Shareholders don't want Apple to spend $1B for $360M in revenue. That's a net $640M loss and that doesn't fit in with Apple's expected gross margins. Hell, Apple could make more money shoveling that cash into 10 Year Treasuries.
I'm not convinced that Apple's acquisition of Beats was a good purchase.
Anyhow the future of gaming is the cloud. This isn't some pie-in-the-sky theory.
You can play Fortnite on your Mac or iPad today with GeForce NOW.
Apple is just not into gaming in the way Microsoft ETC. are. And they never will be.
The #1 market for gaming revenue is mobile, not PCs or consoles. It's bigger than console/PC gaming revenue COMBINED. Apple is doing just fine with their gaming approach.
So, are you happy with the gaming options on Apple devices, including the Mac? That's great. I don't presume to speak for Beats, but I know I'm not. I won't spend even a dollar on mobile games and do my gaming on consoles and a gaming PC.
I despise this attitude that those of us who demand more should settle for less because it benefits Apple. I'll look out for my own interests, thank you.
Apple is just not into gaming in the way Microsoft ETC. are. And they never will be.
The #1 market for gaming revenue is mobile, not PCs or consoles. It's bigger than console/PC gaming revenue COMBINED. Apple is doing just fine with their gaming approach.
So, are you happy with the gaming options on Apple devices, including the Mac? That's great. I don't presume to speak for Beats, but I know I'm not. I won't spend even a dollar on mobile games and do my gaming on consoles and a gaming PC.
I despise this attitude that those of us who demand more should settle for less because it benefits Apple. I'll look out for my own interests, thank you.
We aren’t asking to trade Candy Crush for GTA. Those small addictive games have a place. We just ask Apple use all that damn processing power to welcome games like GTA alongside the small pay-to-play, ad-ridden crap.
The current Apple TV can run the GTA trilogy but instead we get this:
and this:
Apple’s flagship Apple TV 4K game that we can’t even play anymore with the new remote features removed!!!
People also don’t see the snowball effect of Apple funding games. Say Apple spends $4B on gaming and a gaming Apple TV. Here’s some side-effects:
1. More Home and Siri adoption from Apple TV being a central hub and halo effect. 2. New users into Apple products from iPhone to AirTags. 3. Game developers jumping on board to better platforms like Mac and Apple TV. 4. Apple VR/AR headset/Glasses gaining interest from gamers. 5. Swift and Metal widening the gap from competitors. 6. $7B in revenue added from Apple TV taking at least 20% of the console market. Not considering Mac and other product sales. 7. Apple Arcade becoming a competitor to big companies like Ea and Sony. 8. HomePod becoming a serious purchase for gamers.
Apple has the funds to take over the living room. Then there’s bigger potential like Apple developing a game engine to overthrow Epic and Apple potentially taking 40% of the console market. I can’t think of a better company who could do this.
d natively would make a difference, the rest can be supported via streaming (NVidia Geforce Now, XBox Cloud etc).
You’re suggesting that Apple spend $1b to possibly earn $360m?
How do you think the Xbox market got started? Or the Apple Arcade even? Apple has hated game developers for decades, they're not going to come running back now. So yes, if Apple wants desktop games, they will have to invest a lot in the first few years.
There is zero interest in the Mac platform from the big game developers. The hardware is finally coming along, the M1 has decent entry- to mid-level GPU performance, but there is a lack of tooling, not too mention no Vulcan support. We will have to see how many copies Resident Evil Village actually sells to see if there might be a new market. No Man's Sky is an old game, and has it's issues, we'll see if that one still sells. Both games have distinct genres, so if it doesn't fit yours, you may not buy it. Doesn't mean there won't be a market, but it's way too early.
Apple's progress in games is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. No doubt that pace can be frustrating. But with the passage of enough time, evolution can look like revolution.
Every year another piece of the puzzle falls into place. I think we are getting closer to waking up and discovering that the world of Mac gaming has radically changed while we weren't looking. Not there yet.... but I really think it's coming.
Except, there are many people that are looking. And have been looking for a long time. And we recognize every single piece of this puzzle as soon as it appears. Most of us have gone from thinking that something is coming, to just hoping that something is coming. I mean, I appreciate what you’re saying, and I agree that Joe Blow down the street might be surprised if Apple ever realized its gaming potential. But, for a lot of people here, it will be more a sigh of relief than a surprise.
Apple is just not into gaming in the way Microsoft ETC. are. And they never will be.
