What does Switch 2 mean for gaming on Apple platforms?

[salamanderjuice]

- The first AAA iPhone game was RE Village (8) in 2023, not RE 7 Biohazard in 2024.

- RE Village was released for PC in 2021. It was released for Mac in 2022, not four years later.

- RE 4 Remake was released for Mac 9 months after the PC release, not four years later.

- There has never been any elephant in my room, not even a baby Yoda. I have a 10TB external HDD with Seagate IronWolf Pro enterprise-class drive for $280 for my Mac/Crossover games and other stuff. I could also buy a faster portable 1TB mini SSD for $100 if needed.

The first AAA iPhone game is debatable. XCOM: Enemy Unknown on iOS from 2013 is that, I'm not even sure it's the first. Especially if you are including ports of much older games like Chrono Trigger. But even if you're constraining yourself to relatively recent AAA game on iOS, XCOM is that being closer in release on iOS to the console versions than RE8. AAA games on iOS are not new.

I think with "4 years later" they were referring to Death Stranding specifically (babies in jars), but I mean even in your own post there's a 7 year late zombie game?

Apple storage is a problem. It's an extra cost and an extra hassle. And if you don't want the hassle of external, it's a really extra cost.

 

[Moukee]

Switch 2 is at least on par with PS4 - go and look at some of the Digital Foundry coverage.

Sure, but the PS4 Pro's GPU is way faster than the regular PS4, and I was saying the PS4 Pro is faster than the Switch 2 in raw throughput .

 

[macfacts]

?
The App Store does as well.

But the iOS app store doesn't have a large back catalogue of games unless you like freemium type games.

 

[Ta_whirimatea]

I admire some of the optimism in this thread, but Apple is not and has not been serious about gaming for decades.

Apple’s entire gaming focus over the past (say) ten years has been anodyne casual gaming via Arcade, and the iOS money pump. The iOS gaming platform is basically irrelevant to the Mac, because all the money there comes from free-to-play games like Candy Crush with lucrative micro-transactions where Apple gets 30% for doing literally nothing more than processing the payment. When Apple released a full-price AAA game on iPhone (Resident Evil 7), two things happened: the performance was a stuttery mess, and the sales were in the toilet, with only around 6000 sales total in the first year.

Apple has looked at MS and Sony and gone “sheesh, they seem to have spent an awful lot of money building out a platform, and they’ve been really patient about it, and they’ve got XBox Live and PSN and all that stuff, and holy holy, have you seen how much they’ve spent on developers?”, and they’ve gone “yeah nah, we’ll just port some four-year-old Capcom games about zombies and babies in jars, it’ll be fine! We’ll put a cool-looking senior gaming exec in a fancy leather jacket on stage at WWDC! GAMERING!”. An example I’ve used before is something literally millions of people play: FIFA $this_year. Can you play FIFA 2025 on Mac? You can not. Can you play it on PlayStation®5, PlayStation®4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch™? Absolutely*!

There’s no shortcut. Apple needs to buy and commit to one or several studios, and build the player network/matchmaking infrastructure (e.g. XBL, PSN). Apple Silicon GPU performance is, while remarkable per watt, pretty weak by comparison with PC GPUs one or even two generations old. But that’s not stopped Nintendo. Since the N64, no Nintendo system has been particularly graphically impressive - but their secret sauce is “weak GPU, forty years of stellar IP”. Apple can’t do this unless they buy it. They’ve got the money - but who’s going to sell? Apple folds on gaming regularly.

*FIFA 2025 releases on the 27th of September, btw

I salute you sir for your mighty fine post..

 

[GioGiusi]

No matter how good Apple is able to make their M-series SoC, and they are incredibly good, physics is a thing. And physics says you will always be able to make a more powerful GPU when the the GPU itself is bigger than Apple's entire machine. And those gigantic GPU's appear to be the only thing game developers are interested in targeting.

 

[d686546s]

I feel the challenges keeping iOS from being a more serious gaming platform go beyond specs. At this point, it may be institutional and near impossible to remedy.

1) When you develop a game for the switch, you know that every switch owner is going to own a game controller. You can't make that assumption with a platform like the apple tv. The Apple TV already has such a low market share. If you develop a game that requires a game controller to play properly, you are limiting your target audience to a niche of a niche. That said, I wish Apple would incentivise more developers to port their existing iOS games to tvOS (eg: larger percentage of revenue share perhaps), or look at adding them to Apple Arcade.

Grimvalor, for example, is an example of a game I thoroughly playing on my iPad (with a PS5 controller). I purchased it again on my switch so I could play it on my TV, and it was a pretty fun experience overall (while reminding me how ancient the switch's hardware is). This could be done; the developers just don't because they don't think it's worth their time probably.

