According to rumors former AMD engineer Cliff A. Maier, previously an active member here on MR "knows folks inside Apple that want to do a major gaming push, but gaming companies are resistant, so they might just have to "do it themselves". He said this a few weeks before Metal 3 was announced, alongside the new Apple Silicon games, so I think he may be on to something."
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Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games
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Word on the street is that Square Enix seems to be interested in being bought (current rumor is Sony buying them). Not saying that the IP they have is Apples speed, but it is somewhere to start.
Square hasn't set a public price as far as I've heard. I think they messed up getting rid of that studio, then again that studio didn't really mesh well with them to begin with.
Two long articles about the future of Mac gaming with interesting insights.
"https://www.techradar.com/features/...of-pc-gaming-whether-pc-gamers-like-it-or-not
"In a PC gaming landscape where so much different hardware exists that must be accounted for, it’s little wonder why developers are starting to primarily target consoles, rather than developing for high-end PCs and porting to weaker consoles afterwards. The release of Elden Ring earlier this year is a perfect example of a game that ran brilliantly on consoles, but ran into persistent issues when running on a PC, despite its more accessible requirements for major AAA launch."
“It's great!” Adrian Gurney, the Producer & Development Manager for CCP Games’s space-faring MMO EVE Online, told me a few weeks ago. “I mean, just to kind of look at it from my point of view with my tech hat on, it's a real big advantage to have not only the CPU and the GPU integrated, but also the memory all being on one package.”
“I mean, obviously, you get better performance naturally,” Gurney continued, “because you haven't got all the interconnects between the devices. But more importantly than that, when it comes to things like testing … testing how it looks, and does it render correctly, and all that, you can come in and validate that the result is correct, it doesn't matter which Mac we're testing it on. If it's an M1-based architecture, we get the same result from all of them.”
"it’s no small thing that Capcom is bringing Resident Evil Village, natively, to Apple silicon, and the developers I’ve spoken to (as well as Apple itself) have confirmed that there is a growing interest in what Apple has to offer with its new hardware."
“Since Apple has been able to take all of the creation of the drivers for the GPUs and supporting systems in-house,” Gurney said, “if we ever do have a problem, and we need to reach out and get some support, it means that the problem will be fixed across the board on all of their systems, which is it's just such a big advantage for game development, being able to say, this specific machine, we can test and we can validate it's going to work across the board.”
"I believe the hardware is there," Hunter said. "It comes down more to the marrying of the hardware and software and having had the opportunity to work very closely with the [Apple] Metal team, we got a glimpse into the direction that it's going and after WWDC 2022, you can of see that Metal is coming up to par with modern graphics API's. That has built a lot of trust and faith, at least on my part in terms of where gaming is going on the Mac side of things, and I think it's actually a very exciting opportunity."
"The Apple team says its seen a substantial uptick in developer interest since WWDC, especially around Metal 3 and MetalFX Upscaling, but there is still a ways to go before Apple will truly compete against the Windows PC as a PC gaming platform. At this point though, the writing is on the wall, and it's only a matter of time before there is a must-play Mac exclusive that will upend the entire conversation around PC gaming."
www.tomsguide.com
"I recently attended an Apple gaming event to learn more about the company’s gaming aspirations. During the presentation, I got to see No Man’s Sky running on a 16-inch MacBook Pro packing an M1 Max chip and 16GB of unified memory. I emphasize that I saw the game since it was a hands-off demonstration. Though I wasn’t able to test the title myself, I was still impressed. It came as no surprise that No Man’s Sky looked absolutely stunning on the MacBook Pro’s 16-inch mini-LED display. The demo was set in an icy valley surrounded by enormous snow-covered mountains. The varying shades of whites and blues appeared crisp and vibrant. Weapon fire and explosions also popped off the screen. Everything looked amazing."
"Apple appears to be taking important steps toward having PC-level gaming experiences on Macs. Metal 3 seems like a robust developer platform, and combined with Apple silicon and macOS 13, the company could potentially deliver competent gaming experiences in the near future. This point is further emphasized by the fact that Capcom — one of the biggest game developers and publishers on Earth — is bringing Resident Evil Village to Macs. If the company sees success on Macs, I don’t see why it wouldn’t port other games running on its RE Engine. Could we see titles like Devil May Cry 5, Street Fighter 6 or Dragon's Dogma 2 on Macs? It’s not inconceivable."
"If No Man’s Sky and Resident Evil Village succeed on Macs, it could spur other big developers to port their titles. Lack of support from major publishers is one of the chief reasons why Apple gaming isn’t on par with PC. But if more publishers and developers jump on board, then Macs could one day become viable gaming machines. Of course, it would mean Apple playing nice with companies like Epic Games… but that’s a whole other story."