The #1 market for gaming revenue is mobile, not PCs or consoles. It's bigger than console/PC gaming revenue COMBINED. Apple is doing just fine with their gaming approach.
So, are you happy with the gaming options on Apple devices, including the Mac? That's great. I don't presume to speak for Beats, but I know I'm not. I won't spend even a dollar on mobile games and do my gaming on consoles and a gaming PC.
I despise this attitude that those of us who demand more should settle for less because it benefits Apple. I'll look out for my own interests, thank you.
Resident Evil Village and No Man’s Sky is a decent start but not nearly enough.
It might encourage others to port games when they see high profile games adopting Metal. I wonder if Apple pushed for this or if Capcom decided to do it themselves.
These developers don't need many sales to justify doing this. Apple's Mac userbase is over 100 million, Apple Silicon is a smaller portion but should be over 30 million by now. Game companies consider 5-10 million unit sales across all platforms to be a good result:
For one platform out of 4-5 (PC/Playstation/XBox/Nintendo/Mac), they only need to sell 1-3 million copies on Mac around $60.
Other ports that would be good are GTA V, Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Mass Effect series, Far Cry 4/5/6, Forza (not likely), Resident Evil 2/3 remakes, Horizon Zero Dawn (not likely), Plague Tale, Star Wars Battlefront 2, some of Call of Duty Black Ops and MW series and Battlefield, Apex Legends.
Partnering with Microsoft on their Game Pass might be an option as they can port some good first party titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator and Forza. Currently it works through streaming but they can add native titles where it's feasible to maintain the port.
Although it's just one title, it's a high profile and high-end one so it's great to see a native port. It would be good to see Apple throwing some of the budget they allocate to Apple TV content to games. I don't know what it would take to convince a company to do a port and support it but $50m should do it and is a pretty small amount for Apple. $1b would get them 20 high-end game ports and if the games sell through the App Store and they sold 1m per title x $60 x 20 titles x 30%, they'd make $360m back.
Most of the top 50 or so best-selling games over the past 10 year ported natively would make a difference, the rest can be supported via streaming (NVidia Geforce Now, XBox Cloud etc).
The $1B investment is worth the snowball effect alone. Apple just need to get the ball rolling. They could have offered Capcom half of that for a catalog of games. Even if Apple made $0 from the deal the developers that would follow would make up for it in new hardware sales alone.
The problem is, Apple has a desert that they’re trying to sell home owners (gamers) to. There’s nothing there but they expect people to just move in(to Mac). Build something here first and watch others adopt.
Had Apple gave Capcom just $150M to develop a catalog of games with iPhone companion apps, they’d see a ton of switchers to both Mac and iPhone. If I were Cook, I’d take it further and have them develop Resident Evil to work across Mac/iPad/iPhone/Apple TV.
Mac: Full core game Apple TV: pickup where you left off with your choice of game controller iPad: Same as Apple TV with added touch features iPhone: mini games that help you on your journey/companion app
Heck, I’d find a way to throw Watch and AirPods in there. Maybe Atmos/Spatial Audio with head tracking support for AirPods. Especially after today’s announcement
Then I’d find a way to earn herbs(Resident Evil’s health supplement) and find other items by walking and running with Watch Fitness.
Buy ONCE get all these platforms and features.
The idea is to get gamers on board with Apple and into a better ecosystem. As of now, no one is gonna put their PS5 to the side to play Resident Evil VIII on Mac. That’s ridiculous. Also, this causes a paradox which Nintendo dealt with before, since no one is buying Resident Evil on Mac, Capcom will then use that as a reason to stop developing for it but there’s no reason to buy it on Mac in the first place. It’s a catch 22 I’ve seen in the industry before.
There’s the “Tim Cook knows how to run the biggest tech company in the world” excuse but here’s the problem with that argument: Cook doesn’t give a damn about gaming. It’s just a fun side hustle for Apple. They don’t even update us on Apple TV at WWDC anymore. I was hoping M2 would be the chip Apple was waiting on for a new Apple TV but that’s looking hopeless as time goes on.
Apple should discount their App Store fees in return for ecosystem support i.e. -5% for 3 device categories, -10% for 4 etc.
LOL at the resident hot takes...Metal 3 sounds like it has the capability to be transformative for gaming on M1 and M2. M1 was already better than what people expected using the older version and Metal 3 will be improving frame rates, graphic fidelity and load times.