For a while, Apple Arcade had World of Demons, which was removed last year (and seemingly ended on a cliffhanger). Fun game that made great use of the Apple TV's specs, and I wish there were more games like it.

2) I feel like the economics of the App Store are different from that of the switch. People are, for some reason, willing to pay $60 for a Switch game, yet baulk at paying $10 for an iPad game, while flocking to freemium games that can easily cost them way more in the long term.

Apple Arcade looks like it could be a back door to getting more console-quality games on the Apple TV, but again, Apple doesn't seem committed enough in that area. Again, many of the games seem to prioritise the bursty nature of gaming on the iPhone and iPad (ie: played in short windows), so you don't really get much in terms of depth or complexity.

Maybe people just don't have the habit of treating their mobile devices as dedicated gaming devices and prefer to have a separate piece of hardware for it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think you are absolutely right on all of these points, to which I would add the following:

I'm more likely to be willing to pay more for a game on a different platform because I'm pretty confident that my PC games, my Xbox games or my Playstation games will still function on my hardware in a few years. I never bought a Switch, but I'm considering getting one now, and in 8 years -- assuming a similar longevity -- it will still play Breath of the Wild which will have been out 16 years by then. On the other hand, there's absolutely no guarantee that Apple will not break compatibility at some point and a developer will simply see no more economic incentive to support a particular game.

That's not intended to be a criticism of Apple per se, a mobile OS is intended to develop over time whereas a console is supposed to stay static, but it helps explain why I might be willing to spend £60 on a Switch game I really like but not on an iOS game.

 

[redcarian]

Apple Silicon GPU performance is not ”pretty weak”. It’s a matter of optimization. In Blender M3 Ultra 80c is almost as fast as desktop 5070 Ti (300W) and faster than laptop 5080. M4 Max 40c is as fast as a desktop 4070 (200W). M4 Max 32c is faster than desktop 7900 XTX (355W) and laptop 5060 Ti/5070.

I overlooked the M3 Ultra element.

Specifying the 80-core GPU variant of the Ultra brings the base cost (before any other upgrades) of the Mac Studio to £5,699. (I felt that such a meaty price deserved some meaty formatting)

So, for only 8 times the price of the cheapest RTX 5070 TI on ebuyer today (currently £140 off!), you can buy a Mac that’s not quite as fast!

 

[HouseLannister]

What does Switch 2 mean for gaming on Apple platforms?​

 

[galad]

Actually it means something.
The CPU architecture is the same, so every Neon optimization made for the Switch will work on Apple Silicon too, and that means less work to do to port the games to macOS (if they have a Switch version).

 

[throAU]

Actually it means something.
The CPU architecture is the same, so every Neon optimization made for the Switch will work on Apple Silicon too, and that means less work to do to port the games to macOS (if they have a Switch version).

The problem is, it isn’t neon CPU instruction optimistion that matters, it’s GPU optimisation and the Apple GPU architecture is completely and utterly different to Nvidia and AMD, with its Tile Based Deferred Rendering architecture.

Yes, sure it can run metal, and via a shim (MoltenVK), it can run Vulkan. It doesn’t mean that it is optimised unless the developer puts the work in to optimise for what is a very niche platform for AAA, as per above @redcarian ) - the cost for competitive hardware vs. a console or PC is exhorbitant.

The closest the ipad, iphone and low end mac really comes (for 90% of mac users in the consumer space) is something similar to switch 2 power really as far as gaming is concerned.

People aren’t buying Ultras to run games (as per above, you’d have to be brain damaged to consider it). People aren’t buying a lot of ultras, period, but those who are, are using them for niche video production/development/llm applications. Not games.

 

[galad]

CPU optimizations matter too, anyway, it's not like the fact that Apple GPUs are tile based means that every shaders will have to be rewritten from scratch… something will require a bit of reworking, but it's not the end of the world.

 

[throAU]

CPU optimizations matter too, anyway, it's not like the fact that Apple GPUs are tile based means that every shaders will have to be rewritten from scratch… something will require a bit of reworking, but it's not the end of the world.

Less than you might think, this is why PC gamers can still run AAA games far better than you can on a brand new mac using CPUs from 8-9 years ago with a discrete GPU from 5 years ago, purchased for less money 5 years ago.

You say optimisation isn’t the end of the world, but due to the tiny market of mac gamers, you’re probably looking at a few thousand customers per machine type. Tops.

IT
JUST
ISN’T
WORTH
IT


at least not until apple pull their finger out to demonstrate the mac is a viable market, and kick start the platform.

but they don’t really care.

 

[diamond.g]

CPU optimizations matter too, anyway, it's not like the fact that Apple GPUs are tile based means that every shaders will have to be rewritten from scratch… something will require a bit of reworking, but it's not the end of the world.

All the uber shaders that developers like to use have to be redone.

