"impressed how well it runs" is a common but meaningless sentiment. It's like if 99% percent of comments about literature talked about the ink and paper quality.
@@HandM80 yes and no. I don't find it comfortable to game on without a controller unless its a touch based game. I know I can use an external controller, but in the other way, I find it more comfortable to have the entire device and controller in my hands, like a steam deck or a switch.
Yup. I saw RE4 was available and wanted to try replaying it on mac to see how it compared to my PC. Opened Steam and then quickly found the Apple store exclusivity for the native metal API app and went "nope"
That's not remotely true. Two of the best running Mac games are No Man's Sky and Sims 4 - and both of those are on their own storefront (Steam for NMS and EA App for Sims 4). Both these storefronts are natively running on an ARM version for Apple Silicon and both the aforementioned games are natively running on Apple Silicon, ARM, and Metal. Mac gaming isn't limited to the App Store unlike iOS and iPad gaming which they are trying to push. However, the issue with Mac gaming is that developers aren't invested enough. Your point on the App Store stands true for iPad and iPhone gaming. Like NMS isn't available on iPad because of the App Store - same with Sims 4.
@@ProtectusCZ No it isn't, Sims 4 is a Sims Online sequel that failed in development called Project Olympus. because the always online on SimCity failed so much, they quit development on it and repackaged Project Olympus as an offline game, aka Sims 4.
Apple just have to do what everyone else would do: 1: Set a good budget for mac gaming project (easy for Apple); 2: Hire a marketing team who knows about games. Do events on physical Apple Store, media...; 3: Build a talented team for exclusives in house games; 4. Throw off actual App Store and build a exclusive game app, with a mix of native games + proton-like games, (partner with Valve and Codewears); 5. Invest money on native ports based on top 20 most played steam games (plenty of money for that) Leave the rest to Apple-Proton; 6. Patience. It will require at least 10 years for the model to be stabilized. 7. Partner with Nintendo for a Legal emulator exclusive for Macs and iPads (not iPhones, of course, leave it to Switch/Switch 2). Nintendo sells switches and games on Apple Stores. All Nintendo games runs on Mac/iPad for better graphics quality/4k 60 Fps.
I've thought Apple should have purchased Nintendo because they have no gaming aspirations without in house talent. You're right with a lot of what you're saying, but I believe cloud gaming will be a thing before Apple has their stuff together from a native hardware standpoint. GeForce Now (from Nvidia) on Mac is superior to console gaming today if you're close enough to a data center. I don't know why folks are trying to make Mac gaming hardware a thing when it's niche at best.
How can people buy their games if Apple is only giving a very small storage space on their base models (256gb)? And, adding more storage is so overpriced.
Because it’s nonsensical to expect developers to port AAA games to the iPhone and nonsensical to expect mobile gamers to pay $60 for games. Apple needs to encourage devs to port their games to Steam. In an ideal world they’d also be on the iPad App Store but a lack of active cooling can really impact performance
In their App Store, they can get 30% of each sale. That’s probably what they want: a new source of revenue from software sold to existing customers, instead of selling Macs to gamers (which would be incredibly hard).
The fact that none of these games have cross save between iOS and macOS makes them useless to me. Apple NEEDS to force universal purchase and crosssave!
Apple CAN'T force universal purchase and cross save. The developers don't NEED Apple's platform, so they can do without putting their games on any part of the Apple ecosystem want.
@@demetriouspough5484 No but they can incentivize it by paying them more to include cross save too. Cross save would be the one thing Apple can separate themselves from the competition.
Just focus on Mac gaming. On iPhones the idea of playing RE4R on a 5,8” screen with touch control or Gamepad is just dumb. There’s a reason Fruit Ninja or Angry Birds were so popular. People on phones want a 5 min experience to pass the time, while they’re waiting, etc. iPads do make more sense though, but people upgrade those MUCH less often so unless you already have like an M2 one or thinking of upgrading, you’re not gonna get these super demanding games.
they're probably trying to get in on that sweet Nintendo handheld revenue, but I'm confused about why they chose these huge games instead of things more appropriate like Celeste, Ori, Stray, Dredge, Hades, Cup Head, Dead Cells, or older stuff like Fallout New Vegas/4 which it could presumable run quite well
On a 6.7 inch screen with a controller attachment , you basically have an OLED Switch with a better screen and APU. Apple needs to make a controller attachment themselves though, because some of the offerings out there are low quality, or some people don't realize they exist. It's true people don't want to play console games on a touch screen, but that doesn't have to be the case.
Nobody wants to use Apple's app store. It's garbage. People want Steam. Apple doesn't profit from that. Why you think they launced M4 on Ipad? App Store lock in. Their whole strategy revolves around ecosystem lockin. Which is why they are fighting tooth and nail against the EU. If Apple wants gaming they gonna have to team up with Nintendo or something lol. Supporting EGPU would be cool but once again run into compatibility. No point in having the power if it's not compatible with what you want to run. Maybe they should invest in getting proton on Mac how Steam did with Linux. They also need to focus on the App Store. They really need a game hub for it or improve Arcade or something. Have sales. Attractive offers. Modding. Community. But Apple has no gig worth touting when it comes to gaming. PC has all the support... Supports all gpu interfaces, OpenGL, DirectX, Vulkan... has Steam, Epic, all the stores, all the sales. Xbox has gamepass. PS has all their goodness. Nintendo has exclusives. Apple has nothing going for it when it comes to gaming... So they have to change that. But really, I think they SOL. Too little too late. There's nothing Apple can do for gaming that can't be done on another platform better, easier, cheaper, and with more potential revenue. So, they can either pay up to play nice and support compatibility. Pay up for exclusive games and content, content that gamers actually want. Or team up with another platform. Like, if Apple Arcade had actual great lineup of games and could play on any Apple device with one subscription I'd totally go for that... that would be a gig worth touting. And yea, you can't be late to the party. You can't release a game year later, after it's already played out, and charging full price for it. That isn't gonna work... One of the major reasons I bought my M1 to begin with was it was advertised at the time to be able to run IOS apps on Mac.. the universal app. Then, they changed their mind about that and I have been sour ever since. So yes, they do need to enable IOS apps on Mac.
the last bit is the developers like netflix and so on who've opted-out their app on mac silicon, granted it was apple who actually made it possible for them to do so.