IMO, it also increases the possibility of an M series ATV down the road.
This is a bigger deal than most think. It’s the quickest way to boost fps on existing hardware and it’s all about fps. Apple could buy its way into gaming but that’s not it’s form. It’ll be interesting to see how much explicit coding is required to activate but it beats TBDR re-writes. Though once the numbers build, that will start to make sense. I wonder if the M2 GPU cores have implicit caching now.
d natively would make a difference, the rest can be supported via streaming (NVidia Geforce Now, XBox Cloud etc).
You’re suggesting that Apple spend $1b to possibly earn $360m?
How do you think the Xbox market got started? Or the Apple Arcade even? Apple has hated game developers for decades, they're not going to come running back now. So yes, if Apple wants desktop games, they will have to invest a lot in the first few years.
Microsoft were trying to push Xbox units. Once the hardware and user base is out there, and the tools are available, developers will follow. Apple's hardware is getting there more and more, and they are slowly improving the tools, but games don't sell blockbuster numbers on the Mac, the user base doesn't go for them. Throwing money at big studios to get the "AAA" titles won't change that.
Btw, I'm very happy with games on the Mac, there's amazing stuff out there and very few games that I miss. "AAA" increasingly has little to do with quality.
Shareholders don't want Apple to spend $1B for $360M in revenue. That's a net $640M loss and that doesn't fit in with Apple's expected gross margins. Hell, Apple could make more money shoveling that cash into 10 Year Treasuries.
I'm not convinced that Apple's acquisition of Beats was a good purchase.
Anyhow the future of gaming is the cloud. This isn't some pie-in-the-sky theory.
You can play Fortnite on your Mac or iPad today with GeForce NOW.
It got them 3/4 of the way to Apple Music above and beyond hardware.
Nobody in this thread seems to understand that AAA gaming is the smaller market, not the larger market. Having AAA games in the cloud doesn't change that.
Shareholders don't want Apple to spend $1B for $360M in revenue. That's a net $640M loss and that doesn't fit in with Apple's expected gross margins. Hell, Apple could make more money shoveling that cash into 10 Year Treasuries.
Anyhow the future of gaming is the cloud. This isn't some pie-in-the-sky theory.
You can play Fortnite on your Mac or iPad today with GeForce NOW.
They might not make as much of a loss, that's based on 1m sales per title. If it was 2m units, it would be a smaller loss and it also assumes $50m would be needed to convince a company to do a port. Somewhere around $18m per port would be break even. Valve asked for $1m to port Half-Life 2:
Apple is spending $100m+ on multiple Apple TV projects so they are probably losing money just now.
Shareholders only care that their investment keeps going up overall and $1b won't make a dent when they make over $90b profit.
Game streaming is getting pretty good but there's no indication it's replacing native iOS gaming. There will always be both native and streaming and native will have more players.
d natively would make a difference, the rest can be supported via streaming (NVidia Geforce Now, XBox Cloud etc).
You’re suggesting that Apple spend $1b to possibly earn $360m?
How do you think the Xbox market got started? Or the Apple Arcade even? Apple has hated game developers for decades, they're not going to come running back now. So yes, if Apple wants desktop games, they will have to invest a lot in the first few years.
There is zero interest in the Mac platform from the big game developers. The hardware is finally coming along, the M1 has decent entry- to mid-level GPU performance, but there is a lack of tooling, not too mention no Vulcan support. We will have to see how many copies Resident Evil Village actually sells to see if there might be a new market. No Man's Sky is an old game, and has it's issues, we'll see if that one still sells. Both games have distinct genres, so if it doesn't fit yours, you may not buy it. Doesn't mean there won't be a market, but it's way too early.
It will be hard to build gaming back up on the Mac to the level of interest there is on iOS. To get a higher volume of players to invest in a platform, it needs a lot of the big popular titles. If it's just one or two, players will already have another platform and just keep all the games in the same place. Some features will also be missing on the Mac like Resident Evil Village supports raytracing but likely won't be available.
There were a few times when Apple tried to get more games on the Mac:
Another time was they tried to get most of the top 10 PC games ported. This was a long time ago.
I expect a big part of the problem now is that most of the big developers are tied into business deals with Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo and aren't willing to allocate the resources and there's risk in allowing external studios access to code to do a port.
Shareholders don't want Apple to spend $1B for $360M in revenue. That's a net $640M loss and that doesn't fit in with Apple's expected gross margins. Hell, Apple could make more money shoveling that cash into 10 Year Treasuries.
