The final blow for real gaming on the Mac, or the beginning of a new era?

[magbarn]

Doom Eternal. Medicore more of the same from the run with big gun and jump genre...

I wasn't that impressed with the graphics either.

We'll have to see what AS can do in terms of that mono-genre from the PC Gamer stable.

I felt a passive cooled A12z showed great promise running Lara.

But it's not like consumer Intel Macs are any good. Most have crap iG.

So chances are anything Apple does is going to be an improvement.

Matching an 8 core Intel and 'last year's' 5700 (which still isn't even on the Mac desktop yet...) would be a decent start.

We've got nothing but a 'sneak preview' to go on. And nothing like the shipping Apple Silicon.

It's not like Intel have setting the world alight cpu temps aside. Or AMD's gpus. Pretty mediocre stuff.

On the PC side. It's been pretty stagnant for 5 years.

£1200 for a 2080ti. *Shrugs. Lack of competition that is.

AMD have finally got competitive with cpus in the last year or so. But it's been pretty bad before that. And Apple won't be using them. But may, indirectly, compete with them.

Given the price of PC gaming. I'd rather buy a PS5.

Nv can stick their £1200 2080 Ti.

Azrael.

I agree that GPU pricing is insane but hoping Apple's silicon is going to blow away a 754mm2 GPU chip with 616 Gb/sec memory speed with a SoC is a serious pipe dream.

I guarantee in 5 years a MBP 16 today with a 5600 Pro is going to have the ability to play significantly more AAA titles than Apple Silicon Mac unless the industry has some big changes. The 2025 Mac may have the GPU to play the games, but the support will not be there. I know, as I had PPC macs and looked longingly at PC gaming back then.
I missed my G4 Powerbook when I sold it, but I loved being able to edit photos in aperture on my 2008 MBP 15, boot up Windows and play a game of Fallout 3 while on the road without having to have a separate PC laptop...

Steve Jobs tried to get John Carmack to postpone his wedding so he can give a talk about Mac Gaming in the past. You think Tim is going to do that? Only way Mac Gaming takes a big comeback is Apple pulling a Microsoft and buying a game developer.

 

[diamond.g]

"Real gaming"? No true Scotsman?

As for volume, I think this will tremendously increase the number of games on the desktop since a ton of iOS games will be coming directly over. I also think it will increase the amount of developed games for desktop as developers can then create a game for iOS and desktop easily at the same time. I could not speak to "AAA" computer only titles. It will boil down to how easy is it for a developer to create Windows and Mac versions. Only developers who create multi-platform apps/games and are trying out the new dev box could speak on the effort.

I think some folks are looking for more quality titles. There are a lot of time waster games in the iOS App Store, not that many are ones that have comparative experiences to say Uncharted.

 

[JMacHack]

Doom Eternal. Medicore more of the same from the run with big gun and jump genre...

Ah yes, the BEST genre.

Steve Jobs tried to get John Carmack to postpone his wedding so he can give a talk about Mac Gaming in the past. You think Tim is going to do that? Only way Mac Gaming takes a big comeback is Apple pulling a Microsoft and buying a game developer.

Anecdotal I know but I believe Gabe Newell said about Apple's "dedication" to gaming is that they'd send a team over, discuss some stuff, and then leave and nothing would happen for awhile. Then another team would show up, have no idea about the earlier team, go over the same stuff, then leave.

Kikizo | Gabe Newell Interview - Valve on The Orange Box - September 2007

Video game reviews, previews, interviews, video downloads and cheats.

archive.videogamesdaily.com

ah, here's the quote. Oddly enough it's from '07, Steve's era.

"
Kikizo: People keep asking you about a potential Macintosh version, and your stance is that this is a strictly Windows project...?

Gabe: Well, we tried to have a conversation with Apple for several years, and they never seemed to... well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go "wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming". And then we'll say, "OK, here are three things you could do to make that better", and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow though on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms."

 

[diamond.g]

I agree that GPU pricing is insane but hoping Apple's silicon is going to blow away a 754mm2 GPU chip with 616 Gb/sec memory speed with a SoC is a serious pipe dream.