Yep! Apple should focus on a platform-agnostic solution, like Steam Proton. Hoping that developers will port games for Mac has not been working so far.
In that case I'd rather just get a cheap gaming laptop and play everything flawlessly rather than buy an expensive Mac and have it run at 30fps on 1080p low
I want to buy/play the RE games and I also would like to try Death Stranding 1) Put the games on steam 2) Let me choose what drive to install game on or move it and create a link (ln -s) 3) 24h download of RE4 was just silly, this told me Apple isn’t serious with game distribution 4) MacOS need to support current gen Xbox controller, they only support an older no longer available version (Steam support current gen controller) 5) Put the games on Steam 6) How about newer games? How about porting more Indiegames, alot of them are better than AAA failures anyway I am completely uninterested in iPhone/iPad ports I think porting long lived multiplayer games would be interesting for a lot of people but also a huge investment for game developers since they need to do simultaneous releases if they want cross platform gameplay.
With each video, you’re sounding more and more PCMR. I’m thinking seriously about just unsubscribing, because life is too short to waste it on something that doesn’t inspire me or bring me joy.
The most obvious explanation is the price/performance ratio with Apple devices, and the fact that almost no-one buys an Apple device for the purpose of gaming, so the addressable market is small. If Apple really wants to get serious about gaming, they need to reintroduce something like the iPod Touch (so everything except the phone and give it a chip capable of playing these games) an Apple TV with something close to an M3 Pro/Max performance capable of playing any iPad/Mac game on the big screen, and stop selling their base Macs for over $1000 with 8GB of RAM and SSD's so small they were laughed at in 2012, let alone in 2024.
The issue isn't so much a hardware or price one. The M1 MacBook Air 8gb still packs enough horsepower to run many very popular games extremely well like World of Warcraft and League of Legends. There are a ton of people (college students for example) who would say that machine for $899 is a great deal and runs MacOS buttery smooth. The people to be affected by a gaming push are specifically those prospective students who think "I love MacOS to work but I'm unsure I'll be able to do light/moderate gaming here and there in my dorm". It's more of a distribution issue at this stage. People don't want to use the Mac app store when they have a steam library, and they want developers to be able to port games to Arm without a hassle
If they gave free steam key for an App Store purchase then Apple would profit and people could grow their steam library. Would have to work that out with the devs though
apple should've put all these games in Apple Arcade as exclusive, which would not only make the games more affordable to play to users, but also makes Arcade more appealing to subscribe to. and then on steam too for purchase.
Apple could have avoid some of these issues if they had native Vulkan support in their OS years ago. Windows has OpenGL and Vulkan as an open fallback if devs were not using DirectX. Same with Linux. Forcing devs to only support Metal is lot of dev time and looking at Valve delisting a lot of Mac ports of their games, I can see why. If MacOS had a Vulkan fallback for applications, it would be easier for devs to port their game's rendering and, in addition, would make compatibility layers to run OpenGL games that ran on older macs and Windows software similar to Proton.
Apple need to make AppleTV with M4 (maybe even PRO version) and bring all game to the living room with gamepad this will give us another already done console on the market (and Mac/iPad/iPhone will greatly benefits from this move too)
Absolutely agree with you! Games like Street Fighter 6, MK 11 etc and possibly Tekken would shine on the iOS ecosystem! Imagine an iPhone 15/16 playing SF6 wow! I also can’t understand the decision not to make Mirage for MacOS! It’s insane! My MB Pro with M2 Max would run that game easily over 60fps as it has the horsepower to overcome poor programming and optimisation from Ubisoft! I actually enjoyed playing RE4 on my MB Pro and playing RE7 now, it’s glorious on that display!
Ya can’t compare the game numbers when these games were old already on other devices so not like it is first time release of AAA games, another thing apple is just now finally starting in AAA games on their newest devices which haven’t been out a year yet, lets give them 3-5yrs of pushing AAA gaming and see where Apple is then” not saying they shouldn’t have done better already but that they are just now showing interest to the public for console style gaming
I think this still shows some sort of promise. Mac’s ecosystem doesn’t cater to gamers at all. I’d venture to say that only a VERY small percentage of Mac users would even consider playing games on their Mac. I don’t think much will change until Apple gets some sort of exclusive deal, or their own AAA studio AFTER really refining the toolkits AND trying to change the Mac culture to include gamers as well. Also put the damn games on STEAM.
I think apple should follow some steps like for upcoming GTA 6 they should talk with rockstar to release it on mac on the same day as of consoles and also much earlier then PC's, this will attract many PC gamers to mac
. Pc gamers dont even use the epic game store on their pc if a game is exclusive and wait for steam release. If anything they would go buy a ps5 to play gta6 but never a mac.
No, it will not attract PC gamers to mac. PC gamers are infamous for being able to wait years for games, take all PS4/5 exclusives for instance, PS didn't attract PC gamers, they just waited until the games were ported to PC and played them then.