I'm not convinced that Apple's acquisition of Beats was a good purchase.
Anyhow the future of gaming is the cloud. This isn't some pie-in-the-sky theory.
You can play Fortnite on your Mac or iPad today with GeForce NOW.
That is because you don't remember how many flagship smartphones Samsung sold from 2011-2015 versus how many they sell today. Samsung America's marketing came up with a very brilliant marketing strategy to position Samsung as the cool, urban, hip alternative to Apple. A core part of that strategy was their partnership with Beats - whose headphones was featured the ads and Beats Radio was preinstalled on every Samsung phone - and their ad campaign with LeBron James (this was back when everybody liked him, and he endorsed Beats also). Perhaps Samsung should have preserved this by purchasing Beats themselves but it would have ruined the authenticity I guess. But in any case, Apple's buying Beats ended this very effective ad campaign. That plus Samsung Korea fired Samsung America's marketing team for being too successful and becoming too influential. Samsung started micromanaging everything from the home office and made it clear that the job of the regional offices was to carry out their marching orders. Had Samsung retained Beats they could have just kept it going for at least a few more years, or had they retained their best marketers Samsung could have pivoted to another strategy. But neither happened and Samsung hasn't threatened Apple in flagship sales since. They have even cancelled the Galaxy Note, which was huge for them in the Beats/LeBron/hip-hop era. And their current marketing is so bad that most of their fans from 10 years ago don't even know that the Galaxy Fold or Galaxy Watch exist.
Sorry but macOS gaming isn't going to happen. People who are serious about gaming buy PCs and consoles. Even if your main machine is a Mac, you are going to buy a console ($250 for a Nintendo Switch or XBox S, $500 for a PlayStation or XBox) or a gaming PC (which start at $750) to play your games. If you don't have a console or a gaming PC, you aren't serious about video games. Meaning that even if a flood of video games were to arrive on macOS, you won't start playing them. Why? Because if you were actually interested in playing them before you would have bought a console or PC and played them before.
PC and console gaming is an expensive, time-consuming, and frustratingly difficult hobby. Because of this not very many people do it. Even a hit console only sells 50-100 million units, and the PC gaming market is about the same size. By contrast billions of people play mobile games because they are cheap - $5 or less as compared to a $60 PC or console game - far easier and available on hardware that you already own for other purposes. Mac users who have never shown an interest before aren't all of a sudden going to start investing the time, money and effort into Final Fantasy and Far Cry just because you now can on a Mac.
Another thing: don't overstate Apple Silicon's capabilities. Its two best attributes when compared to Intel and AMD - multicore performance and power per watt - are completely irrelevant to PC gamers. What is most important for PC gaming is single core performance and GPU performance. Apple Silicon is honestly mediocre in both. The single core performance is behind Zen 3 AMD Ryzen 7, 11th gen Intel Core i7 and later this year may even be comparable with Zen 4 AMD Ryzen 5 (which will be on TSMC's 5nm node) and 13th gen Intel Core i5 (will be made on Intel's 2nd gen 10nm node). And while Apple has the best integrated GPU by far, discrete GPUs that outpeform it don't cost a whole lot (or at least won't when the shortage is over). A $2000 MacBook Pro offering the same effective gaming capability as a $1200 Dell G15 is nowhere near the compelling proposition to people who actually play video games as it is to Apple fans who push the "ballpark with x86 performance plus much better power per watt" thing.
Ultimately PC and console gaming are going to end up in the cloud. It has already started with GeForce NOW and Xbox Cloud. Nintendo Switch plays some cloud games.
Sure people are always going to game on their mobile devices but if you can play Fortnite via GeForce NOW and stream to your television set, why spend the money on console or PC hardware when you could spend those dollars on content?
I've even downloaded the GeForce NOW app onto my LG C1 television but have only dabbled with it a bit. I also have a Google Chromecast Ultra and the Stadia gamepad lying around somewhere.
Apple is just not into gaming in the way Microsoft ETC. are. And they never will be. I think they feel like they need to pay a little attention to gaming, especially in the mobile end of things, but don't see it as a focus for the Mac for good reason. The companies that focus on it spend a ton on it. Gaming dev is expensive and there just isn't the opportunity for Apple to make it back given market realities.
In two years the tools and hardware will be there, all Apple needs to do is keep building the foundation, like saving and investing…..