"https://www.techradar.com/features/...of-pc-gaming-whether-pc-gamers-like-it-or-not
"In a PC gaming landscape where so much different hardware exists that must be accounted for, it’s little wonder why developers are starting to primarily target consoles, rather than developing for high-end PCs and porting to weaker consoles afterwards. The release of Elden Ring earlier this year is a perfect example of a game that ran brilliantly on consoles, but ran into persistent issues when running on a PC, despite its more accessible requirements for major AAA launch."
“It's great!” Adrian Gurney, the Producer & Development Manager for CCP Games’s space-faring MMO EVE Online, told me a few weeks ago. “I mean, just to kind of look at it from my point of view with my tech hat on, it's a real big advantage to have not only the CPU and the GPU integrated, but also the memory all being on one package.”
“I mean, obviously, you get better performance naturally,” Gurney continued, “because you haven't got all the interconnects between the devices. But more importantly than that, when it comes to things like testing … testing how it looks, and does it render correctly, and all that, you can come in and validate that the result is correct, it doesn't matter which Mac we're testing it on. If it's an M1-based architecture, we get the same result from all of them.”
"it’s no small thing that Capcom is bringing Resident Evil Village, natively, to Apple silicon, and the developers I’ve spoken to (as well as Apple itself) have confirmed that there is a growing interest in what Apple has to offer with its new hardware."
“Since Apple has been able to take all of the creation of the drivers for the GPUs and supporting systems in-house,” Gurney said, “if we ever do have a problem, and we need to reach out and get some support, it means that the problem will be fixed across the board on all of their systems, which is it's just such a big advantage for game development, being able to say, this specific machine, we can test and we can validate it's going to work across the board.”
"I believe the hardware is there," Hunter said. "It comes down more to the marrying of the hardware and software and having had the opportunity to work very closely with the [Apple] Metal team, we got a glimpse into the direction that it's going and after WWDC 2022, you can of see that Metal is coming up to par with modern graphics API's. That has built a lot of trust and faith, at least on my part in terms of where gaming is going on the Mac side of things, and I think it's actually a very exciting opportunity."
"The Apple team says its seen a substantial uptick in developer interest since WWDC, especially around Metal 3 and MetalFX Upscaling, but there is still a ways to go before Apple will truly compete against the Windows PC as a PC gaming platform. At this point though, the writing is on the wall, and it's only a matter of time before there is a must-play Mac exclusive that will upend the entire conversation around PC gaming."
I finally have hope for Mac gaming — here’s why
High-end gaming on Macs may be a reality soon, thanks to Apple's M2 chip and Metal 3
"I recently attended an Apple gaming event to learn more about the company’s gaming aspirations. During the presentation, I got to see No Man’s Sky running on a 16-inch MacBook Pro packing an M1 Max chip and 16GB of unified memory. I emphasize that I saw the game since it was a hands-off demonstration. Though I wasn’t able to test the title myself, I was still impressed. It came as no surprise that No Man’s Sky looked absolutely stunning on the MacBook Pro’s 16-inch mini-LED display. The demo was set in an icy valley surrounded by enormous snow-covered mountains. The varying shades of whites and blues appeared crisp and vibrant. Weapon fire and explosions also popped off the screen. Everything looked amazing."
"Apple appears to be taking important steps toward having PC-level gaming experiences on Macs. Metal 3 seems like a robust developer platform, and combined with Apple silicon and macOS 13, the company could potentially deliver competent gaming experiences in the near future. This point is further emphasized by the fact that Capcom — one of the biggest game developers and publishers on Earth — is bringing Resident Evil Village to Macs. If the company sees success on Macs, I don’t see why it wouldn’t port other games running on its RE Engine. Could we see titles like Devil May Cry 5, Street Fighter 6 or Dragon's Dogma 2 on Macs? It’s not inconceivable."
"If No Man’s Sky and Resident Evil Village succeed on Macs, it could spur other big developers to port their titles. Lack of support from major publishers is one of the chief reasons why Apple gaming isn’t on par with PC. But if more publishers and developers jump on board, then Macs could one day become viable gaming machines. Of course, it would mean Apple playing nice with companies like Epic Games… but that’s a whole other story."
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To be fair, this is more to do with the making of game versus the output part. UE 4.27 already supports outputting Apple Silicon Native binaries for games.Another good sign of more devs supporting Mac as a gaming platform, despite the ongoing conflict between Apple and Epic. Great news!