I’ve been listening to this excuse since 2020: “But developers just need to port their games to Apple Silicon”. So far, we went from 1 to 10ish AAA games.
Gamers: Don't want to primarily game on their phones. Yes, they'll play games on them but a real gamer isn't getting pumped up to play 3-4 hours(or more) of a AAA game on a 4 inch screen with touch controls. Don't want to rebuy games they already own especially if they don't agree with the DRM of Apple's store. Or is that just me who grew out of paying full price for the mac ports of games from Aspyr and Macsoft back 20-25 years ago? I got Death Stranding for free from the Epic Game Store on PC. It's not the director's cut version but I'd happily buy the upgrade at some point if I could actually get the mac version of the game in addition to the pc version. You can forget about me paying 40(much less 20) dollars on Apple's store for it though. Do not want to continue to feel ripped off and cheated. I have a ton of mac games from using macs for 40 years or so, but even recently you can buy a ton of games on Steam. GOG, Epic Game Store, etc. and get mac versions for nothing extra. The fact that Whiskey and Wine are heavily used to play the the latest PC variants of games clearly shows a demand for games but Apple is delusional if they think GPTK is for developers to get a handful of games on their app store.
And this doesn't count for the games I'm most interested in just aren't they ones they are offering. I want to play games like Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2(funny how they upgraded in to 64-bit which would mean it'd work in Rosetta 2 only to have Valve drop the mac version. Fortnite(PC version chokes because of anti-cheat, Mac version hasn't been updated in 5 years or so because Epic and Apple got into a legal pissing match over who should be making money from an IPhone version, but you can stream it or use an android emulator so there's that.) I'm mostly interested in AAA games in the 5 - 10 year old range but again I have zero desire to rebuy games I already own especially from the App Store.
A few issues. On iPad and iPhone we need active cooling macOS sequoia will fix the double storage issue. We also need a better Game Center app similar to steam.
Don’t get me started about apples, stupidity with gaming on the Apple TV. So many great games from the iPhone and iPad could work on the Apple TV, but their storage limitations from years ago, kept developers away. I don’t expect much from Apple and these AAA titles
Apple could learn a lot from the Linux gamers given their Unix heritage. Here’s what I would do 1. Make game porting toolkit not a porting toolkit, but Apple Proton, an all purpose wine implementation for playing almost any windows game under the sun from modern titles like Cyberpunk to older titles like FEAR or Unreal. Gptk seems to be better for modern titles not old titles that people also enjoy 2. Support open standards like open gl and vulkan. It’s befuddling that Apple has a hate boner for Vulkan and dropped support for open gl. The lacking open gl support makes games like Minecraft much less enjoyable on my Mac, and titles like Wolfenstein the New Order or Doom 2016 unplayable on any compatibility layer on Mac. 3. Promote Steam more and stop releasing games on their App Store. No pc gamer likes online storefronts like the Windows Store and the Mac App Store is not much better. Steam is much better and has a far bigger library of games. Maybe work with Valve to allow steam play compatibility to run GPTK or Wine for a more seamless experience I love my MacBook but I use it for creative work and for school, not so much for games unless I want to prove that Mac’s are capable of playing games, but Apple needs to do more to make us satisfied.
Those numbers can’t be right. 7000 copies sold for RE:Village? I can’t possibly be part of an exclusive club. If I bought RE:Village that means RE:Village sold an order of magnitude more than 7000.
The issue is not in that noone want to play them. I do not want to pay for a game, because: 1. I want to play the game on other platforms at least as possibility. 2. I want regional prices because I would not pay for a game 60$ when the game in my region for Windows costs 15$. I will NOT. 3. App Store is a piece of crap, at least of now. As we know new updates MIGHT improve it. 4. Games released on the App Store are not even available on all Apple platforms. It's pathetic.
This would be my feedback to Apple - not as an armchair CEO but as a general schmuck who games occasionally. I have no interest in what is being brought into gaming. Resident Evil, Death Stranding, Lies of P all look impressive but not something I’m gonna sit down with for extended periods. But I do (and would) with games like Valheim, Palworld, Deep Rock Galactic and other AA or indie titles that are multiplayer that I can play with my kids or games that can be played in short gaming sessions. I use my Mac for work mostly so having my downtime be something that fits family gaming would be of interest to me. That’s the niche I fall into and I’m not sure how many would be the same as me. I’ll be buying Palworld when the Mac version is available so I can join friends and family. I currently play Vaheim with my sons. These are games you can easily jump into and out of without dedicating huge sessions to, and I can move my MacBook from the office to the living room to join. The Mac is light and being able move to another room to join a game that my kids are playing would play to that strength. For this reason RE7 and all these intense single player games don’t interest me.
I’m not surprised sales are super high. Not only are all of these limited to either high end iPads or just the iPhone 15 Pro, it also is on Mac App Store, further emphasizing the fact that people don’t buy games on Mac. I personally don’t own a device that can play any of these games on iOS and I don’t own a recent Mac, just a modern gaming laptop. I do think the sales are somewhat in line with what I expect because people do not game on Mac and the games on mobile tend to be F2P crap or super casual games Also the screen size isn’t even an issue. The Steam Deck, Switch, and ROG Ally wouldn’t be popular if people didn’t mind playing big AAA games on a small screen. The issue is just the audience. The gaming audience on mobile is hyper casual while those who buy handheld gaming devices tend to be less casual gamers. Touch controls to suck and I highly advise against them for these games. A controller is basically required for the best experience or possibly even mouse and keyboard for iPad too
Only way I see Apple competing in AAA gaming is by pivoting Apple Arcade to a cloud gaming service. I only bought RE4 for my M1 Pro bc I don’t have a console, gaming PC and zero Steam library. Most gamers do. No surprise RE4 doesn’t run well on my 15 Pro.