After all it took 13 years to become Intel Free…..
Gaming on the Mac is eventually going to largely end up in the cloud, like GeForce NOW where one can currently play No Man's Sky RIGHT NOW.
I believe you can play No Man's Sky on your phone via GeForce NOW and cast it to a TV set. For this reason, I believe that iOS gaming has a brighter future than Mac gaming. There are simply more iPhones in use than Macs.
The you will own nothing but be happy syndrome, no thanks.
Resident Evil Village and No Man’s Sky is a decent start but not nearly enough.
It might encourage others to port games when they see high profile games adopting Metal. I wonder if Apple pushed for this or if Capcom decided to do it themselves.
These developers don't need many sales to justify doing this. Apple's Mac userbase is over 100 million, Apple Silicon is a smaller portion but should be over 30 million by now. Game companies consider 5-10 million unit sales across all platforms to be a good result:
For one platform out of 4-5 (PC/Playstation/XBox/Nintendo/Mac), they only need to sell 1-3 million copies on Mac around $60.
Other ports that would be good are GTA V, Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Mass Effect series, Far Cry 4/5/6, Forza (not likely), Resident Evil 2/3 remakes, Horizon Zero Dawn (not likely), Plague Tale, Star Wars Battlefront 2, some of Call of Duty Black Ops and MW series and Battlefield, Apex Legends.
Partnering with Microsoft on their Game Pass might be an option as they can port some good first party titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator and Forza. Currently it works through streaming but they can add native titles where it's feasible to maintain the port.
Although it's just one title, it's a high profile and high-end one so it's great to see a native port. It would be good to see Apple throwing some of the budget they allocate to Apple TV content to games. I don't know what it would take to convince a company to do a port and support it but $50m should do it and is a pretty small amount for Apple. $1b would get them 20 high-end game ports and if the games sell through the App Store and they sold 1m per title x $60 x 20 titles x 30%, they'd make $360m back.
Most of the top 50 or so best-selling games over the past 10 year ported natively would make a difference, the rest can be supported via streaming (NVidia Geforce Now, XBox Cloud etc).
Better gaming will happen as Apple lays the foundation in software/hardware infrastructure, and I don’t mean Apple paying bribes or buying up money loosing game companies.
Resident Evil Village and No Man’s Sky is a decent start but not nearly enough.
It might encourage others to port games when they see high profile games adopting Metal. I wonder if Apple pushed for this or if Capcom decided to do it themselves.
These developers don't need many sales to justify doing this. Apple's Mac userbase is over 100 million, Apple Silicon is a smaller portion but should be over 30 million by now. Game companies consider 5-10 million unit sales across all platforms to be a good result:
For one platform out of 4-5 (PC/Playstation/XBox/Nintendo/Mac), they only need to sell 1-3 million copies on Mac around $60.
Other ports that would be good are GTA V, Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Mass Effect series, Far Cry 4/5/6, Forza (not likely), Resident Evil 2/3 remakes, Horizon Zero Dawn (not likely), Plague Tale, Star Wars Battlefront 2, some of Call of Duty Black Ops and MW series and Battlefield, Apex Legends.
Partnering with Microsoft on their Game Pass might be an option as they can port some good first party titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator and Forza. Currently it works through streaming but they can add native titles where it's feasible to maintain the port.
Although it's just one title, it's a high profile and high-end one so it's great to see a native port. It would be good to see Apple throwing some of the budget they allocate to Apple TV content to games. I don't know what it would take to convince a company to do a port and support it but $50m should do it and is a pretty small amount for Apple. $1b would get them 20 high-end game ports and if the games sell through the App Store and they sold 1m per title x $60 x 20 titles x 30%, they'd make $360m back.
Most of the top 50 or so best-selling games over the past 10 year ported natively would make a difference, the rest can be supported via streaming (NVidia Geforce Now, XBox Cloud etc).
Better gaming will happen as Apple lays the foundation in software/hardware infrastructure, and I don’t mean Apple paying bribes or buying up money loosing game companies.
Apple has been doing this for 30 years. At this pace do we have to wait another 30 years to start enjoying gaming?
If Apple doesn’t get their sh** together now who will want Apple VR services?
Resident Evil Village and No Man’s Sky is a decent start but not nearly enough.
It might encourage others to port games when they see high profile games adopting Metal. I wonder if Apple pushed for this or if Capcom decided to do it themselves.
