The idea is to first grow the user base of people gaming on their Mac. His assertion is that releasing GPTK as open source would improve on the current situation because it’s basically a better Wine with Apple + Codeweavers + the community filling in the gaps and bug fixing. This would ensure a wider array of games, including newer games would work.
Oh he agrees that’s the problem. So his solution by going full proton is to rapidly increase the library of possible Mac games and increase the known Mac player base making it a more attractive target for developers. The problem of course is that Apple doesn’t operate a cross Windows Mac platform store like Steam so they can’t just go through and mark games as GPTK ready. Heck I remember when a bunch of iOS developers were pretty unhappy when Apple made the default for iOS apps to be made available to Apple Silicon Mac users. So again I’m not sold that this is the best first step for Apple to try.
By virtue of being the far more profitable platform the iPad/iOS needs less help being attractive to develop for. If you can make the Mac attractive to develop for, developers will want their stuff work on any iPhones/iPads that can run their stuff. Basically the proton solution is to use Proton as a stop gap to grow the user base to then make native development attractive. It’s the chicken and egg problem: developers don’t want to develop for a user base that’s too small and users won’t game on a system with too few games. So jumpstart the process with great hardware and non native games.
Personally I think the middle of the road approach that Apple is taking enticing developers with money, support, and advertising combined with GTPK to help fill in gaps for more advanced users/gamers is probably the right approach with going full proton as a backup option because, as I said, Apple doesn’t operate a massive store with Windows games, like Steam, something Andrew overlooked.
