Apple can sell 14 billion dollars of flappy bird all you want. But that’s baby stuff.
Apple isn’t actually “serious” until they go after BRAND NEW AAA games and score them at launch. Not months or years later when the market is tired of them.
A. Triple A exclusive or three (timed or not) would be massive.
If they were truly serious about any kind of AAA gaming on the Mac they’d have defaulted the RAM to 16GB rather than hobbling the base (and most sold) model with 8GB.
Caveat: Apple uses unified memory with the M series computers. Unified memory can access the CPU and GPU at the same time. DDR memory cannot and has to split up the RAM between the CPU and GPU. So a computer using 8GB of unified memory is going to perform significantly better than what you would expect from an 8GB DDR system.
If they were truly serious about any kind of AAA gaming on the Mac they’d have defaulted the RAM to 16GB rather than hobbling the base (and most sold) model with 8GB.
Caveat: Apple uses unified memory with the M series computers. Unified memory can access the CPU and GPU at the same time. DDR memory cannot and has to split up the RAM between the CPU and GPU. So a computer using 8GB of unified memory is going to perform significantly better than what you would expect from an 8GB DDR system.
Yep, and if you believe a Mac with 8GB of Ram will perform just as well as one with 16GB of Ram I have a barely used bridge to sell you in Egypt, going super cheap!
Look, Apple Silicon is amazing and yes, all sarcasm aside, it does handle memory extremely well due to the integration of the SoC. For small day to day tasks like checking your email or playing songs on Apple Music you’re going to notice very little, if any, difference.
But put in high performance/intensive tasks (AAA gaming 100% falls into that!) and the difference quickly becomes clear.
Every couple of years Apple does this and we see maybe 1 thing happen and then it fizzles out. Couple years later Apple announces it's making a push into gaming again, rinse and repeat.
Indeed. 1996-98 was the Pippin console, Game Sprockets, fast upgrades of GPUs on iMac G3, extensive support for those selling games etc. 2014: Metal. 2017: AR Kit.
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.
I had the same exact thought about Apple carving out a separate business unit to focus on entertainment, mainstream gaming, XR for gaming, etc., with the Beats brand as the starting point. Specialized hardware ... why not? I'll have to give it more thought but I do think it is legitimate to ask the question whether Apple's current strategies around its bread & butter products are slowing it down when it comes to certain specializations that dive much more deeply into areas that aren't really relevant to business, productivity, design, development, etc. There's also a thought in the back of my head that wonders if Apple is spreading itself too thin doing everything from low level silicon to funding of movie development & content delivery, cloud services, being a sort-of bank or credit union, healthcare, AI, etc. When is Apple breakfast cereal going to hit the market?
However, the thing that snaps me back to reality is the fact that Apple has always defied conventional thinking and conventional logic. Their focus on integration at so many levels and in so many directions means that everything Apple does is interrelated in some way. Apple's strategy and execution is one of the greatest examples of "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts" philosophy being brought into the practical realm. If you subscribe to System Thinking it becomes very clear that Apple is no longer just a "products & services" company, they are a System in and of themselves. The "Apple System" is the nucleus at the center of the larger and ever expanding Apple Ecosystem, which brings partners, suppliers, third party products & services, stakeholders, industry pundits, media pundits, and of course customers into orbit the Apple System nucleus.
saarek said: Yep, and if you believe a Mac with 8GB of Ram will perform just as well as one with 16GB of Ram I have a barely used bridge to sell you in Egypt, going super cheap!
This person said they were able to play Elden Ring (which requires 12GB RAM minimum on Windows 10) through Crossover with an 8GB M2 Air laptop. As they point out, not every game works like that (Cyberpunk 2077 is also a 12GB min game and is not really playable). But it's certainly interesting that 8GB unified is able to run a 12GB DDR minimum game.
