Their development documentation and tools are free to use.
It was 10 times smaller on Intel cpus and AMD gpus as well. Hint: it’s not ARM, it’s not Apple, you should be screaming at the people refusing to port games.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Should Apple make a deal for Mac games with Microsoft or Sony?
- Thread starter Bodhitree
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Apple has money to throw around if they wanted to get the games, that they don’t generally means they don’t think it is worth while.
Apple funded Blender so nothing stopping them from funding a game development house. I think it's a silent internal policy not to mention gaming to give the appearance that Mac platform is for professionals. You want games? Go buy an iPad or iPhone to access Apple Arcade.
https://www.blender.org/press/apple-joins-blender-development-fund/
https://www.blender.org/press/apple-joins-blender-development-fund/
So, wait. Can Apple buy their way out of it or not??
If Apple buys a AAA developer, or contracts with them for x titles over x years, then that developer is paid to think it’s worth while.
Wouldn’t we still have people complaining that they’re not really doing it for the good of the Mac? That they’re only doing it for the cash, and that they’ve sold out!?
I guess it depends. If Apple bought Feral Interactive or Aspyr Games and threw money at porting games (and maybe coming up with exclusive IP) would that be better than say buying CD Projekt Red and having those devs make games for the Mac as well as other platforms?
It is a chicken and egg situation. If there are no gamers on the Mac, then game developers are not going to invest money in Mac games. The Apple hardware is becoming more than capable, especially with Apple Silicon at relatively affordable prices. Apple is the only one capable of breaking these cycle, it is a long game and would cost a lot of money to invest into game studios, to port to the Mac and bag some exclusive titles, but eventually if YouTube channels like LTT start getting Macs and saying gaming on Mac now is actually as good or better than PC gaming now, then people would eventually start shifting across.
The standard M1's are already incredible value for money for the power and the efficiency. Apple could really use this as an opportunity to shift perceptions on what a Mac is, both for the average user and power users.
We’ve been over this in this very thread, and many threads before. It doesn’t make any financial sense for Apple to shovel money into Mac gaming.
I think it’s just a foregone conclusion that gaming will never, until the heat death of the universe, be good on Mac. Passable? Sure, but it’s a tertiary priority at best for major publishers.
It has been this way since the goddamn late 90’s. It didn’t change with the Intel transition, it’s not gonna change with the Apple Silicon transition, and unless 90% of PCs suddenly disappear, it will likely be unchanged forever.
Ah...and now the truth peeks out from behind all the ********. Microsoft just spent HALF OF ALL OF THEIR TOTAL CASH for Activision and you have people here like, "Eh, well...there's no real money it."
There's a Hell of a lot of money in it. Apple is just bad it like a wallflower at a house party but they can and should find some contributors to help them bridge the gaps.
I think you’re oversimplifying the problem. IMO, cost is a major overlooked component. You might have the best hardware, but if it’s still expensive, why would consumers shift. In addition, I think Apple would have to bring more than just exclusivity to even plant a seed of a diaspora.
So are high-end pc gaming laptops, against which Apple squares off against in their marketing slides and material (equipped with the RTX 3080, and so on).
That’s the market that Apple is taking on with their offerings and their pricing. We can argue about exactly how successfully they’re doing it (or not), but they just aren’t taking on $600 consoles or sub- $1000 PCs. These are Apple’s first gen of their own custom silicon, introduced in the middle of a PC market with unprecedented chip shortages and high-end RTX GPUs that you can’t even buy anywhere close to MSRP.
I would argue that we’ll see M2 and M3-equipped Macs that are less expensive than comparable RT offerings, before we see the opposite happen.
Again, just my opinion. I don’t KNOW anything.
If Apple's trying to get to three trillions $s, then they would best avoid gaming methinks.
This is like hearing all of the arguments that iPhones have so much raw power and that they should compete against consoles directly (so Steam, Switch, PS4/5, Xb1, XsX/S). I play games on iOS and Android, and I know there can be sufficient overlap between the 2, but they also have their fair share of differences.
I'm glad I got a 9th gen iPad, and while I use it as a gloried gaming device, I still have reasons to game on PC. It seems easier for MacOS people just get a console or Windows machine to get into gaming, just like how creative types suck it up and get a Mac (even though viable alternatives do exist)
It's always irritating when people maintain some idea that if Apple pursues games in a significant way it's somehow going to curse the business and make everything else they are doing horrible and no longer profitable. The fact is that adding actual core gaming would only serve to expand what they already have. There's literally no downside.
Last edited:
I outlined the exact scenario to what Apple can expect “getting into gaming” in the second post in this thread.
There is zero benefit to Apple, and the gaming crowd doesn’t want Apple. Not a single person stands to benefit from Apple trying gaming, besides maybe a few whiners in this thread.
I guess I don't understand why they would bother making Metal gaming friendly at all on the Mac if they dislike gaming as much as you imply they do.
Nowhere did I say “Apple dislikes gaming”.
What I’ve implied is that Apple is aware that there’s no point in going after desktop gaming and that it’s a huge waste of time and money.
You’ve likewise illustrated my point in that Apple HAS the frameworks for games to be ported to MacOS. They’ve done the footwork of making the tools available to devs.
The devs aren’t making anything for MacOS despite this.
I’ll outline the situation once again:
Culture:
1. Game devs (bigger game devs especially) flat out don’t care about MacOS. This should be readily apparent by now.
2. Desktop gamers HATE Apple. The diy mentality (which Apple is demonstrably against) is ingrained into the culture and Apple and Apple users are widely mocked. This crowd will not be convinced by any olive branch.
These top two points should be reason enough to convince anyone that whining about gaming on Mac is pointless. But I’ll continue.
