Feral: Apple Silicon Opens Up 'Exciting Opportunities' for the Future of Mac Gaming

[tubular]

Doomed for all gamings.

So doomed, so very very doomed, that Apple:

"Apple's profits from gaming outweighed those of major game companies, according to a report, with Apple earning more from App Store games in its 2019 fiscal year than Nintendo, Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, and Sony combined."

Apple earns more from gaming than Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Activision combined | AppleInsider

Apple's profits from gaming outweighed those of major game companies, according to a report, with Apple earning more from App Store games in its 2019 fiscal year than Nintendo, Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, and Sony combined.

appleinsider.com

Whenever the topic of gaming comes up on this forum, we always hear from those who equate gaming with AAA gaming, as if the rest is irrelevant and invisible, and that there are only two kinds of computer -- the ones running RTX 30x0, and potatoes.

Well, not every car race is an F1 race, and yet lots of people are mightily entertained by non-F1 races all the same.

Apple has decided there's plenty of money to be made serving the majority of the community -- the part that isn't burning with shame not to be running the latest and greatest AAA game at a kazillion FPS on a screen the size of Saturn's rings. That's why they're not out there in a hurry to subsidize the porting of AAA games.

Having said that, Apple's problem for a long time is that their strategy for a graphics solution capable of supporting AAA games is not only not industry-standard but, worse, has changed direction every few years. It's been a moving target. I'd hope that as they move all their boxes to Metal-driven TBDR embedded in Apple Silicon they will have finally created something *stable* enough to be worth developing conversion tools for.

I can understand Apple walking away from OpenGL, which was built for the 1990s. I don't understand -- or rather, don't like -- the decision to walk away from Vulkan.

Still, I don't see the Mac hosting AAA games for at least five years, because of the legacy of this strategy churn. If the moving finger has finally stopped moving, then that's good news, but it will take a while for games to build the development infrastructure and knowledge to best take advantage of it. (Blender's only had official support for Metal PBR rendering for a few months, for example.)

 

[DeepIn2U]

With the M1's amazing GPUs, every Mac sold today can double as a gaming console, in terms of graphics performance but also in the uniformity of the hardware available to the software developer. All that's needed now is the games.

I’ll be nice Apple‘s a team of game developers to push the limits of Apple Silicon going forward. Then, you’d have an internal team that actually can work with game developers and game engine creators to optimize or speed optimization for game porting.

 

[Theo Moon]

That list is a lie. People are getting ~20fps with MBA M1 at 1080 ultra (highest preset) and not 38fps.

That is because they don’t have the power adapter plugged in. It’s an apple “feature” to save battery, like not having macromedia flash on the iPhone. Apple makes lots of decisions like this to save battery life and unlike other companies that break all the rules to show high fps.

Apple beats all chip mfr in power usage vs framerate. And sadly isn’t part of the usual gaming metrics. Got another device that can do better picture quality than an iPhone or Mac with no fan noise?

Typical “high performance gaming computer” can bake cookies all day long. Use that heat creatively.

PC Case Mod Turns Your Computer Into a Mini-Oven | Gearfuse

If you walked into a friend's room and saw this sitting under their desk, you'd probably be like "Um, why the hell do you have an oven in your room?"

www.gearfuse.com

 

[sunny5]

https://steamdb.info/instantsearch/?refinementList%5Boslist%5D%5B0%5D=macOS%20%28Apple%20Silicon%29

Yes, about 700 or so on Steam, which only started supporting uploading native/universal titles in September.

lol, do they even mention if they support Apple Silicon natively? NOT AT ALL. Stop trolling.

 

[topdrawer]

lol, do they even mention if they support Apple Silicon natively? NOT AT ALL. Stop trolling.

Thats what the tag means. Yes.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Now that we’re going to need ports again it all feels very familiar in a good way. Ultimately it will mean less games cause a company can’t just slap the windows executable inside a Cedega wrapper and call it a Mac port but honestly I’ll take less games that are actually ported rather than more games that barely work.