"Elden Ring - used 1600x900 with low settings. 20 hours in right now, totally playable (stable 25-35 fps in open areas like Limgrave, more in closed ones). Consider lowering to 720p in more demanding areas like Caelid or using some mods that gets rid of shadows and special effects if you really need the frames for a boss fight. Elden Ring surprised me because even though my m2 air can only get 30-ish fps, it was relatively stable with rarely any frame drops."
Apple can sell 14 billion dollars of flappy bird all you want. But that’s baby stuff.
Apple isn’t actually “serious” until they go after BRAND NEW AAA games and score them at launch. Not months or years later when the market is tired of them.
A. Triple A exclusive or three (timed or not) would be massive.
It would be good for them to have exclusive AAA games but they take a lot of time to make and aren't guaranteed hits. The industry is moving away from platform exclusives because a single platform doesn't make back the development budget where 5m copies at $60 is often break-even:
GTA 5 was made in 2013. GTA 6 was announced in 2022 while already in development and due in 2025. The GTA franchise has had just 2 main game releases since the original iPhone. Baldur's Gate 3 took 6 years. If they started a AAA production today, it wouldn't ship until 2028-2030.
A GTA 6 leak said the company had allocated $2b for it. 1000 employees x $50k x 6 years = $300m, marketing $200m, probably online services for >50m players, it's easily over $500m:
There are some types of game that are faster to make like Call of Duty games have a shorter cycle as they are mainly multiplayer. Fighting games like Street Fighter have little content in them. Racing games can be done quicker and expanded over time.
The best kind of games for companies like Apple are replayable ones like Minecraft, Roblox, The Sims. I doubt they'd want violent games in the portfolio.
If they had 'evergreen' games like Forza Horizon, Mario Kart, The Sims, Stardew Valley, Football Manager, Smash Brothers, those would get regular players:
They can commission studios to build games for them instead of buying the studios. They can scale up faster that way, they'd just have timed deliverables to justify funding and if a studio doesn't deliver, they can pass the work onto another studio.
It's not easy finding good independent studios to buy because the big game companies keep buying them up and some want to stay independent because being owned by Apple means being owned by Apple's shareholders. A lot of studios have been burned by shareholder driven companies before and gone through crunch periods, mass layoffs etc.
I think commissioning exclusive games could work for them so that the studios maintain independence. They probably want to avoid using Unreal Engine too or they have to pay Epic a fee.
saarek said: Yep, and if you believe a Mac with 8GB of Ram will perform just as well as one with 16GB of Ram I have a barely used bridge to sell you in Egypt, going super cheap!
This person said they were able to play Elden Ring (which requires 12GB RAM minimum on Windows 10) through Crossover with an 8GB M2 Air laptop. As they point out, not every game works like that (Cyberpunk 2077 is also a 12GB min game and is not really playable). But it's certainly interesting that 8GB unified is able to run a 12GB DDR minimum game.
Desktops use the SSD when they run out of memory so the games still run but it causes performance bottlenecks that show in some games. The following video shows the issue, especially towards the end around 4:30:
Apple doesn't necessarily need to make the entry model 16GB but people who intend to use them for gaming should get the memory upgrade. It would be nice if the baseline increased a bit since RAM costs <$5/GB. Moving to 12GB at the same price wouldn't be much to expect, this costs Apple <$20.
If they were truly serious about any kind of AAA gaming on the Mac they’d have defaulted the RAM to 16GB rather than hobbling the base (and most sold) model with 8GB.
Marvin said: Apple doesn't necessarily need to make the entry model 16GB but people who intend to use them for gaming should get the memory upgrade. It would be nice if the baseline increased a bit since RAM costs <$5/GB. Moving to 12GB at the same price wouldn't be much to expect, this costs Apple <$20.
You're always going to be paying a lot more money for better gaming performance on desktop/laptop. That's the reason consoles are popular.