the article is most about iOS. the main issue is the games play like a$$ on iPhone. the port is low quality low effort, they barely run, low frame rate, and crash often. and then you add on top the games were designed to be played on PC/Console…such as the UI being too small on iPhone, the virtual controllers sucking, the gameplay style requiring too much attention for too long. High End mobile games like ZZZ by mihoyo are getting 40million in preregistration. We're more likely to see the high end mobile developers make more astounding games than the old console developers being able to make good games for mobile ….. AC Mirage crashed within minutes for me on iPhone 15pm . as an app developer I know the revenue estimates we've seen have been 10x off in either direction before for my own games and my friends.
personally I think the fact that they managed to forcerun a console game on a PHONE its a pretty outstanding deal, I'd say like with all Apple does, they're ahead of the industry and now sadly they will eat the "negative" press while phones for the next years will compete and improve on this, we're so close to have a console with console quality and "pocket friendly like a phone"
Your argument is invalidated by the fact that Doom 2016 and Warframe can both run on the Nintendo Switch, which is weaker by processing power than my five-year-old budget phone. Apple hardware's build quality is commendable, but they've lost the lead they used to have in terms of processing power and are drip-feeding improvements to their cult. If you want to praise someone, praise the developers of the games and the compatibility tools.
Something Apple probably would never do (seems unlikely for Valve in the current era too), but this would be fixed by a partnership with Steam. We need some kind of cross buy system. As it is right now, if a game is on Steam and The App Store, I buy on Steam, because Steam is a better gaming platform (all the community features and all the best games in one place) and I know I have a lot of hardware options, and I have more friends to play with. Apple does have the advantage though of the Apple hardware ecosystem for those that are fully in it. Buying a game once and playing it on my Apple TV, iPad, Phone, and Mac is awesome. The only problem is Apple doesn't force devs to publish on all devices. If I have a cool game on my phone, that doesn't mean I can plop down on my couch with a controller and enjoy it on the big screen, that doesn't mean while I am at my desk I can enjoy it on my 4k 120 monitor. Purchases are really a mess as you have to research every game to see what devices it is on. Some devs are selling the same game twice depending on which Apple hardware you want to use. Shout out to Overhaul games though, who even though they already had a $20 Mac version of the original Baldur's Gate games, they still went ahead and enabled the $10 iPad versions on Mac when Apple introduced that feature. And SoMoGa, who released the classic JRPG, Lunar on every Apple device, so I can in fact play on my TV, monitor, iPad, and Phone.
Questionable article with questionable numbers! There are two sources used in the article but we only see the worst one in the video. The other source is Appmagic with much higher numbers. There is too much difference between the numbers to have statistical significance. So games like Resident Evil 4 and Village with 710,000-817,000 downloads are flops and had only 11,570-26,266 buyers? AC Mirage had 279,000 downloads in less than two weeks and it’s a flop and had 4,420 buyers? They compare that to 1.9 million downloads for AC Rebellion, a free mobile game that could be played on ordinary iPhones like 4-6. Of course a $50 game that can only be played on top iPhone models and iPads has fewer downloads. Give it 6 months or so like RE games before making conclusions. Is an expensive sports car a flop because only few buy it at high price? Who knows Ubisoft sales goal with such a title and strategy? Why does the writer of the article believes Mirage must sell 1.9 million copies in just two weeks to be successful? Until somebody who actually has worked on these projects at/with Capcom, Kojima Productions, Ubisoft or Apple provides facts or insights you should take such speculations with a large grain of salt. Capcom said in a press release that RE Village’s release on new devices like iPhone has increased sales. The article says ”those ports have bombed” but it also says ”Apple is likely paying developers like Ubisoft and Capcom to port these games to iPhone knowing they are doomed to fail.” So if Apple is paying what difference does it really make if the sales bomb or not? Apple wants the games and pays for them for different reasons. Microsoft still loses up to $200 on every sold Xbox after 23 years apparently so Apple has still a few years left to test the waters. Epic’s loss for its game store will reach $965 million by 2027. Everybody says Apple has the money and should pay so here you are. If that’s the case the devs haven’t lost anything. On the contrary they make some revenue too for free. In the end does it even matter? Even if only one person has bought the games Apple seems to be supposedly willing to pay for more games every year. People say they rather have many buggy PC games than fewer Mac games. Then I too rather have more games sponsored by Apple than none. Isn’t that the same thing all the experts on Apple’s gaming strategy complain about all the time? That Apple should buy and pay for this and that? Besides they used sale prices in their estimate. The normal prices are higher which means even fewer buyers but higher download rate per buyer which makes less sense. Why would each buyer download a game 60-100 times? Is it a matter of huge families with huge number of apple devices using family sharing and universal purchase? Doesn’t make sense.
when it comes to portable gaming I'd much rather play on a nintendo switch with its even slow for its time Tegra X1 chip (or the nintendo 3ds with it's iphone 3GS-level specs) but with actual controllers rather than touch screen controls. touch screen CAN work great, when the game was made with it in mind, rather than being a port of a game from another platform
just support Mac gaming mainly, and port some native games into iPad, gaming on iPhone not so great idea, even if I had iPhone 15 pro I would not buy them. Porting some fps games into Mac will be great idea, like CS2 maybe COD(if Black ops 6 would release on Mac, that would be great). And adding these games on Arcade. I don't see any interesting games on Arcade and reason to pay for it.