The big difference from today is that back then, PC gaming performance of an acceptable level was limited to PC’s. So, you’d need a PC or a Mac, right? Now, PC gaming performance even beyond that level is available for just a few hundred bucks dropped on a PC or a gaming system OR, if you’re savvy, you can use CrossOver to get the Windows app to run on the Mac. With all these easier paths, it would take something special for a developer to spend money to do a port, I think.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

It seems to scale well to a point but not beyond 48 cores.

I see that there’s GFXBench Metal on the App Store, do we know if it’s actually using Metal (optimized for TBDR) to it’s fullest potential or is there a translation bottleneck that would limit performance? I’m doing some searching, but not finding anything clear yet.

 

[emulator]

People who want to play must forget the Mac. Seriously, if you can afford a Mac, you can definitely afford a $500 console.

The only games I play on M1 are some point and click from GOG. Everything else on Series X with game pass (3 years for $95).

 

[EntropyQ3]

The big difference from today is that back then, PC gaming performance of an acceptable level was limited to PC’s. So, you’d need a PC or a Mac, right? Now, PC gaming performance even beyond that level is available for just a few hundred bucks dropped on a PC or a gaming system OR, if you’re savvy, you can use CrossOver to get the Windows app to run on the Mac. With all these easier paths, it would take something special for a developer to spend money to do a port, I think.

It takes one thing and one thing only.
Customers.
You are right, it’s not as if there’s a shortage of ways to get a gaming fix at moderate cost sidestepping MacOS. But there are also people who want to simply fire up a native game on the platform they use and like. How many? Impossible to say, except that it should grow with the number of users.

I own a capable dedicated gaming PC, and have a large library of games there I like/have liked. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t prefer to play games on my quiet and cool (and quite capable) Mac Studio. And with age, I no longer particularly enjoy futzing around with PC innards and reinstalling Windows, (nor do I enjoy jumping through hoops and translation layers on my Mac). It gets old. I may well more or less just freeze the PC at its current level, and favour good titles released for MacOS, if they are available.
I don’t need them for MacOS, its just a platform preference. But that preference is real. And so is my money, if you happen to be a games publisher.

 

[tubular]

People who want to play must forget the Mac.

Nonsense. Different people, different styles, different platforms. One size does not fit all.

 

[Homy]

Rosetta 2 is NOT a native version and I was very clear about that.

Doomed for all gamings. For example, Boot camp no longer works. How about indie games? Are there any native games? Beside, macOS is the worst platform for gaming and that's why many games like Genshin and Alien Isolation dont support macOS but iOS/iPadOS.

Actually you were not clear about it. I answered to what you wrote, not what you meant. You said Mac OS is worst for gaming and that's why Alien Isolation supports iOS and not Mac OS. Your question ”Are there any native games?” was related to indie games. You didn't say why Mac OS is worst for gaming despite being better than iOS, since iOS is a scaled-down version and both are sharing the same hardware architecture.

The fact is that Mac OS is much better now for gaming with Mac OS 12 Monterey, Metal 3, 64-bit and Apple Silicon than in 2015 when Alien Isolation was released on Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite, OpenGL, 32-bit and Intel.

So if Mac OS is worst for gaming now how come that Alien Isolation was released for it back then when the Mac hardware and software were even worse?

To say that Mac OS is worst for gaming as a reason for the lack of native AS games compared to iOS is to oversimplify. I think one reason for Alien Isolation not being ported natively to Apple Silicon and Mac is that it has already sold enough copies that there is not enough profit in making a native version, especially when the current version still runs via Rosetta. It’s also more work to port OpenGL to Metal than a game which already is made in Metal. iOS is on the other hand a new market where Alien Isolation didn’t exist and can make more profit.

Also saying ”Doomed for all gamings” is a bit exaggerating and overdramatic, to say the least. People have been saying for decades that Apple and Mac is doomed and yet I’ve been playing all the games I want since my first Mac back in 1996 and still have a backlog for at least a decade to come; And when I’m done I can always replay my old 32-bit games with projects like Mac Source ports or use Parallels or Crossover with DX 12 support in a couple of years.

