX12 games.
And as you say, that's not counting iOS.
Right now, Metal is used much more widely than DX12.

 

[jeanlain]

Edit: since Total War: Warhammer has a benchmark, I ran it with the 1920x1080 Ultra settings as detailed here. I have a R9 280x; the DX12 fps for that card is 24.1fps. My Metal fps is...er, 37.4, ran it several times to be sure. Which makes me suspect that maybe they changed the benchmark at some point, since it doesn't seem possible that Metal could be that much faster, especially since they're using a much newer CPU.

EDIT: nevermind. I was about to mention possible CPU differences.

 

[iReality85]

Some here have to admit the facts. Metal works and is more than adequate for a game like overwatch. And it's not as if blizzard absolutely needed OpenGL. Recent Macs also have the guts to run this game.

I'm inclined to think that the reason given for not porting overwatch is not the actual reason, but one that is easier to provide. Put the blame on Apple instead of admitting that you don't care.

Says who? Says you? What grounds or evidence do you have to support that Metal is more than adequate for playing Overwatch? Are you a Blizzard software engineer for Overwatch?

The main article even quotes the engineer as saying, "There are several technology decisions that Apple has made that has made it a little difficult for us to release Overwatch in the way we want it to be consumed, and that is why we haven't pursued it."

Fair enough.

But your argument comes down to second guessing Blizzard's reasoning and because other games use Metal. That's not a valid argument- that is personal griping. We get it, you don't like Blizzard's decision.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Windows 10 is my gaming OS with hardware custom built for gaming and liquid cooled and overclocked. Keeps my Mac focused on business use.

 

[Reason077]

It's been a while since I had the battle.net launcher installed (I'm in a self-imposed exile from Blizzard games, they're too damn addictive!). But I seem to remember the "overwatch" tab was always present even on Mac where the game is not available. You just got ads and promotional stuff when you click on it...
[doublepost=1509982846][/doublepost]

Blizzard’s legacy properties use off-the-shelf rendering APIs. Both the Starcraft and WoW engines utilize Direct X for PC. I know newer properties like HotS and Hearthstone utilize Unity, much to the Mac’s benefit.

Heathstone is the only Blizzard title that uses Unity, AFAIK.

HotS is built on the Starcraft II engine, which is a custom engine developed in house by Blizzard, but using some 3rd-party technologies like Havok physics. Likewise, both the WoW and Starcraft II engines were derived from the Warcraft 3 engine...