NotEntirelyConfused
Power User
- Joined
- May 15, 2024
- Posts
- 71
There's been a bit of news recently about gaming on Macs (and Apple's platforms in general, but the emphasis is on Macs since they're the laggards compared to the iPhone/iPad).
My initial reaction was to roll my eyes and move on. I don't have much time for games, and in any case I long ago realized that Apple doesn't care about gaming at all. I think that that's a giant error, because gamers, while a small part of the overall market, make a LOT of noise. And Apple has made a major effort to conquer the youth market, which has been largely successful in a number of areas, but has failed miserably with the Mac, mostly due to this. But I've been rethinking this.
In the last few years, with AS, Apple's attitude has perhaps changed a little, but (for example) building the porting toolkit, while a great step, won't by itself do much to overcome decades of malign neglect. They'd need to figure out a way to attract many devs to the platform, and that seemed like something that wouldn't happen any time soon, despite occasional exceptions. It wasn't just that devs lacked trust in Apple. It's that they trusted Apple to screw them over.
Even more fundamentally, though, if you want to attract devs to your platform, the MOST important thing is to have a platform that can actually, y'know... run their games. Everything else is a comparative afterthought. So before AS, Macs weren't really even an option for anything other than the most casual games, because the iGPUs were abysmal, and dGPUs were expensive and entirely unavailable on the most common Macs.
With the advent of AS, that changed in a fairly significant way. The AS GPUs on even MacBook Airs were good enough to run modern games on low settings. So, that's a start. But still... low settings, smaller market... it's not enough for a sea change, though it moves the needle a bit.
One of the reasons the AS GPUs were good enough is that dGPUs have gotten ridiculously expensive. Crypto drove up pricing dramatically. And just as it seemed some sense might return to the market, AI kicked into high gear. dGPUs are probably not going to get any cheaper any time soon, and may even continue to get more expensive.
So where does that leave Apple? Probably in a pretty good position! As dGPUs become a smaller part of the overall PC gaming market, the average Mac stacks up more and more favorably against the average PC for graphics performance. At some point, if dGPUs don't get cheaper, Macs may start looking like an attractive platform just for their baseline GPU performance. Not this year, probably, but maybe 2025 or 2026. And if Apple can manage not to completely fuck up again between now and then, that might actually be enough to start pulling over a significant number of devs.
Honestly, even if I never play another game again, just the benefit of getting certain whiners to shut up about Apple will be significant.
My initial reaction was to roll my eyes and move on. I don't have much time for games, and in any case I long ago realized that Apple doesn't care about gaming at all. I think that that's a giant error, because gamers, while a small part of the overall market, make a LOT of noise. And Apple has made a major effort to conquer the youth market, which has been largely successful in a number of areas, but has failed miserably with the Mac, mostly due to this. But I've been rethinking this.
In the last few years, with AS, Apple's attitude has perhaps changed a little, but (for example) building the porting toolkit, while a great step, won't by itself do much to overcome decades of malign neglect. They'd need to figure out a way to attract many devs to the platform, and that seemed like something that wouldn't happen any time soon, despite occasional exceptions. It wasn't just that devs lacked trust in Apple. It's that they trusted Apple to screw them over.
Even more fundamentally, though, if you want to attract devs to your platform, the MOST important thing is to have a platform that can actually, y'know... run their games. Everything else is a comparative afterthought. So before AS, Macs weren't really even an option for anything other than the most casual games, because the iGPUs were abysmal, and dGPUs were expensive and entirely unavailable on the most common Macs.
With the advent of AS, that changed in a fairly significant way. The AS GPUs on even MacBook Airs were good enough to run modern games on low settings. So, that's a start. But still... low settings, smaller market... it's not enough for a sea change, though it moves the needle a bit.
One of the reasons the AS GPUs were good enough is that dGPUs have gotten ridiculously expensive. Crypto drove up pricing dramatically. And just as it seemed some sense might return to the market, AI kicked into high gear. dGPUs are probably not going to get any cheaper any time soon, and may even continue to get more expensive.
So where does that leave Apple? Probably in a pretty good position! As dGPUs become a smaller part of the overall PC gaming market, the average Mac stacks up more and more favorably against the average PC for graphics performance. At some point, if dGPUs don't get cheaper, Macs may start looking like an attractive platform just for their baseline GPU performance. Not this year, probably, but maybe 2025 or 2026. And if Apple can manage not to completely fuck up again between now and then, that might actually be enough to start pulling over a significant number of devs.
Honestly, even if I never play another game again, just the benefit of getting certain whiners to shut up about Apple will be significant.