Macs are better and more powerful than ever before and more games are being ported to Apple Silicon. The slow pace is partly because Rosetta does a very good job. Just because some particular AAA games aren’t on Mac it doesn’t mean it’s doomed for all gaming.

 

[Nugat Trailers]

lol, do they even mention if they support Apple Silicon natively? NOT AT ALL. Stop trolling.

Yes, that's... the whole point of the tag. A developer selects it while uploading a game to Steam, or updating a game, and it gives the title the 'macosapplesilicon' tag.

That link is a list of the titles on Steam that have the 'macosapplesilicon' tag, sourced via SteamDB.

So we can probably assume that at worst, the titles there are Universal, if not Native.

Of course, the developers could all be lying, but in that case, I'd have to put the onus back on you to contact them and find out.

 

[SenorWhyMe]

Im not trying to game on a laptop. If I go the computer route I want a 3090 water cooled for 4k and ray tracing.

this is why i wished m1 could support external GPU sadly it will never happen

 

[GalileoSeven]

It's obvious that Apple's definition of "gaming" differs substantially from everyone else's. Mobile/casual stuff is one thing......more immersive stuff (AAA titles and the like) played on beefier laptops & desktops is another. Apple hasn't and doesn't appear to want to take the latter seriously whatsoever (and the cause behind that has been debated ad nauseum already - though I like the theory that the margins are just too low for their liking).

Feral needs to drop the wishful thinking and face up to reality. This reads like they're trying to drum up business and/or their stock price.

 

[tubular]

It's obvious that Apple's definition of "gaming" differs substantially from everyone else's.

Apple's got a very lucrative groove going. What they're doing clearly works. It's not what I'd prefer, but I can't blame them for sticking with what's worked out very well for them.

Apple can execute long-range planning and big R&D, which is how they got to Apple Silicon. I wish they'd do the same for a game-porting pipeline, because without that they're shut out of the bigger games (unless they're made with either Unity or Unreal, both of which have Metal support). AAA games are hella risky as investment on their own terms -- plenty of high-profile crash-and-burns -- and until Apple has a game-porting pipeline that considerably lowers porting costs, MacOS/iOS is going to stay primarily a place for mobile/casual gaming. And the buckets and buckets and buckets of cash Apple makes from from it every single day.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

But there are also people who want to simply fire up a native game on the platform they use and like.

Right, and, back then, there was actually no other way for many Mac users to play that game. That’s likely why the porting companies could be successful. They had a captive audience of users, who had nowhere else to go, who would wait to get that game on the Mac.

These days, they don’t have to wait. Most folks buy a console, a few buy a PC, a few others figure out how to get the windows executable to run on the Mac. And, once they figure out that solution, they’re now effectively no longer in the macOS gaming market, per se. If a publisher WAS to have interest in a macOS native application, as those gamers have non-Mac solutions, they’re not going to wait for a company to port it, they’re just going to buy the non-Mac version.

This is the quandary. So many that want to game have OTHER ways to game… the publishers know from the survey cards some fill out that the user that bought this game HAS a Mac in the house, but they’re playing the game on something else. They effectively reach Mac users without ever having to reach out to Mac users.

 

[sunny5]

Actually you were not clear about it. I answered to what you wrote, not what you meant. You said Mac OS is worst for gaming and that's why Alien Isolation supports iOS and not Mac OS. Your question ”Are there any native games?” was related to indie games. You didn't say why Mac OS is worst for gaming despite being better than iOS, since iOS is a scaled-down version and both are sharing the same hardware architecture.

The fact is that Mac OS is much better now for gaming with Mac OS 12 Monterey, Metal 3, 64-bit and Apple Silicon than in 2015 when Alien Isolation was released on Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite, OpenGL, 32-bit and Intel.

So if Mac OS is worst for gaming now how come that Alien Isolation was released for it back then when the Mac hardware and software were even worse?