I guarantee in 5 years a MBP 16 today with a 5600 Pro is going to have the ability to play significantly more AAA titles than Apple Silicon Mac unless the industry has some big changes. The 2025 Mac may have the GPU to play the games, but the support will not be there. I know, as I had PPC macs and looked longingly at PC gaming back then.
I missed my G4 Powerbook when I sold it, but I loved being able to edit photos in aperture on my 2008 MBP 15, boot up Windows and play a game of Fallout 3 while on the road without having to have a separate PC laptop...

Steve Jobs tried to get John Carmack to postpone his wedding so he can give a talk about Mac Gaming in the past. You think Tim is going to do that? Only way Mac Gaming takes a big comeback is Apple pulling a Microsoft and buying a game developer.

They could buy Epic Games from Tencent...

 

[jeanlain]

I was unaware there wasn't. That might be a good reason.

Allegedly, the Zenimax (or Bethesda) CEO hates Macs. I've never seen evidence of this though.

 

[magbarn]

I think some folks are looking for more quality titles. There are a lot of time waster games in the iOS App Store, not that many are ones that have comparative experiences to say Uncharted.

Definitely, Just finished Last Of Us 2, while not as good/novel as the original, has no peers in the iOS app store where most games are shovelware and keep my interest for no more than 5 minutes with popups asking for more money within the first level of playing. That's the kind of drek that we'll be able to gleefully play with MacOS 11 being able to play ipad games on Apple Silicon Macs.

 

[JMacHack]

I really don't think Apple has much to gain with buying a studio to produce games. It doesn't really fit their M.O. either. Every time they mention games it's always iOS-focused and usually they emphasize small(ish) developers or indies. I think they try to sell the App Store as a place where "small devs can sell their products."

Also, I feel like I should point out the general negativity toward Macs that the "Gaming" demographic holds. Even if Apple were to make a concentrated effort to enter gaming I'm not sure there would be many people on board with it. In fact, if they pushed too hard I'm certain there would be significant backlash.

Allegedly, the Zenimax (or Bethesda) CIO hates Macs. I've never seen evidence of this though.

Well, the only loss for the Mac gamers is Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal. I'm not too broken up about losing say, Fallout 76.

 

[diamond.g]

I really don't think Apple has much to gain with buying a studio to produce games. It doesn't really fit their M.O. either. Every time they mention games it's always iOS-focused and usually they emphasize small(ish) developers or indies. I think they try to sell the App Store as a place where "small devs can sell their products."

Also, I feel like I should point out the general negativity toward Macs that the "Gaming" demographic holds. Even if Apple were to make a concentrated effort to enter gaming I'm not sure there would be many people on board with it. In fact, if they pushed too hard I'm certain there would be significant backlash.


Well, the only loss for the Mac gamers is Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal. I'm not too broken up about losing say, Fallout 76.

Prey, Deathloop, and probably Ghostwire as well, though I will readily admit only Prey has history.

 

[PortoMavericks]

Has anyone found out just exactly how pissed off Valve is at all this? Apple basically just murdered them on the Mac platform and Microsoft will start getting bolder about it now too. I mean their entire bread & butter is contingent on x86 continuing to exist, not to mention their customer base (myself included) has a massive curated library of gaming content that is going to go *poof* gone just because Intel got out of the wrong side of the bed for a few tech cycles and everyone is all like “CANCELLED!!”.

From a preservationist’s perspective, x86 gaming goes back 40 years and we’re just gonna let all that history go? You’ll say “keep up a side x86 rig” but those will just get rarer and rarer as PC makers all eventually follow Apple.

I’d argue that I’m pretty sure down the road ARM CPUs will be able to easily emulate all x86 code ever created but Apple will certainly kill Rosetta 2 in a few years, pretty much like they did with Rosetta 1.

 

[JMacHack]

Has anyone found out just exactly how pissed off Valve is at all this?

I'm sure they care about as much as they care about making good games. Which is to say, not at all.

Apple basically just murdered them on the Mac platform and Microsoft will start getting bolder about it now too. I mean their entire bread & butter is contingent on x86 continuing to exist, not to mention their customer base (myself included) has a massive curated library of gaming content that is going to go *poof* gone just because Intel got out of the wrong side of the bed for a few tech cycles and everyone is all like “CANCELLED!!”.

I'm sure Rosetta 2 will soften the blow. "Poof gone" is unlikely if the keynote was anything to go by. Also, Valve is betting the farm on Linux, if their bullish progress on Proton is any indication.