 

[cateye]

From an individual consumer standpoint, the Switch 2 doesn't change anything about gaming on the Mac for me. Once my frustration reached a point that it was easier to move off-platform for my gaming needs, I was never going to come back or spend money on games on the Mac again.

I still use and love my Macs and my iOS devices for a host of purposes, but not one dollar on games on those platforms ever again.

And yes, already have a Switch 2 and am enjoying it quite a bit. It's an evolutionary upgrade more so than revolutionary, for sure, but the improvements are all welcome and exactly what Nintendo needed to do. Interested to see how developers use the extra headroom now.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I have no idea why anyone would think "what Nintendo is doing means something about gaming on Mac platforms"

The two topics are totally unrelated.

 

[jeanlain]

No matter how good Apple is able to make their M-series SoC, and they are incredibly good, physics is a thing. And physics says you will always be able to make a more powerful GPU when the the GPU itself is bigger than Apple's entire machine. And those gigantic GPU's appear to be the only thing game developers are interested in targeting.

?
Game engines are designed to run on relatively modest GPUs that are not more powerful than average M-series GPUs. The problem of Mac gaming is no longer the hardware, it is only the problem is the small the user base. It has always been, in fact.

As for physics, I'm pretty sure M-series SoCs have everything required.

 

[GioGiusi]

?
Game engines are designed to run on relatively modest GPUs that are not more powerful than average M-series GPUs. The problem of Mac gaming is no longer the hardware, it is only the problem is the small the user base. It has always been, in fact.

As for physics, I'm pretty sure M-series SoCs have everything required.

That's not how any modern game is developed. Just take a look at the requirements. Nothing new runs well on anything other than the latest GPUs. Everything else runs compromised.

 

[jeanlain]

That's not how any modern game is developed. Just take a look at the requirements. Nothing new runs well on anything other than the latest GPUs. Everything else runs compromised.

This doesn't change the fact these games are not played on the latest GPUs by the vast majority of gamers.
Hardcore gamers that are not satisfied by anything below 4k 120 fps represent a minority.

 

[GioGiusi]

This doesn't change the fact these games are not played on the latest GPUs by the vast majority of gamers.
Hardcore gamers that are not satisfied by anything below 4k 120 fps represent a minority.

Oh I know. Very much true. And it leaves most gamers chasing a PC they don’t have.

 

[throAU]

What was that about Rosetta 2 not being deprecated and sticking around for ages?

Apple details the end of Intel Mac support and a phaseout for Rosetta 2

Rosetta app translation features for Intel apps won’t stay around indefinitely.

arstechnica.com

 

[Homy]

The article has zero sources for its claims about Rosetta. Even the article says "Rosetta will be available to older games that rely on Intel-specific libraries but are no longer being actively maintained by their developers".

Beyond macOS 27 you can't use Rosetta for making new apps/games for Intel Macs with Xcode. All new apps must be made for ARM64 but old apps will still work.

"Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases – through macOS 27 – as a general-purpose tool for Intel apps to help developers complete the migration of their apps. Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks."

About the Rosetta translation environment | Apple Developer Documentation

Learn how Rosetta translates executables, and understand what Rosetta can’t translate.

developer.apple.com

 

[redcarian]

This doesn't change the fact these games are not played on the latest GPUs by the vast majority of gamers.
Hardcore gamers that are not satisfied by anything below 4k 120 fps represent a minority.

The thing is, people play games on the most affordable SKU. For Mac, that’s the MBA. Which has no storage, not enough RAM, and a GPU that’s absolute hot garbage compared to something like a 2070.

A poster upthread was talking about M3 Ultras and M4 Maxes - and that’s where you get competitive performance (kinda sorta but not really), but those systems are stratospherically expensive.

 

[spac3duck]

Unpopular opinion but I'd personally love to see: Imagine if Apple acquired Nintendo.

 

[diamond.g]

Unpopular opinion but I'd personally love to see: Imagine if Apple acquired Nintendo.

Aside from Apple gaining "beloved" IP. Why would that be a good thing for Nintendo?

 

[salamanderjuice]

The article has zero sources for its claims about Rosetta. Even the article says "Rosetta will be available to older games that rely on Intel-specific libraries but are no longer being actively maintained by their developers".

Beyond macOS 27 you can't use Rosetta for making new apps/games for Intel Macs with Xcode. All new apps must be made for ARM64 but old apps will still work.

"Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases – through macOS 27 – as a general-purpose tool for Intel apps to help developers complete the migration of their apps. Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks."

About the Rosetta translation environment | Apple Developer Documentation

Learn how Rosetta translates executables, and understand what Rosetta can’t translate.

developer.apple.com

What you quote from the developer docs is the same as what the article says. macOS 28+ is only going to keep a subset of Rosetta functionality. If games only need subset A and regular apps need A+B and B is removed then then there is no guarantee old apps will still work.

It doesn't seem specific to Xcode either.