These developers don't need many sales to justify doing this. Apple's Mac userbase is over 100 million, Apple Silicon is a smaller portion but should be over 30 million by now. Game companies consider 5-10 million unit sales across all platforms to be a good result:
For one platform out of 4-5 (PC/Playstation/XBox/Nintendo/Mac), they only need to sell 1-3 million copies on Mac around $60.
Other ports that would be good are GTA V, Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Mass Effect series, Far Cry 4/5/6, Forza (not likely), Resident Evil 2/3 remakes, Horizon Zero Dawn (not likely), Plague Tale, Star Wars Battlefront 2, some of Call of Duty Black Ops and MW series and Battlefield, Apex Legends.
Partnering with Microsoft on their Game Pass might be an option as they can port some good first party titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator and Forza. Currently it works through streaming but they can add native titles where it's feasible to maintain the port.
Although it's just one title, it's a high profile and high-end one so it's great to see a native port. It would be good to see Apple throwing some of the budget they allocate to Apple TV content to games. I don't know what it would take to convince a company to do a port and support it but $50m should do it and is a pretty small amount for Apple. $1b would get them 20 high-end game ports and if the games sell through the App Store and they sold 1m per title x $60 x 20 titles x 30%, they'd make $360m back.
Most of the top 50 or so best-selling games over the past 10 year ported natively would make a difference, the rest can be supported via streaming (NVidia Geforce Now, XBox Cloud etc).
The $1B investment is worth the snowball effect alone. Apple just need to get the ball rolling. They could have offered Capcom half of that for a catalog of games. Even if Apple made $0 from the deal the developers that would follow would make up for it in new hardware sales alone.
The problem is, Apple has a desert that they’re trying to sell home owners (gamers) to. There’s nothing there but they expect people to just move in(to Mac). Build something here first and watch others adopt.
Had Apple gave Capcom just $150M to develop a catalog of games with iPhone companion apps, they’d see a ton of switchers to both Mac and iPhone. If I were Cook, I’d take it further and have them develop Resident Evil to work across Mac/iPad/iPhone/Apple TV.
Mac: Full core game Apple TV: pickup where you left off with your choice of game controller iPad: Same as Apple TV with added touch features iPhone: mini games that help you on your journey/companion app
Heck, I’d find a way to throw Watch and AirPods in there. Maybe Atmos/Spatial Audio with head tracking support for AirPods. Especially after today’s announcement
Then I’d find a way to earn herbs(Resident Evil’s health supplement) and find other items by walking and running with Watch Fitness.
Buy ONCE get all these platforms and features.
The idea is to get gamers on board with Apple and into a better ecosystem. As of now, no one is gonna put their PS5 to the side to play Resident Evil VIII on Mac. That’s ridiculous. Also, this causes a paradox which Nintendo dealt with before, since no one is buying Resident Evil on Mac, Capcom will then use that as a reason to stop developing for it but there’s no reason to buy it on Mac in the first place. It’s a catch 22 I’ve seen in the industry before.
There’s the “Tim Cook knows how to run the biggest tech company in the world” excuse but here’s the problem with that argument: Cook doesn’t give a damn about gaming. It’s just a fun side hustle for Apple. They don’t even update us on Apple TV at WWDC anymore. I was hoping M2 would be the chip Apple was waiting on for a new Apple TV but that’s looking hopeless as time goes on.
Apple doesn’t need pay bribe’s to these nitwits just keep building the software/hardware foundation, nor do they buy up these money loosing companies who are resold every 5-10 years to the next new Bumpkin in town.
Comments
I'm not convinced that Apple's acquisition of Beats was a good purchase.
Anyhow the future of gaming is the cloud. This isn't some pie-in-the-sky theory.
You can play Fortnite on your Mac or iPad today with GeForce NOW.
The current Apple TV can run the GTA trilogy but instead we get this:
and this:
People also don’t see the snowball effect of Apple funding games. Say Apple spends $4B on gaming and a gaming Apple TV. Here’s some side-effects:
1. More Home and Siri adoption from Apple TV being a central hub and halo effect.
2. New users into Apple products from iPhone to AirTags.
3. Game developers jumping on board to better platforms like Mac and Apple TV.
4. Apple VR/AR headset/Glasses gaining interest from gamers.
5. Swift and Metal widening the gap from competitors.
6. $7B in revenue added from Apple TV taking at least 20% of the console market. Not considering Mac and other product sales.