From a preservationist’s perspective, x86 gaming goes back 40 years and we’re just gonna let all that history go? You’ll say “keep up a side x86 rig” but those will just get rarer and rarer as PC makers all eventually follow Apple.

Yeah it sucks, but tell that to Motorola and PPC adopters.

 

[dmccloud]

Quantity does not equal quality.

True, but that same argument also applies to Steam, Origin, GOG Galaxy, Epic, Ubisoft....

 

[Azrael9]

Hyper-casual games are typical of mobile computing. I don't need to play with the phone forever like a lot of people do. But you keep buying those optional in-app purchases so you help make those game developers earn a meager living.

My phone is turned off. If that's any consolation. And it's staying off.

Azrael.
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What makes Valve special? They can provide universal apps like anyone else.

Half Life 2. Other than that. I don't recall anything else they did.

This 'games store' of theirs? With little to no Mac support? 2nd rate and late ports? Deprecated Open GL gaming?

Azrael.
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True, but that same argument also applies to Steam, Origin, GOG Galaxy, Epic, Ubisoft....

Aye. There are good examples of games on probably every platform.

You always get a lot of junk on each platform.

AS Mac is going to be a new platform. With, as yet, untested hardware. I'm optimistic about Apple finally having control of the engine room of the Mac...and the API ie Metal.

When it arrives it can be compared to what Intel have done for the last 5 years. And all that deprecated Open GL stuff.

For me, a game is about a good idea, storytelling and how it plays. That is as true now as it was on the C64, the N64, the PS, PC or Mac or anything else.

Arzael.
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I agree that GPU pricing is insane but hoping Apple's silicon is going to blow away a 754mm2 GPU chip with 616 Gb/sec memory speed with a SoC is a serious pipe dream.

I guarantee in 5 years a MBP 16 today with a 5600 Pro is going to have the ability to play significantly more AAA titles than Apple Silicon Mac unless the industry has some big changes. The 2025 Mac may have the GPU to play the games, but the support will not be there. I know, as I had PPC macs and looked longingly at PC gaming back then.
I missed my G4 Powerbook when I sold it, but I loved being able to edit photos in aperture on my 2008 MBP 15, boot up Windows and play a game of Fallout 3 while on the road without having to have a separate PC laptop...

Steve Jobs tried to get John Carmack to postpone his wedding so he can give a talk about Mac Gaming in the past. You think Tim is going to do that? Only way Mac Gaming takes a big comeback is Apple pulling a Microsoft and buying a game developer.

We don't know anything yet. And there are no 'guarantees.' But I thought the A12z running the Tom Raider demo' was promising. Along with all the other demos we got.

When we have AS hardware the comparisions can begin. Things get to move along again with the PS5, RDNA2 etc. Things have been pretty stagnant for the last 5 years. Apple have to compete with that. Or the Mac can shrivel up and die. Apple seem pretty confident as they've made their move. It can hardly get anyworse than hot, inefficient so-so cpus and year's old gpus or crap iGPU.

The 5600M ('Pro') is expensive at £800. Apple can keep it. As can NV for their £1200. That's what happens when you don't have a lot of competition.

I think even Steve Jobs was reaching to get John to cancel his wedding.

The Mac has more chance of attracting developers being part of a write once and deploy eco system. It gets millions more apps and games. Thousands more developers.

More chance than they ever had with over priced towers, deprecated open gl and crap, late ports...and only one gpu supplier with years old gpu tech'.

PPC Macs (I liked Marathon Infinity...) had their day and are concerned to history. There were the same protests before Apple moved onto Intel. Intel are now history as far as the Mac and Apple are concerned. After a promising start, it seemed to compound the Mac's 2nd rate status with 1st rate prices. It was just a stick by PC gamor tower fans to beat Mac users over the head with. All those excuses why Macs weren't good at gaming. You're paying a bleeping fortune for each Mac. I expect it to be the best at gaming.

Put a bullet in it and start again. Which Apple are. It couldn't get any worse than it was.

They're taking control over the Macs destiny with the AS, the API and the access to millions of apps and thousands of devs.

We can only judge on what happens next. But it's definitely a new frontier.

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

from my testing, what is under rosetta installation, takes about 20-30% of the initial performance...so the first mac chip should be at least 30% faster than the A12Z to outcome what you are getting lose under rosetta 2
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I think the Bloomberg article indicated whispers of 50-100% faster performance.