Yes Apple Silicon means sealed non-upgradeable Macs can in terms of performance potentially match custom built PC gaming rigs (and despite the perception of an Apple hardware tax, might be price competitive as well)
Yes iOS has been (and is) extremely successful as a gaming platform
Yes Apple has been providing more recently some tools to help game developers e.g. Game Porting Toolkit
Yes the consistency of platform between iOS, iPad OS, TV OS, macOS helps - in theory, encourage developers to release macOS games
Is the Mac therefore now considered a serious gaming platform - hell no
Is Apple themselves serious about Mac gaming? We don't know. Evidence so far says the answer is still no. What is more important is that the overwhelming industry perception by developers etc. is also no and backed up by decades of experience of Apple.
This is an area that Apple are keeping any plans they might have very much hidden. My own perception is that they still are not treating gaming as a serious category and that this is a huge mistake.
I have a number of ideas that could completely transform this and I feel ultimately add tens of billions of dollars of revenue. If Apple are interested they can contact me,
Sadly history indicates Apple is still not interested in gaming.
Most of us will recall Steve Jobs was anti-gaming and this arguably still shapes Apple. The irony is that one of the first steps in Steve Jobs (and Steve Wozniak's) careers was working at Atari!
Marvin said: Apple doesn't necessarily need to make the entry model 16GB but people who intend to use them for gaming should get the memory upgrade. It would be nice if the baseline increased a bit since RAM costs <$5/GB. Moving to 12GB at the same price wouldn't be much to expect, this costs Apple <$20.
You're always going to be paying a lot more money for better gaming performance on desktop/laptop. That's the reason consoles are popular.
Probably very true for a top end performance driven PC rig but would those same target users be willing to pay for the performance and Apple’s markup.
I doubt many would opt for that and there lies a conflict. To really push cutting edge games on a Mac, you need a strong gaming focused base of users to play off. It's always been that way and Apple has never committed to that kind of user.
How to tempt them now? High prices and upsell don't seem to be the way.
avon b7 said: How to tempt them now? High prices and upsell don't seem to be the way.
High prices? Look at this list of the best Windows gaming laptops...the "best budget" gaming laptop is $1300. An M2 MBA with 16GB unified memory is $1200. An M3 MBA with 16GB unified memory is $1500. All the rest of the choices on the list are in the range of $1500-$2500. It's a lot more expensive than buying a console.
The reality is that desktop/laptop gaming is usually two categories of users: people that bought the hardware for non-gaming functions that also want to do some gaming on the side AND gaming enthusiasts with plenty of disposable income who want to chase the highest frame rates and highest graphic settings. That second group isn't going to be looking at Apple hardware. They're going to be exclusively looking at Windows desktop/laptop setups. So Apple is targeting the first (and larger) group. In other words, people that aren't primarily buying the hardware for gaming.
Comments
Look, Apple Silicon is amazing and yes, all sarcasm aside, it does handle memory extremely well due to the integration of the SoC. For small day to day tasks like checking your email or playing songs on Apple Music you’re going to notice very little, if any, difference.
But put in high performance/intensive tasks (AAA gaming 100% falls into that!) and the difference quickly becomes clear.
However, the thing that snaps me back to reality is the fact that Apple has always defied conventional thinking and conventional logic. Their focus on integration at so many levels and in so many directions means that everything Apple does is interrelated in some way. Apple's strategy and execution is one of the greatest examples of "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts" philosophy being brought into the practical realm. If you subscribe to System Thinking it becomes very clear that Apple is no longer just a "products & services" company, they are a System in and of themselves. The "Apple System" is the nucleus at the center of the larger and ever expanding Apple Ecosystem, which brings partners, suppliers, third party products & services, stakeholders, industry pundits, media pundits, and of course customers into orbit the Apple System nucleus.