I will explain to you why it's failing. Because for years greedy Apple didn't give regular iPhones decent amount of memory, which would be enough for AAA gaming even on regular iPhone 15 and 14. If they did, a much more broader audience would be able to buy these games. Thank you Apple. You shot yours in the foot
Apples problems can be solved easily. Stop distributing the mac versions on the appstore. Nobody wants to use the appstore to manage these large games.
Currently i'm using m1pro macbook for productivity but for gaming i have a PS5. Its absolutely cheap as compared to any apple product. Two dedicated machines for two different tasks/processings has just been a bliss. (being a casual gamer i'm chill with frame rates and graphics too :3)
I started to get interested in gaming on Mac since I have an m3 max. But then I started GeForce now ultimate which performs incredibly well and has a lot more games and I’m happy I didn’t spend a penny on a Mac App Store games. Otherwise that would have been nice but when I see how it developed I think I did the right move. With GeForce Now you can launch pc games like Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake 2 or Cyberpunk 2077 from your steam, epic store or Xbox library at maximum graphics settings and ray tracing it’s incredible. Plus I’ll be able to play these game on a pc, a steam deck or an Xbox if I buy those one day. Also I can play from the x cloud or use GeForce on any other device like iPhone and iPad etc at much higher settings than what these devices can do natively. With that in mind I’m pretty sure apple won’t cut it in gaming. These other companies are much bigger players on the gaming tech and business. Good news is that Mac gaming is developing. Just not with the App Store.
I just gotta say… I don’t have the energy to wait years for games I can play on switch and Windows to release on Mac. Even if they run well. Furthermore, the focus is very much on Games I don’t care about. I don’t really like most shooters. I LOVE cozy games however. While big impressive games like Resident Evil certainly send a signal, maybe going the Nintendo route and focusing mainly on gameplay would be more successful. There are certain hypes within certain sections of the gaming community. Maybe approaching developers when their games are still in development would also bring some success. The cozy gaming community especially is often hyping up Kickstarter games that don’t really have the resources to invest into Apple right away. If they take their gaming seriously, they should consider supporting such games early to broaden Apples gaming appeal in general. We need to see that Apple is taking gaming seriously. A few Triple A titles aren’t going to cut it, we need a portfolio. Especially now that windows ARM is coming out, there is a real opportunity to take a considerable chunk of Windows marketshare by getting good at gaming quicker than Windows ARM is. We all know that ARM chips are ridiculously powerful. We want to enjoy them fully!
I never see any sales of games on the Mac App Store. Civ 6 is still $99! If they want people to use the store, they can't just charge full price and leave it there for 7 years untouched.
C-mon Apple start from the basics cover all genre’s. Fighting games : Street Fighter, Teken, Mortal Kombat. Shooting games: CS, Call Of Duty, Battlefield, Valorant, Fortnite. Sports: NBA 2K, Madden, FIFA. Adventure: Assassin Creed Odyssey, Red Dead Redemption, GTA V, God of War, Spider-Man, Hit Man. Start with those Apple 😉
In a new world these are not AAA games anymore. People don't want to play these, on mobile you need shorter game sessions. Genshin Impact, Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero easily destroy these by quality, amount of content, writing, budget and earnings. And as for Macs, Mac users don't have time for games or they have PS5. Kids don't buy Macs, it's a productivity machine.
I will only play these games if available on the Apple TV (maybe a Mac Mini with proper Living Room UI option). Would never play them on my iPhone. I have recently started playing games on GeForce Now (great platform). But, there is no GFN App on the Apple TV so had to buy a Nvidia Shield.
I hope Apple succeeds and write an Nvidia RTX driver or AMD 7900XT driver for my 2019 Mac Pro and release Call of Duty and Battle Field in Steam or the App Store, that’s all they have to do and they will succeed. Even Valorant in Mac they will make money they have to know which market to capture seems they don’t have any ideas that all HS and College kids have Macs even how dedicated they are on PC gaming.
First I have to say that I am glad Apple trying go into gaming. Even I have PS5 with subscription, I am enjoying gaming on Mac more (mainly thanks to CrossOver), than on PS5. But I have Mac for work (base M1 Pro 14"), so I can justify its high price. If I want Mac for home usage, I would consider base Air which is with its 8 GB RAM, passive cooling and 256 GB of storage bad choice for gaming. With high costs of upgrades for 16/512 option it is completely out of range and I can get more powerful gaming laptop for lower price (e.g. Legion Slim 5 14" in full specs). MacBook Pros prices are on another level for home usage. I could also build gaming rig, but I don't want any desktop solution and I don't even want Windows.