To say that Mac OS is worst for gaming as a reason for the lack of native AS games compared to iOS is to oversimplify. I think one reason for Alien Isolation not being ported natively to Apple Silicon and Mac is that it has already sold enough copies that there is not enough profit in making a native version, especially when the current version still runs via Rosetta. It’s also more work to port OpenGL to Metal than a game which already is made in Metal. iOS is on the other hand a new market where Alien Isolation didn’t exist and can make more profit.

Also saying ”Doomed for all gamings” is a bit exaggerating and overdramatic, to say the least. People have been saying for decades that Apple and Mac is doomed and yet I’ve been playing all the games I want since my first Mac back in 1996 and still have a backlog for at least a decade to come; And when I’m done I can always replay my old 32-bit games with projects like Mac Source ports or use Parallels or Crossover with DX 12 support in a couple of years.

Macs are better and more powerful than ever before and more games are being ported to Apple Silicon. The slow pace is partly because Rosetta does a very good job. Just because some particular AAA games aren’t on Mac it doesn’t mean it’s doomed for all gaming.

It is doomed and that's why macOS is less than 2% out of all PC game market. You probably need to face the fact and truth.

 

[George Dawes]

With Eddie cue in charge what could possibly go wrong ?

 

[Nugat Trailers]

I'm genuinely curious as to your idea of 'doomed'.

No, seriously. Are you telling me, sunny, that out of all the games on Mac, there are completely and utterly, 100% nothing worth playing, and we should all run out and give money to Alienware?

 

[EntropyQ3]

This is the quandary. So many that want to game have OTHER ways to game… the publishers know from the survey cards some fill out that the user that bought this game HAS a Mac in the house, but they’re playing the game on something else. They effectively reach Mac users without ever having to reach out to Mac users.

This is true.
(Sometimes you see a narrative that hinges on MacOS users being incapable of using other devices or platforms, which is bizarre.) That said, your argument applies to all platforms. They are all in competition with each other, providing benefits and drawbacks for their respective users, and of course therefore a lot of people own and use more than one.

What sets Macs apart is basically expense. If the primary objective of the device is gaming, then Macs aren’t cost effective. Which means that Mac buyers simply had other priorities dominating as motivators for their purchase. Since people buy Macs without having gaming as their primary use case, ROI for publishers can be a dodgy proposition.

But the killer for MacOS gaming software used to be Boot Camp. People who like to play PC (as opposed to mobile or console exclusive) games, could simply fire up their Windows environment and enjoy the benefits of PC release schedules and pricing deals and not deal with port delays or limited title selection at all. No need to buy anything other than possibly a Windows license key. That option however, is gone.

So if you don’t want the to spend the expense, maintenance or space required for an alternative gaming platform, or even the minor inconvenience of having to fire up another system to chill with a game, gaming on your Mac, under MacOS, is now an a lot more attractive proposition than it used to be.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t make sense for people who care about having a wide selection of games to invest in another system, but turning that argument on its head, owning another system doesn’t preclude that they would think it neat to have nice games on their Macs. If I go to a coffee shop here in my university town, I see a ton of MacBooks in front of students. Even if they have a PS4/5 at home, they might still want to be able to run some Total War on their laptop.

That was a long winded way of trying to convey that having access to other platforms doesn’t preclude that people could enjoy gaming on their Macs, and even preferentially choose that.

It’s not a black and white world. These discussions unfortunately tend to become very polarized. We just don’t know, and unfortunately, nor do the publishers.

 

[Piplodocus]

Feral are heroes IMO for Mac gaming. I bought an M1 Max MBP the end of last year. Wasn't *meant* as a gaming machine, but since I was spending so much on a 32 GB / 4 TB machine, I figured since it'll be my main machine for a good while, I may as well pay a little bit extra for the 32-core GPU as it should game better.

