Is Apple finally serious about gaming after its latest push?
Apple has an absolutely dominant position in mobile gaming because of the ubiquity of the iPhone but a minuscule desktop market share. Apple has big plans for 2024, and we got a look at some of what's coming.
New games coming in 2024 on Mac and other Apple platforms (Photo by Stephen Silver)
Over the years, Apple has made quite a few moves to improve its position in gaming, especially for the Mac. Back in 2000, Microsoft took "Halo" out from under Apple.
Since then, Apple has occasionally made noises about boosting Mac gaming, but most have failed to amount to much. But ever since the launch of Apple Silicon in 2019, there have been rumblings that Apple is serious about it this time.
The company has been pushing the gaming capabilities of its MacBooks, especially since the Apple Silicon M3 generation began debuting in 2023.
Then, at the June World Wide Developers Conference, Apple announced several moves to strengthen the company's relevance in the gaming space, most of which were made possible by the Apple Silicon ecosystem.
These included announcing some high-profile new AAA games on Apple platforms, including Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows, 11 Bit Studios' Frostpunk 2, Capcom's Resident Evil 7 Biohazard, and PocketPair's Palworld. Those games have already begun rolling out, with more coming in the second half of 2024.
Apple also announced the pending arrival of Game Mode for iOS and iPadOS, after it was previously only available on Mac OS. Game Mode is meant to help games run to their full capacity by kicking in when the game is launched and providing higher and more consistent frame rates.
Other gaming-related WWDC announcements included Personalized Spatial Audio for games, improvements to the Mac App Store for macOS Sequoia, and the introduction of Game Porting Toolkit 2 for developers, making it easier to port games from the Windows platform. Apple also began speaking at WWDC of a "Unified Gaming Platform," which encourages developers to view the Apple ecosystem as one platform rather than three.
What's next for Apple and gaming? And will this desktop gaming push succeed at a greater level than others have?
Where Apple stands
It's unclear where Apple currently stands regarding gaming market share, and Apple does not release its own statistics. It's been clear for years, though, that it absolutely commands the mobile space worldwide.
As of data released by S&P Global in 2022, Apple had $14.8 billion in annual gaming revenue. This placed it a distant second behind Tencent and ahead of Alphabet and Sony.
And, notably, ahead of Nintendo.
Apple's revenue in the gaming space mainly comes from its strength in mobile gaming, driven by commissions on downloads and in-app purchases. Apple, though, has long been well behind PCs in gaming revenue.
However, Apple's recent moves, leading up to WWDC in June of 2024, have indicated that it's seeking to close that gap.
Introducing the new games
I had the chance to attend a recent gaming showcase which included some of the newly announced games for Mac and Apple platforms.
There were demos of the new games, including "Frostpunk 2," Hoyoverse's "Zenless Zone Zero," and Blizzard's "Diablo Immortal." I also saw demonstrations of how some games can operate seamlessly across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
Frostpunk 2, from 11 Bit Studios (Photo by Stephen Silver)
I looked at "Frostpunk 2," the survival game set 30 years after an apocalypse event. The publishers have called it a "society survival game."
Playing on a MacBook Pro, the graphics and world-building certainly looked impressive. The publisher of "Frostpunk 2," 11 Bit Studios, announced at the end of June that the game's release was delayed three months.
Zenless Zone Zero, from HoYoverse (Photo by Stephen Silver)
Another highlight was "Zenless Zone Zero," an anime-styled game I played on the iPad. It featured convincing streetfight action in a fictitious Asian city called New Eridu.
The demonstrations, overall, emphasized that, in the Apple Silicon era, things have improved for developers, who can port games more easily while aiming for one platform instead of three.
Port in progress
I also got a look at the Game Porting Toolkit 2, which is being used to port "Control: Ultimate Edition," which is set to arrive later in 2024.
Control: Ultimate Edition, as shown in Steam's interface (Photo by Stephen Silver)
was used to run Microsoft applications on a Mac, porting Windows games to the Mac ecosystem.
When we'll see the big games
"Assassin's Creed Shadows" will arrive on the Mac on November 15, the same day and date as PCs and other consoles. "Frostpunk 2" will land on September 20 on Apple and other platforms after initially being set for a July release. However, it is now available for preorder from the App Store.
"Palworld" will land on the Apple platform at an undetermined date in 2024, as will "Control: Ultimate Edition."
Palworld from PocketPair running on MacBooks
"Resident Evil 7 Biohazard" is available now.
What we didn't see
One conspicuous aspect of the showcase was the absence of anything involving Apple Vision Pro, which was not featured. This indicates that developers, at least the ones at the showcase, do not view the Apple Vision Pro as a priority.
While AI, under the name Apple Intelligence, was a big part of the keynote at WWDC, it was not emphasized either. This indicates that AI's role in gaming is further in the future.