View attachment 2042533
But it is nice to see Epic isn't leaving Apple users out in the cold.
Though I am still a little bummed games like Rumbleverse (that just dropped this week) are still not being made for macOS.
I know but with one more obstacle out of the way the Mac devs can now easier jump on the UE5 bandwagon if they want. I guess Rumbleverse wasn't released for Mac for the same reason as Fortnite, the Apple/Epic conflict. They rather let other devs do Mac games for now and collect the money that way.
Yeah I found it interesting the game is published by Epic, but developed by another crew. I don't see any reason a free to play game shouldn't have a macOS version.
One example of the importance of UE5 becoming a native AS application that crossed my mind is the next Tomb Raider game. It's confirmed that they're going to use UE5 and even though there's no guarantee they will port it to Mac it would be impossible if UE5 wasn't going to get native Mac support.
Since Eidos has chosen UE5 it's almost certain that they will use it for the next Deus Ex too. That's two AAA games that have been very popular on Mac so I cross my fingers.
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Meanwhile Crossover 22 was just released.
"On the macOS side, we have been continuing to make gaming performance improvements. Between including the wined3d changes available with Wine 7.7, updating to MoltenVK version 1.1.10 and adding a few other tweaks, we’ve made quite a bit of progress. One particularly exciting example is Rocket League: the performance using wined3d is much better than CrossOver 21.2, and the nameplates are visible in-game (unlike using DXVK).
CrossOver 22 also offers initial support for DirectX 12 games on Linux. A handful of DirectX 12 games are running well, including Diablo II Resurrected."
"On the macOS side, we have been continuing to make gaming performance improvements. Between including the wined3d changes available with Wine 7.7, updating to MoltenVK version 1.1.10 and adding a few other tweaks, we’ve made quite a bit of progress. One particularly exciting example is Rocket League: the performance using wined3d is much better than CrossOver 21.2, and the nameplates are visible in-game (unlike using DXVK).
CrossOver 22 also offers initial support for DirectX 12 games on Linux. A handful of DirectX 12 games are running well, including Diablo II Resurrected."
Hopefully! I saw that RE 3 remake now runs on 22 with limited functionality. Before it wouldn't run.
Sounds like Feral has more Mac games under development. Not a surprise but still good news. Interesting that the follower asks about Android but Feral answers with "macOS" first.
From Facebook:
- Any upcoming project for Android?
- We will be bringing more fantastic games to macOS, iOS, Android, Linux and Nintendo Switch... but details of which games are on the way will remain a secret! The best way to follow all of our latest news and announcements is via our Facebook page, stay tuned!
From Facebook:
- Any upcoming project for Android?
- We will be bringing more fantastic games to macOS, iOS, Android, Linux and Nintendo Switch... but details of which games are on the way will remain a secret! The best way to follow all of our latest news and announcements is via our Facebook page, stay tuned!
Yes, but that was announced at WWDC. The post here mentions unannounced games.
Yeah. That is fair. Guess we have to wait until they announce whatever the new game(s) are.
Big news and another good sign of dev support for Apple Silicon. Aspyr has updated RollerCoaster Tyccon 3 with native support for AS and is now working on an update to SimCity 4. They will also go through their Mac catalog to update more games like Borderlands, Star Wars, Civilization, Mafia and Call of Duty. Who knows, maybe they will port Tiny Tina's Wonderland too. 
"This list of games will be updated as we continue to assess our Mac catalog and identify other titles to be updated for Apple Silicon native support."
Maybe now that they lost the SW Knights of the Old Republic project to Saber they have more time for Mac ports again.
"This list of games will be updated as we continue to assess our Mac catalog and identify other titles to be updated for Apple Silicon native support."
Maybe now that they lost the SW Knights of the Old Republic project to Saber they have more time for Mac ports again.
Andrew Tsai has released a new video covering the latest on Resident Evil Village for the Mac:
As he states, Capcom's website has listed the system requirements. It will be released this year, and apparently be Apple Silicon only.
![revas.jpg]( "revas.jpg")
So, even though Metal 3 supports AMD Vega and 5000/6000 series, this game will not, while every Apple Silicon Mac ever sold will. This is a clear sign that the Intel era is winding down, and the Apple Silicon era of Mac gaming is beginning.
As he states, Capcom's website has listed the system requirements. It will be released this year, and apparently be Apple Silicon only.
So, even though Metal 3 supports AMD Vega and 5000/6000 series, this game will not, while every Apple Silicon Mac ever sold will. This is a clear sign that the Intel era is winding down, and the Apple Silicon era of Mac gaming is beginning.