Rebuttal to scenarios that I’ve seen proposed:
1. Apple should buy a studio and release Mac exclusive games:
Reality: Apple spends a ****tillion money on a studio and releases some well polished, fun titles that nobody plays because the core audience isn’t going to go out and spend $600 absolute minimum to play a handful of games at best. Moreover, sales of Macs specifically FOR this Apple exclusive game wouldn’t see any significant uptick in sales, and certainly not enough to justify the studio acquisition alone. Ignoring the costs of developing a AAA blockbuster game.
This also doesn’t solve the fact that many other games would still be unavailable.
2. Apple should build a gaming Mac!
Reality:
A gaming focused Mac needs to have a few things:
a. An x86 processor, because that’s the most compatible with games.
b. An off the shelf gpu, currently NVidia is the big dick so let’s go with them
c. Windows because that’s the most compatible OS with games.
That’s just a standard gaming PC.
The fact is that aside from the culture that is very resistant to MacOS, any avenues to capture any gaming marketshare are guaranteed failure.
3. Financial:
I’ve touched on this in my above points but here’s the big 600 lb gorilla:
Apple already makes the most profit from gaming. Mobile is bigger than console and desktop combined in dollars and amount of warm bodies. And Apple has exclusive access to 30% of revenues from the most powerful phones and an essential monopoly on the tablet market.
As much as desktop gamers want to wag their e-peen about being able to play GTA5 and Skyrim for a decade now or have fun finding bugs and crashes in Cyberpunk 2077, they’re a (very vocal and obnoxious) minority.
In fact, there’s something else I’d like to touch on about iOS vs. desktop.
Right now, I’m able to buy GTA vice city and roller coaster tycoon classic on the App Store. Genshin Impact and formerly Fortnite which I’ve heard are/were two of the most popular games on the planet are/was available for iOS but not MacOS.
This, despite sharing the same codebase (with even more strict requirements for iOS in terms of performance and such) Points towards developers simply ignoring MacOS. Which isn’t fixable by Apple as outlined above.
In plain, unambiguous terms: there’s nothing Apple themselves can do.
If I may, let me pre-empt any misreadings of my stance on the matter since I’m terrible at communicating:
I don’t care if games come out for MacOS or not. Gaming is a part of my life that I left behind and am better off for it. It won’t change my life if Battle of Duty: Legends gets released for Mac or not.
If gaming was a big part of my life I wouldn’t be using Mac, even though Windows gives me ass cancer.
I’m not defending Apple in any way, I’m only pointing out the hard reality of the situation because I’m stupidly bothered by it.
I don’t care if games come out for MacOS or not. Gaming is a part of my life that I left behind and am better off for it. It won’t change my life if Battle of Duty: Legends gets released for Mac or not.
If gaming was a big part of my life I wouldn’t be using Mac, even though Windows gives me ass cancer.
I’m not defending Apple in any way, I’m only pointing out the hard reality of the situation because I’m stupidly bothered by it.
I understand, I guess my stance is closer to: I'd like to not need my PCMR rig to play games looking super pretty. I like Mac notebooks and for as much as they tend to cost it would be nice to not have to buy/build an additional system for all the shinies.
On the balance of it, I like tech so of course I have a Switch, Xbox, PS5, Mac, and a PC, it is just annoying to know that if I am going out of town and want to game while I am there my choices are limited.
If I may be brutally honest, I don’t think AAA gaming on Mac will ever be on par with PC. Maybe we’ll get ports a couple years down the road. But that’s where we are now.
The core reason why Mac gaming is second class is MacOS. Even before the switch from x86, Apple couldn’t force developers to use libraries that were newer than a decade (64-bit and opengl). Even with engine compatibility with Metal, devs don’t port games to Mac.
(Among other reasons, I recall some users here saying they’d like to port to Mac, but tools they use are either unavailable or don’t work correctly on Mac, and clearly the devs of those tools don’t give a **** about Mac compatibility).
And this also doesn’t account for commonly used DRM and Anti-Cheat software being only compatible with windows.
Yelling at Apple about games is yelling at the wrong party. That’s the issue.
The core reason why Mac gaming is second class is MacOS. Even before the switch from x86, Apple couldn’t force developers to use libraries that were newer than a decade (64-bit and opengl). Even with engine compatibility with Metal, devs don’t port games to Mac.
(Among other reasons, I recall some users here saying they’d like to port to Mac, but tools they use are either unavailable or don’t work correctly on Mac, and clearly the devs of those tools don’t give a **** about Mac compatibility).
And this also doesn’t account for commonly used DRM and Anti-Cheat software being only compatible with windows.
Yelling at Apple about games is yelling at the wrong party. That’s the issue.
I just wanted to offer a tiny correction to one of your points above, and it’s about DRM and anti-cheat software. There is no inherent incompatibility between DRM schemes and MacOS, nor is there any incompatibility between VAC or Epic Anti-cheat and MacOS.
From where are you getting your information? When I Google it, literally the only results I get are the ones about Denuvo anti-cheat and gamer’s concerns about how it may go too far in its attempts to protect players from aimbots.
I could be wrong. I am often wrong.
Honestly, I think Apple’s best entry into games is to stick an M1 into the Apple TV, relaunch it as a games console and allow anyone to make games for it through an app store. Xbox and Playstation are walled gardens with limited numbers of titles, a really democratic approach to games publishing may end up being a breath of fresh air. This approach has worked well with bringing a wide range of games to iOS and iPadOS, and it doesn’t involve any expensive purchases.
Because VAC is a joke, and I had no idea Epic had an anti cheat. Inherent incompatibility? No, but it’s easier to sneak kernel level anti-cheat into Windows than a unix derived OS. Likewise with DRM
Denuvo, Vanguard, battleye, and Ricochet. And yes, in my opinion it does go too far. But that’s beside the point.