Even at the lower estimate...this is very interesting for emulation of apps.

Azrael.
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Has anyone found out just exactly how pissed off Valve is at all this? Apple basically just murdered them on the Mac platform and Microsoft will start getting bolder about it now too. I mean their entire bread & butter is contingent on x86 continuing to exist, not to mention their customer base (myself included) has a massive curated library of gaming content that is going to go *poof* gone just because Intel got out of the wrong side of the bed for a few tech cycles and everyone is all like “CANCELLED!!”.

From a preservationist’s perspective, x86 gaming goes back 40 years and we’re just gonna let all that history go? You’ll say “keep up a side x86 rig” but those will just get rarer and rarer as PC makers all eventually follow Apple.

Preservation of games.

Broadly. I think the community of gamers will have to take up the task...regardless of platform.

I don't see sell £££ now companies that bothered with supporting a museum of games, they are usually into whatever is selling now and 'murder the last year's news' in its crib. Or yank, eg, MMO support. And leave it 'dead.' It's even more of a danger as we go 'digital' only.

Investment in time, money etc. evaporates with the EULA. Customers have to demand preservation rights.

x86 has a had a decent run. It's not quite over yet. But it's going to face some challenges when Apple goes custom ARM and probably M$ (following a similar path...) kick it to the curb.

Azrael.
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I want this on my Mac
View attachment 938278

Was it one of the PS5 demos during the live event?

Azrael.

 

[mrcloaked]

I’m a collector.

 

[Azrael9]

I’m a collector of around 1300 games between Steam and GOG that all run on one single thin Mac laptop I can throw in my bag with a controller (and godsend Steam Input).

With the loss of 32-bit, x86, and Boot Camp (and the depreciation of OpenGL), I will be able to run about 15 of those, all under Rosetta emulation. That’s a near 99% loss. Super cool. Imagine if Apple just **** on your movie collection like that.

I already saw this coming 2 years ago and prepared a second laptop purchase, but still. It’s a shocking, jaw-dropping loss of capability. That’s what ARM gets you.

Are you going to buy a recent Intel Mac to preserve that lot? Have you got DVD/external HD back ups etc?

1300 anything is a lot. It's yours. You payed for it.

Preservation of any digital investment is something all users need to press corporations on.

They don't care that much. They take your money. And forget about you. Especially in the move to digital only anything.

Any corporation can do this. As I have found in the past. You pour hours of your time and subs money into an MMO? A company can just put a bullet in it and no more server to play on.

The odds seem stacked in favour of corporations. So I think it's right that communities band together to preserve older eg MMOs and old 8 bit game ROMs to preserve for play and posterity.

Technology may march on. But there should be the option(s) to preserve things. Gaming now has a very rich history regardless of platform.

I wouldn't trade my C64 memories for anything. And, ironically, you can now buy a 'new' C64 with a set of games and support for ROMs.

Azrael.

 

[mrcloaked]

I'll get a PC.

 

[diamond.g]

I think the Bloomberg article indicated whispers of 50-100% faster performance.

Even at the lower estimate...this is very interesting for emulation of apps.

Azrael.
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Preservation of games.

Broadly. I think the community of gamers will have to take up the task...regardless of platform.

I don't see sell £££ now companies that bothered with supporting a museum of games, they are usually into whatever is selling now and 'murder the last year's news' in its crib. Or yank, eg, MMO support. And leave it 'dead.' It's even more of a danger as we go 'digital' only.

Investment in time, money etc. evaporates with the EULA. Customers have to demand preservation rights.

x86 has a had a decent run. It's not quite over yet. But it's going to face some challenges when Apple goes custom ARM and probably M$ (following a similar path...) kick it to the curb.

Azrael.
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Was it one of the PS5 demos during the live event?

Azrael.

That is Remedy’s Control. A game that came out last year, yet in this one picture is able to pass for a next gen game cause of DXR.

 

[leman]

I guarantee in 5 years a MBP 16 today with a 5600 Pro is going to have the ability to play significantly more AAA titles than Apple Silicon Mac unless the industry has some big changes. The 2025 Mac may have the GPU to play the games, but the support will not be there. I know, as I had PPC macs and looked longingly at PC gaming back then.