I think pretty much nearly every one of my favourites were ported by Feral and they all run great. The only problem I have is I've gone a bit mad in all the Steam sales and I've bought a whole load of great titles in <6 months and I just don't have enough spare time for much gaming. So I've got too many great ones I've only got a tiny way through.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

But the killer for MacOS gaming software used to be Boot Camp. People who like to play PC (as opposed to mobile or console exclusive) games, could simply fire up their Windows environment and enjoy the benefits of PC release schedules and pricing deals and not deal with port delays or limited title selection at all. No need to buy anything other than possibly a Windows license key. That option however, is gone.

Yeah, it was the killer for MacOS gaming, but maybe not like how you think. BootCamp wasn’t “developers developing games for MacOS”, it was a way for developers to “ignore MacOS altogether and run their currently existing Windows application”. If anything, it was pretty much guaranteed that, during that time, publishers dropped whatever small effort they MAY have considered regarding developing for MacOS because they didn’t need to develop a native MacOS app in order for Mac hardware owners to run it.

BootCamp most certainly killed MacOS gaming because the need to develop MacOS games disappeared. BootCamp, CrossOver, virtualization, all of those things that allow gaming on MacOS WITHOUT actually using MacOS reduces the need for publishers to do anything on MacOS.

That was a long winded way of trying to convey that having access to other platforms doesn’t preclude that people could enjoy gaming on their Macs, and even preferentially choose that.

It’s not a black and white world. These discussions unfortunately tend to become very polarized. We just don’t know, and unfortunately, nor do the publishers.

I didn’t say they wouldn’t enjoy it. I guarantee they’d enjoy it and even the publishers know they’d enjoy it. Between the gamer and the publisher, though, the party that actually has the ability to make games appear on MacOS is the publisher. So, you have to look why they would or wouldn’t. From a publisher perspective, “increasing the enjoyment of macOS users” does not drive them to publish games on the Mac. If they know that folks with Macs that want to play their game are buying the Xbox version, or the PS version, or even the PC version, then, while they know a user would “enjoy” playing on their Mac, they know taht user will “settle” for playing on something else. And, having the user “settle”, yields a savings for the publisher in not having to release and support a Mac version.

Large swaths of the world ARE black and white. Like the parts where businesses exist to make money and, towards that goal, are always analyzing “Return on Investment” to determine how best to spend their money. Very few companies feel the return for publishing a game on the Mac is enough to make the investment.

 

[Homy]

It is doomed and that's why macOS is less than 2% out of all PC game market. You probably need to face the fact and truth.

What fact and truth? Sunny5's facts? Well, then I guess that must have been what Feral thought when they decided to port Warhammer 3 to Mac now. They probably said "Forget profits! Mac gaming is doomed. Let's port a new game to Mac". That actually seems to have been their startegy since 1996, to bring games to the doomed Mac market and making tons of loss. Warhammer 3 may actually be their "Let's go out with a bang" game. 4A and Larian Studios must have thought the same thing when they worked with Apple's engineering team to port and optimize Metro Exodus and Baldur's Gate 3 to Mac, as shown last year at WWDC21.

No, I think I put my faith in developers like Feral, 4A and Larian and their own words, analysis and market insights than random doomsday "facts and truth" on MR forums. They've been in the business for 26 years and have seen and survived the transition from 68k to PPC to Intel to ARM. It's also funny that you don't rule out Linux but Mac when Feral's list of ported games to Mac is three times longer than Linux.

 

[Homy]

Feral needs to drop the wishful thinking and face up to reality. This reads like they're trying to drum up business and/or their stock price.

Or maybe they simply know more than you and I about the market after being in the business for 26 years and have seen and survived the transition from 68k to PPC to Intel to ARM? They're not even listed on the stock market.

 

[Bodhitree]

Actually, in this case they possibly may be right. Seeing that M1 provides a single, relatively high-performance SoC across laptops, desktops and tablets, it is quite a tasty hardware target. Large, uniform, high performance markets are good for selling games into. It may take some time — a few years before the market catches up.

That is, if Xbox Cloud Gaming doesn’t make the whole question irrelevant.

Supposedly Apple bought 20m M1 chips from TSMC, I recall reading some time ago. That means that they have sold as many M1’s in a year and a half as the entire amount of PS5’s sold to date.