A simple example is "Total War: ROME REMASTERED." I bought it the first week, but it was on Steam. I have several games that I play on my Mac, but I bought them on Steam or on the game's webpage. Why? In Steam, I have the game for my Mac or CrossOver, but I don't play a game like that on my phone or iPad. I have several Mac games like Humankind, Civilization VI, several titles of Total War, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, ENDLESS Space... the problem is the App Store
Here are some suggestions that Apple could consider: 1) Value for money. Why buy a 3 years old game for full price in the app store, when you can buy it, in a steam sale for less. Regular sales, realistic prices (for old-ish games) might help the platform. 2) Heal old wounds. Apple could eat some humble pie and heal the wounds with Valve, Nvidia and others, to help their platform with games and game developers. 3) Commit to a platform. Rather than keep changing. In Apples 30 / 40 yr, they have changed CPU’s what 4 times, been friends with graphics manufactures then enemies. This tends to upset developers who have just converted to one platform or mastered one Platform. Only having to develop for yet another maybe temporary platform, till apple decided to change again. Apple needs to commit to Apple Silicon and Metal for at least 10 years or longer. 4) Alternatively, Apple could commit to an open standard and support Vulkan, Open GL & Metal natively. Dropping Open GL support, is what upset Valve and stopped the development of Half-life for Macs, back in the OS9 days. As mentioned, wounds need healing. Not forgetting the issue with epic games and the loss of the native fortnight build. 5) Develop a method of supporting on board GPUs and installable GPUs (Nvidia / AMD). They had intel laptops with Dual Nvidia GPU’s, the 2009 MacBook Pros. I could see a Mini Gaming tower with an Apple silicon GPU and a slot for an installable GPU. I am sure that would sell like gang busters and not to just gamers. 6) Stop pushing triple A titles, that run better on other platforms and push AA or indie titles. Not to mention the attitudes of some triple A developers (EA) to such subjects as “crunch” and burning out staff; closing of game development, because their games don’t sell well. Quickly pushed out, buggy games, are all the hallmarks of triple A publishers. 7) Buy or heavily invest in companies who port or bring windows games to the Apple platform (Codeweavers / Crossover, Feral interactive, etc) 8) Port the back catalogue of old 32 bit Mac games to 64 bit. 9) FUN! Gaming is hard to quantify “what is fun” as everyone has their own definition of “what is fun” or “what’s fun to play”. Death stranding, looks pretty, but “is it fun to play?” I have never played it, so I would be rather unscientific to judge something I have never played. I have played previous Kojima games and found the lacking in fun. Being preached at for 30 minutes at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2 and be told to "stop playing the game", by the game. So, I took its advice and stop playing. If the Mac platform is know as a more casual gaming platform than a “hardcore Gamer” platform, then why not embrace the casual and make it the best and most fun casual gaming experience available. Continue to improve the compatibility to use game controllers on the platform. Create a dedicated Gaming App / Store, that understands its' market and knows what its' player base wants, such as cross platform playability (iPad, iOS OSX). Multiplayer cross platform support with Mac and PC, maybe even console. Basically a better gaming store experience. 10) With Arm Chips becoming a windows PC (laptops) thing now and games not preforming well on those snapdragon chips, even through prism. Maybe game developers might start developing with the Arm chip set in mind and create games that work on both platforms. but that’s just wishful thinking. 11) Buy or invest in gaming studios to help develop native games for the platform. The third most wealthy tech company in the world and they cant buy four game developers and get them to develop games on the platform. Apple could give them the freedom that the likes of EA and Ubisoft and Microsoft don’t, to create games that might or might not be the next big thing, but, to do as Apple once sold its self upon and “Think Different”.
1. They need to bring games out on the Mac FIRST (instead of iPhone or iPad). 2. They need to bring games out ON TIME. I don't care about the gazillionth online shooter, brawler, whathaveya...I care about quality titles, whether AAA or indie, that I can play on my Mac, when they originally come out, or maybe one, two, even three months or so later. Not years! (I'm looking at you, Valheim. Apple should've jumped on that the moment they realized they sold 10 million copies of this). I actually do not care whether it's on Steam or App Store. Normally I would prefer GOG anyway, but I take what I can get. If it comes out both on Steam an App Store, I usually will choose the App Store version.
The thing is, they need to partner with Steam, which is the gaming environment on PC. The App Store sucks, and paying again for a game we already bought on another platform (PC) is not cool. I bought Death Stranding again on the App Store to play on my Mac even though I already have it on Steam; this should not happen. I did it because I really like the game. I didn't do the same for other games, and a lot of people are doing that, which explains the low sales. Another thing, Apple should implement the GPTK on Steam like Proton works on Linux. If we have this natively and easily (without needing to mess with Wine and Crossover), Mac gaming would blow up.
I think after natively porting Cyberpunk 2077 ultimate edition to macOS and iPadOS natively (with ray tracing on M3, M4 and later), shall Apple have talks with CDPR to bring Witcher (Canis Majoris) and Orion (Cyberpunk sequel) release on day one on macOS and iPadOS simultaneously, and design the games with those controls and devices in mind. AC Shadows first step in correcting direction
If they would make Mac’s with a minimum of 512Gb storage and 12/16Gb ram, that would help allot as most of these games would simply not fit on most Mac’s. Another big issue is the AppStore, not being able to choose an external drive for these makes it a no go. I get that they don’t want to support Steam and use their own AppStore, but c’mon the AppStore is neglected for many years. And yes, they should do the “buy once play everywhere” strategy, so Mac, iPad, iPhone and I would really like it if they would do the Apple TV (when it gets upgraded).
I don't think it's about practicality right now for Apple. They're bringing desktop games to iOS and iPadOS to demonstrate to other developers that the hardware is capable enough and demonstrate to consumers that they're bringing 'desktop games' to mobile platform. This is also why I think they're not actively pushing iOS/iPadOS games onto macOS (just yet). Technically that's probably very quick and easy like you've mentioned but it's the perception. It's like pricing a phone very high. If it costs a lot, the perception is that it's premium. Here is the same, if you demonstrate desktop games on mobile platform, the perception is that Apple's mobile devices are very capable. I'm assuming that once this perception is more widely accepted by consumers and game developers, it will attract more demand for gaming on their platform. This is what they lack right now, they lack demand (we're a very small # of Mac gamers on this channel 😄 they'll need more!). Once the demand is there, then it's easier for Apple to focus on things like porting iOS/iPadOS games to macOS, improving their AppStore as a games launcher, etc. That's just my view/assumptions.