If you count in Bootcamp, sure. If we are only talking about games that already run under macOS, Rosetta will take care of it. As to 5600M Pro, I expect Apple to have a faster SoC by next year, 2022 at latest. In terms of performance per watt, A12 is already 20-30% more efficient than highly binned Navi. It’s just a question of scaling.

 

[diamond.g]

If you count in Bootcamp, sure. If we are only talking about games that already run under macOS, Rosetta will take care of it. As to 5600M Pro, I expect Apple to have a faster SoC by next year, 2022 at latest. In terms of performance per watt, A12 is already 20-30% more efficient than highly binned Navi. It’s just a question of scaling.

For straight rendering purposes, I hope you are right since we haven’t seen anything to prove the point so far.

For compute, it won’t mean much since AMD has more or less admitted the first run of RDNA wasn’t really compute focused (see how there are no Navi Instinct cards) like CDNA will be.

 

[leman]

For straight rendering purposes, I hope you are right since we haven’t seen anything to prove the point so far.

For compute, it won’t mean much since AMD has more or less admitted the first run of RDNA wasn’t really compute focused (see how there are no Navi Instinct cards) like CDNA will be.

I was talking about compute. As far as rendering is concerned, A12 can be up to 60-80% more efficient.

I am not really sure what “compute focused” means here, Navi cards are plenty fast and they perform very well in compute. Vega on the other hand was “compute focused” in the sense that it’s architecture was not the best at utilizing the hardware for rasterization-related tasks. Still, Navi as good at compute as Vega was. I believe the main reason why there is no Navi Instinct is simply because Navi is a relatively small chip, maxing out at 40 CUs. I suppose that CNDA will remove some drawing-specific hardware from Navi, freeing up space for more ALUs and focusing on larger chips.

 

[diamond.g]

I was talking about compute. As far as rendering is concerned, A12 can be up to 60-80% more efficient.

I am not really sure what “compute focused” means here, Navi cards are plenty fast and they perform very well in compute. Vega on the other hand was “compute focused” in the sense that it’s architecture was not the best at utilizing the hardware for rasterization-related tasks. Still, Navi as good at compute as Vega was. I believe the main reason why there is no Navi Instinct is simply because Navi is a relatively small chip, maxing out at 40 CUs. I suppose that CNDA will remove some drawing-specific hardware from Navi, freeing up space for more ALUs and focusing on larger chips.

I would argue that in a gaming thread rendering is what matters, and for all the efficiency Apple touts we have seen nothing that proves their chips can keep up with the platforms they like to compare themselves to.

For compute technically RDNA is still slower than the equivalent CU and GHz Vega card. The biggest win is RDNA uses less power.

 

[leman]

I would argue that in a gaming thread rendering is what matters, and for all the efficiency Apple touts we have seen nothing that proves their chips can keep up with the platforms they like to compare themselves to.

Well, you can look up some benchmarks. According to GFXBench, the performance of the iPad Pro is around 1/3 of the 5600M Pro, while consuming less than 1/5 of power and containing 1/5 ALUs. Of course, in the end, these are just approximations, but they give you an approximate ballpark to work with.

 

[JMacHack]

I already saw this coming 2 years ago (I am not ignorant to the march of technology) and prepared a second laptop purchase, but still. It’s a shocking, jaw-dropping loss of capability. That’s what ARM gets you.

To be pedantic, 32-bit support was ended on Intel.

Just to clarify one thing: this isn’t a “digital investment” problem as it would be the same if I had 1300 boxed copies of x86 games. The ARM bullet is much more sinister in that regard.

I really do think you're overreacting here. There's plenty of reason to be optimistic in this change, even if Apple doesn't pick up the slack we can look to other emulator projects that support a wider range of consoles than just x86. A lot of these are even open-source, and could be compiled on ASi just the same as x86. You yourself are a committed preservationist, and I assume there's many more like you. Who's to say they wouldn't be committed to making an x86 emulator work on the new Apple Silicon? Projects like WINE, in my opinion, exemplify the commitment people have to their old games.

But you keep buying those optional in-app purchases so you help make those game developers earn a meager living.

Let's not pretend like the same B.S. has been in "AAA Real Game" titles for over a decade.

 

[PortoMavericks]

The biggest win is RDNA uses less power.

And higher clock speeds.

 

[diamond.g]

Have you guys see the Hot Chips presentation by MS for the XSX?
The Series X die isn't ginormous, but look at how much space the GPU takes up