What it all means
AAA game makers are clearly buying into this new strategy and see some potential in developing for Apple's platforms.
Whether the gaming public will buy in, in huge numbers, is another question entirely.
Some recent big AAA games from big publishers, including "Death Stranding" and "Assassin's Creed Mirage," have underperformed when they arrived in the App store. The test for Apple will be whether better games and more interest from developers can eventually help close the gap.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Does the AVP recognize American Sign Language, when spoken by the wearer? If so, that might be a good way to issue game-related commands.
If they're gonna do it then do it and stick with it. It's not gonna happen overnight but they now have a great hardware platform and if developers can see where they can make an iOS game and a macOS game at the same time perhaps more major gaming studios will choose to make those versions. Apple needs to stick with it though and not just say they're gonna do something and then 6 months later let it all fizzle out.
Apple is now on its forever platform ARM64 across their whole hardware lineup. There is no reason for a breaking change after this, they control their own hardware, their own graphics API and there's no reason to go above 64-bit (16 Exabytes RAM limit).
Times are also different now. Most of these games are built on Unreal Engine, some on Unity so they are already taken care of. Apple has been helping build Metal renderers for the other engines. That alone shows a strong commitment to the industry as well as building a DirectX 12 emulator. People tried for years to build DX12 support and Apple released a near perfect implementation that supports hundreds of games, even really high-end ones:
iOS is Apple's big platform for gaming and now the hardware can run AAA titles.
AMD recently released a cross-platform open-source global illumination solution as part of FidelityFX, some of which MetalFX is using:
https://wccftech.com/amd-fidelityfx-brixelizer-gi-is-a-compute-based-dynamic-global-illumination-solution-available-now-in-sdk-1-1/
https://gpuopen.com/fidelityfx-brixelizer/
If Apple integrates frame-generation from FSR3 and a fast global illumination system, their mobile hardware will become competitive with the current highest consoles.
The hardest part left is the game price and convincing players to regularly buy at a high price on Apple platforms, especially older games. Having support for dozens of modern titles is a good start and being able to run on both iOS and Mac will be a huge plus for them.
One thing that would help is wrapping older individual games with the compatibility layers and selling them as separate units. That would support over 500 games overnight and would immediately give the developers revenue. 500 games x $20 x 500,000 Mac buyers = $5b. If they can run on iOS, the unit volume would be even higher.
It's justified being cautious given the history but I think this is the start of their real commitment to a stable gaming platform that they will be able to support long-term and it's nice to see them marketing it.
M3 has the GPU but nothing to do with it for consumers. App Store has no community like Steam and no customizations. The design ethos at Apple is based on a German that made products look like Snow White's coffin. And we have the penny-pinchers at HQ delivering 8 GB on every computer sold to consumers. It simply doesn't work.
Dell is doing gaming through Alienware. Apple should do it through Beats. Create special versions of Mac mini and Mac Book Air by Beats. Better speakers, colored LEDs, 16 GB memory as minimum, 16k webcams... stupid stuff. And Apple should work with studios.
With a market of entrenched players, there isn't really any other way, and in some niches, it's all but impossible. So, Apple has to become a games publisher, taking losses, like Apple TV+, and finding those games that people are willing to spend money on. The key part is establishing a market of customers willing to pay for games. If that is through subscription sharing, DLC whales, who knows, but there needs to be a market of MBA customers willing to pay for playing these AAA style games.
I loved playing Age of Empires 20 years ago. What did Microsoft do? They bought out Ensemble Studios, and basically made AoE exclusive to Windows. Thus ended my playing of AoE. Or maybe I just got old, but MS spent billions to make certain games exclusive to Windows/XBox, and bought their way into game consoles and to maintain Windows' games library.
I won't think they are serious until they become a games publisher and buy out some game studios to have a nice Apple-owned games library to offer.
Underperforming is ok, and probably expected. Like with all things, learn from the failures and keep at it. They need to advertise more, continue to cultivate more AAA games especially exclusives, and participate in the gaming ecosystem like sponsoring conferences, expos, tournaments, etc.
Better development tools would definitely help though.
Apple does seem to be helping developers a little more with creating games for the iOS and the Mac. We'll see if this continues. Apple has a long road ahead of them to get people to use a Mac for gaming. They have to somehow turn the page of people not laughing at you for trying to use a Mac to game. I think Apple has the hardware to do it, now they need to get the software side done and that's gonna take a lot of work on their part.
Full me once, shame on Apple. For me twice…well, it was the mid to late 2000s…Shame on me 🤣.
Apple is only serious about making money, I don’t care about gaming or anything else. They’re making a ton of money on smaller/mobile games, and Apple Arcade. It doesn’t seem to be translating well to AAA gaming. So, ultimately, no matter how much Apple pretends to be serious about it, I think the AAA developers will fizzle out on the Apple gaming side.