7. Apple Arcade becoming a competitor to big companies like Ea and Sony.
8. HomePod becoming a serious purchase for gamers.
Apple has the funds to take over the living room. Then there’s bigger potential like Apple developing a game engine to overthrow Epic and Apple potentially taking 40% of the console market. I can’t think of a better company who could do this.
There is zero interest in the Mac platform from the big game developers. The hardware is finally coming along, the M1 has decent entry- to mid-level GPU performance, but there is a lack of tooling, not too mention no Vulcan support. We will have to see how many copies Resident Evil Village actually sells to see if there might be a new market. No Man's Sky is an old game, and has it's issues, we'll see if that one still sells. Both games have distinct genres, so if it doesn't fit yours, you may not buy it. Doesn't mean there won't be a market, but it's way too early.
Btw, I'm very happy with games on the Mac, there's amazing stuff out there and very few games that I miss. "AAA" increasingly has little to do with quality.
https://www.engadget.com/2007-10-06-half-life-2-on-the-mac-give-valve-one-million-dollars.html
Aspyr and Feral make ports regularly and aren't working with large budgets. Aspyr has 140 employees. Their payroll will be under $10m/year:
https://www.aspyr.com/careers
https://www.aspyr.com/search?search_term=&platform%5B%5D=Mac
Apple is spending $100m+ on multiple Apple TV projects so they are probably losing money just now.
Shareholders only care that their investment keeps going up overall and $1b won't make a dent when they make over $90b profit.
Game streaming is getting pretty good but there's no indication it's replacing native iOS gaming. There will always be both native and streaming and native will have more players.
It will be hard to build gaming back up on the Mac to the level of interest there is on iOS. To get a higher volume of players to invest in a platform, it needs a lot of the big popular titles. If it's just one or two, players will already have another platform and just keep all the games in the same place. Some features will also be missing on the Mac like Resident Evil Village supports raytracing but likely won't be available.
There were a few times when Apple tried to get more games on the Mac:
Another time was they tried to get most of the top 10 PC games ported. This was a long time ago.
I expect a big part of the problem now is that most of the big developers are tied into business deals with Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo and aren't willing to allocate the resources and there's risk in allowing external studios access to code to do a port.
PC and console gaming is an expensive, time-consuming, and frustratingly difficult hobby. Because of this not very many people do it. Even a hit console only sells 50-100 million units, and the PC gaming market is about the same size. By contrast billions of people play mobile games because they are cheap - $5 or less as compared to a $60 PC or console game - far easier and available on hardware that you already own for other purposes. Mac users who have never shown an interest before aren't all of a sudden going to start investing the time, money and effort into Final Fantasy and Far Cry just because you now can on a Mac.
Another thing: don't overstate Apple Silicon's capabilities. Its two best attributes when compared to Intel and AMD - multicore performance and power per watt - are completely irrelevant to PC gamers. What is most important for PC gaming is single core performance and GPU performance. Apple Silicon is honestly mediocre in both. The single core performance is behind Zen 3 AMD Ryzen 7, 11th gen Intel Core i7 and later this year may even be comparable with Zen 4 AMD Ryzen 5 (which will be on TSMC's 5nm node) and 13th gen Intel Core i5 (will be made on Intel's 2nd gen 10nm node). And while Apple has the best integrated GPU by far, discrete GPUs that outpeform it don't cost a whole lot (or at least won't when the shortage is over). A $2000 MacBook Pro offering the same effective gaming capability as a $1200 Dell G15 is nowhere near the compelling proposition to people who actually play video games as it is to Apple fans who push the "ballpark with x86 performance plus much better power per watt" thing.
Sure people are always going to game on their mobile devices but if you can play Fortnite via GeForce NOW and stream to your television set, why spend the money on console or PC hardware when you could spend those dollars on content?
I've even downloaded the GeForce NOW app onto my LG C1 television but have only dabbled with it a bit. I also have a Google Chromecast Ultra and the Stadia gamepad lying around somewhere.
After all it took 13 years to become Intel Free…..
Better gaming will happen as Apple lays the foundation in software/hardware infrastructure, and I don’t mean Apple paying bribes or buying up money loosing game companies.
If Apple doesn’t get their sh** together now who will want Apple VR services?
Apple doesn’t need pay bribe’s to these nitwits just keep building the software/hardware foundation, nor do they buy up these money loosing companies who are resold every 5-10 years to the next new Bumpkin in town.