"Elden Ring - used 1600x900 with low settings. 20 hours in right now, totally playable (stable 25-35 fps in open areas like Limgrave, more in closed ones). Consider lowering to 720p in more demanding areas like Caelid or using some mods that gets rid of shadows and special effects if you really need the frames for a boss fight. Elden Ring surprised me because even though my m2 air can only get 30-ish fps, it was relatively stable with rarely any frame drops."
https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/1cu4uou/games_that_surprisingly_work_okaywell_on_m2_air/
https://twistedvoxel.com/marvels-spider-man-2-sales-break-even-colossal-budget/
GTA 5 was made in 2013. GTA 6 was announced in 2022 while already in development and due in 2025. The GTA franchise has had just 2 main game releases since the original iPhone. Baldur's Gate 3 took 6 years. If they started a AAA production today, it wouldn't ship until 2028-2030.
A GTA 6 leak said the company had allocated $2b for it. 1000 employees x $50k x 6 years = $300m, marketing $200m, probably online services for >50m players, it's easily over $500m:
https://www.radiotimes.com/technology/gaming/gta-6-budget/
There are some types of game that are faster to make like Call of Duty games have a shorter cycle as they are mainly multiplayer. Fighting games like Street Fighter have little content in them. Racing games can be done quicker and expanded over time.
The best kind of games for companies like Apple are replayable ones like Minecraft, Roblox, The Sims. I doubt they'd want violent games in the portfolio.
If they had 'evergreen' games like Forza Horizon, Mario Kart, The Sims, Stardew Valley, Football Manager, Smash Brothers, those would get regular players:
https://steamcharts.com/app/1222670#All
https://steamcharts.com/app/413150#All
They can commission studios to build games for them instead of buying the studios. They can scale up faster that way, they'd just have timed deliverables to justify funding and if a studio doesn't deliver, they can pass the work onto another studio.
It's not easy finding good independent studios to buy because the big game companies keep buying them up and some want to stay independent because being owned by Apple means being owned by Apple's shareholders. A lot of studios have been burned by shareholder driven companies before and gone through crunch periods, mass layoffs etc.
I think commissioning exclusive games could work for them so that the studios maintain independence. They probably want to avoid using Unreal Engine too or they have to pay Epic a fee.
Desktops use the SSD when they run out of memory so the games still run but it causes performance bottlenecks that show in some games. The following video shows the issue, especially towards the end around 4:30:
Apple doesn't necessarily need to make the entry model 16GB but people who intend to use them for gaming should get the memory upgrade. It would be nice if the baseline increased a bit since RAM costs <$5/GB. Moving to 12GB at the same price wouldn't be much to expect, this costs Apple <$20.
Is the Mac therefore now considered a serious gaming platform - hell no
Is Apple themselves serious about Mac gaming? We don't know. Evidence so far says the answer is still no. What is more important is that the overwhelming industry perception by developers etc. is also no and backed up by decades of experience of Apple.
This is an area that Apple are keeping any plans they might have very much hidden. My own perception is that they still are not treating gaming as a serious category and that this is a huge mistake.
I have a number of ideas that could completely transform this and I feel ultimately add tens of billions of dollars of revenue. If Apple are interested they can contact me,
Sadly history indicates Apple is still not interested in gaming.
Most of us will recall Steve Jobs was anti-gaming and this arguably still shapes Apple. The irony is that one of the first steps in Steve Jobs (and Steve Wozniak's) careers was working at Atari!
https://blisscast.wordpress.com/2023/04/24/breakout-atari-apple-english/
I doubt many would opt for that and there lies a conflict. To really push cutting edge games on a Mac, you need a strong gaming focused base of users to play off. It's always been that way and Apple has never committed to that kind of user.
How to tempt them now? High prices and upsell don't seem to be the way.
https://www.pcgamer.com/best-gaming-laptop/
The reality is that desktop/laptop gaming is usually two categories of users: people that bought the hardware for non-gaming functions that also want to do some gaming on the side AND gaming enthusiasts with plenty of disposable income who want to chase the highest frame rates and highest graphic settings. That second group isn't going to be looking at Apple hardware. They're going to be exclusively looking at Windows desktop/laptop setups. So Apple is targeting the first (and larger) group. In other words, people that aren't primarily buying the hardware for gaming.