Agreed with lot of points. Also, it's not just being late or not having enough sales or being limited to Apple ecosystem, but also post-release support. That being said, Apple is still way, way behind Microsoft, Sony, and Steam when it comes to supporting their AAA titles, even well after their release days. And in some case, they're even cross-platform (including cloud saves), something that Apple haven't really allowed with their games from my experience. As much I loved Apple's ecosystem when it comes to flexibility with professional software and internet experience, such lack of flexibility with gaming platform is really dragging them far behind. I believe that a sensible solution is to have Steam fully functional on Mac and iPhone and iPad, which mean every single games being made available for everyone with Apple device, Steam Deck style. That way, there will be extremely consistent release and support for all platforms that can run Steam. The pieces are all there with Steam Deck's Proton OS, Apple's Game Porting Toolkit, virtual machine such as CrossOver, Parallels, VMWare, Wine, and Whiskey. If that version of Steam is indeed possible and can definitely runs on Apple device, that would be a huge win for Apple gamers. Of course, Apple would have liked a cut of profits, so I don't how that would works though. They did figured out back when Mac was running on Intel (even though Steam didn't have all games available then), hopefully they can figure out again this time around.
I tried RE4. Gameplay seems to be optimised for game controller, if you are just kicking the tyres the experience with keyboard/mouse is really not good. I had to uninstall RE 4 because it took a ton of disk space, and then the patch/update was essentially the same size. The App store experience was miserable. It took forever to download. I had to uninstall other large files in order to update the game - and I have a 512GB device, double what most users will have. Until Apple sort out distribution and allow download to external storage very few people will keep these games on their devices. Apple have made their own bed by speccing all their devices with inadequate storage for the last 10 years, and charging ridiculous amounts to upgrade to a fairly sensible 1TB. A good 1TB nvme is $60 retail, how is that a $400 upgrade??
Here’s the thing, the games have to be discounted to make it a no-brainier for most folks. And they really need to push games on their AppleTV platform. There aren’t enough games on there. Lastly, I’d love to play ports of classic games like the Bioshock series, Street Fighter Alpha series, Street Fighter 3: Online Edition, Mortal Kombat 1-2-3-Ultimate, classic Rayman, all on my Apple hardware. They should hire real gamers who know these things.
Apple made all my PPC games not work, and then they made all my Intel 32 bit games and cider wrappers not work. I also have Intel 64 bit games that stopped working on newer macOS versions. I have hundreds of iOS games from previous years that just disappeared. Contrast this to buying games on Steam or Xbox where your purchases are respected. If I buy AAA games, it won’t be with Apple.
Branding, Apple Game Center should be its own app, Apple need their Steam, listing decent games to buy that meet good standards, just like Apple Arcade, but with AA games, away from the garbage mobile games, And investing in social features, imagine you play a SF6 match on your iPhone add the player you just played against in gamecenter and start chating with them, just like the earlier days of X360, Windows phone had an XBOX label for good games without Ads And they had a separate page in the store.
Strongly agree with the comment that the main reason of failure should be Apple's greediness, focusing too much on getting extremely high profit from high price setting and building up Apple's ecosystem. AAA gaming requires high spec hardware. Everyone knows how high the price is if you want more memory and more SSD capacity. Great platform is needed for attracting gamers. Everyone knows that for gaming the top platform now is Steam. Apple just runs its game "development" almost in an opposite way. Apple, we know Apple is a big brand. But don't forget, Apple is not a big brand on serious gaming.
Most of the gamers have PS4/5, XBOX, or Windows machines. The gaming audience is not a generally a Mac owning one. Just to add Linux can play Windows games so the Linux gamers are the same users with Intel/AMD CPUs. PS - there's a steam sale on at the moment so everyone is probably not buying games on App Store.
When I found Frost Punk 2 is going to be released on Mac on day 1, I made a point of pre-ordering on Steam to show support. I'm a recent convert from win to Mac since apple silicon and graphics are crushing it. This said when I think about it, where I pre-ordered is a factor. Apple prefers purchases on App Store where they get a cut. Its likely iPhone/iPad ports are being prioritized over Mac, is due to the fact iPhone/iPad are not Steam platforms. Mac users are more likely to use Steam for purchases, because they have hundreds if not thousands of dollars in titles going back years on their steam accounts. Where Apple however is missing it is a AAA games will drain an iPhone/iPad in an impractical amount of time, and also people just prefer playing on a bigger screen with inputs like a mouse vs thumbs on the screen. Also who wants to use App Store when Steam has sales, and many of their old windows steam games can be played through crossover or parallels, making it sticky. Making the Mac more gaming capible will sell more Macs, it's one of the reasons I converted. So it is in their interest. However unless they have an answer for Steam, it's unlikely they'll get a big cut of game software sales, preventing them from having their cake and eating it too. This all said, there is the question if steam will compete. They've drug their feet on Mac in favor of windows forever and still don't have an apple silicon native client. Meanwhile x86 is being destroyed by ARM, leaving them vulnerable unless intel can pull a rabbit out of their hat.
Apple needs to invest and collab with Steam to bring the equivalent of Linux's Steam app to Mac and merge all Apple's game porting tools into its own Proton-like layer. Once Mac can behave like a Steam Deck, then focus on native games. Personally, I'm looking forward for an ARM Steam Deck, a device that can match Apple's M chips and be used for gaming on-the-go and as a desktop will be the ultimate device for me.
The real problem is that developers have to pay $1000 for a Mac just to make a game vs on windows it’s $149 and windows will run on almost anything. If they really wanted to cheap out they would make a game on Linux which is 100% free. So what I’m saying is they should make a dev kit of sorts that would be more affordable and they need to allow more 3rd party app stores on all their devices. The dev kit could be a monthly payment or a set payment of around $100 to undercut windows. Next make developer accounts free.
Apple needs to rebrand the Apple TV as a gaming console and sell a new model with comparable specs and cost to the Xbox Series X & PS5. Releasing it with their own bundled in first party game pad. The gamepad should have a Touch ID Sensor in it for quick purchases and then they should work with developers to get Apple account sign in for games implemented properly. Making buying games and making new accounts for games would be easier falls right in line with Apple philosophy IMO.
As a mainly PC gamer, I don't care about any game released on the app store - I have a large steam library and I don't want to pay twice to play on both my MacBook and PC - Apple should just accept the fact that its current exclusive approach will only lead to developers unwillingness to port their games to MacOS (cuz nobody buys games on the app store). As for iPhone gaming, when possible I prefer streaming from my own PC rather than playing the native versions (e.g. Genshin Impact) - less device heat with better quality and framerate
Apple needs to just support Steam and/or Xbox platforms. One big problem they have currently with trying to release AAA games is that they've already excluded gamers for so long. They're gonna have to put in some time and energy into it if they ever want a gaming community on Mac.
Well its psychology right. Spending 49.99 on a phone as your only device is a tough swallow. Doing the same on an iPad Pro is more palatable because of the screen size, but they only run well on very expensive iPads And then the Mac….well the Mac is expensive but provides the best experience for these style of games. Face it, serious Mac gaming and iOS gaming will never be a big thing, especially if these numbers are right
Mac's are not bought for gaming. And if Apple wants people to game on the Apple silicon, they might as well buy the titles and sell them for really cheap. Personally, I think a lot of those games are much better priced on Steam than on Apple App Store. Why would I buy it from the app store? Secondly, I love to game, but I have a 16 inch Macbook pro for work. I have a good PC with 2 year old specs for gaming. I would not use the Mac for gaming, even though it can.
I really do hope the folks at Apple are watching this channel. Most of the AAA games I've purchased in the Mac App Store I've played and beaten on other consoles. I'd love to play day one releases on my M3 Mac. And you couldn't be more right about Street Fighter 6. I play Tekken, Soulcalibur, and Street Fighter all the time on the go through Cross Over. I'm just afraid that Apple might start to think that Crossover is eating into their bottom line.
I'm a mac user and don't look for games at the app store, never 😅. I use crossover or Windows emulators + steam for most games. Of course I purchased mac compatible games, specially to support Mac market, but I do it in steam. I have a M2 max and a run some 2023 games on low/medium settings when I know that native, they will run on high/ultra and better resolution 😢
A. should drop Metal and adopt industry standard API: openGL and Vulkan. No way a developer is going to invest in a proprietary tech assuring so low revenues.
I’ll be very real: I just don’t care for any of the games they’re bringing across. I don’t like Resident Evil, Stray was boring and Lies of P is still too expensive. Where’s sea of thieves? Overwatch? Diablo? Final Fantasy 16? Those are titles I’m interested in, but they’ll never make it across.
Seriously who wants to play these AAA on such small screen like the iPhone. Nice on the tech side but then I’d rather play death stranding on a big screen and really enjoy the landscape
AAA games, full price and story mode only... Bring something like, Helldivers 2, diablo 4... something that can be updated and upgraded, would fit better...
If Apple keeps being greedy, they're going to hurt themselves and the user in the end. Sad. I hope they rethink their strategy. Also, gamers are not poor.. but we don't like squandering our money. Give us a good product/ platform / strategy and we'll pay. But not for this..
All the games they pushed, I had already played on Xbox or Playstation(or gamecube if were talking RE:4). It's new games that people want, some original IPs; if Apple really wants to sway gamers to Mac, they're going to have to make the killer games themselves.
I think Apple’s goal by bringing old AAA games to the Mac and the iPhone was to show users and developers what their new devices are capable of. They probably knew these old games wouldn’t sell very well considering people probably already played them on other devices. But the real goal is to encourage game companies to release their games on all Apple platforms at launch at the same time as other devices like PC or PS5, these new launches would be the real success. However, another thing to consider is that a person who can afford an iPhone 15 PM or a high end mac probably has a gaming console too and will probably prefer to play it there. That would mean that at some point Apple will need exclusives if they want to be important in the gaming industry lol.
The storefront sucks and the games they are promoting aren’t that great. Only the upcoming titles from this years WWDC are really good. I expect Palworld to sell a bunch of units. But most importantly, the gaming interface on iOS and Mac SUCK SOOOO BAD.
If you want to buy an iphone solely for gaming, then why can't you just buy a pc? The highest end iphone that you can theoretically get is 2000 dollars, why not get a pc or a console. 1000 dollar pc would perform better than any iphone, plus nvidia dlss and ray tracing just makes it a better experience.
Release ipad with AAA gaming and use apple logo for heat reduction but why the magic keyboard block the apple logo? 😂 why dont create a gaming version of magic keyboard has its own battery and has fan to suck out the heat from ipad for long gaming experience? Apple absolutely doesn’t care for ipad gaming 😂 I feel like the Apple employees stop hard working, the are busy to prove themselves 😂
A partnership with Valve for an integrated Proton Layer / Gaming Toolkit could be a good start. Maybe even Apple developing the next Steam Deck, I could then say, yeah, macs can game, and it would be an incentive to get games ported to run with better performance on that Steam Deck. But Apple would need to reach deep their pockets.
give us Fan for MBA I wont be able to play a single game even if I pay $100s-$1000s with laggy fps on an entry level MBA due to thermal issues. its better to invest in an Windows Setup than on Mac setup considering the cost console cost much lesser than this.
