Johar

Tim Cook is a bean counter who seems to really dislike AAA games, while favoring Apple Arcade fluff. A whole generation of gamer kids have been lost for Apple due to his deliberate choice to snub AAA game developers.

I used to boot into Windows on my 2009 Mac Pro in order to play PC games. With plenty of RAM and the possibility to upgrade the GPU, this was a viable solution up until a few years ago.

However, since the passing of Steve Jobs, gaming on the Mac has been deliberately ignored, with seriously underpowered computers and no interest whatsoever in working with game developers. Even Mac gaming stalwart Blizzard finally gave up on the Mac platform, when their new Overwatch title literally could not run decently on any available Mac.

Moving to ARM might not affect the business side in any drastic way, but every single person wanting to play new AAA PC games will be forced to either buy two computers  or to ditch the Mac altogether. Considering how many young people (and quite a few older) are into games, this seems to me like a major loss of opportunity. It's even more bizarre given Apple's apparent recognition of the importance of games on their mobile platform. But I guess they believe Apple users are more interested in Candy Crush than in Overwatch.

It has been sadly obvious for oh, about as many years as Steve Jobs have been dead, that Apple is firmly opposed to any kind of state-of-the-art gaming on the Mac.

I've been a Mac user since I got my first Macintosh SE (so quite a while) and it has always been a bit of a challenge to be a gamer on that platform. But Steve Jobs regularly trotted out gaming celebs like John Carmack to tout the gaming prowess of Mac OS X. We also got OpenGL, PC compatible ports and eventually the ability to boot straight into Windows and play any game we wanted.

Under Cook, mobile games seem to be OK, but game developers on the Mac are given such a cold shoulder that even Mac gaming stalwart Blizzard refrained from launching their latest hit game Overwatch on the Mac. This was the first game since the start of that company that wasn't simultaneoulsy launched on both PC and Mac. Apples anemic GPU choices didn't enable the game to meet Blizzard's user experience standards.

What I don't get is the joy that clowns like Lkrupp seems to derive from the fact that Mac users now need to purchase a second computer for gaming. Is there any reason at all to celebrate that one specific, and incidentally very popular, activity simply can't be adequately performed on a Mac computer?

The problem of Apple's failure to mainatin developer's interest in the Mac platform is only a matter of will. Mr. Cook has intentionally made an enemy out of GPU champion Nvidia, offered many generations  of severely underpowered Intel based computers and been astonishingly arrogant towards game developers. I think the current come-to Jesus-moment is just due to the only thing a beancounter understands - Apple is no longer a growth company. They simply can't afford to disdainfully ignore a whole swath of the younger (and partly older) generations, whose interest in (real and immersive) gaming will influence their choice of computer platform.

I have to confess that I rarely play mobile or casual games, so I had missed some of the developments mentioned above.

As for Game Center, one of its most glaring faults was that it was so insular. It was OK in the early years, but the lack of support for Android and social (read Facebook) connections effectively rendered it obsolete as a foundation for games, and particularly multiplayer games. Also, like I said, it was technically unsound and highly unreliable.

Are Apple's current game related services (as mentioned in posts above) multi-platform?

As for the Mac, I think Apple has the resources and competence to do very well as a gaming company. The real question is if they want to.

I have this terrible feeling that MacOS will be dumbed down in order to make it "easier to navigate" for iPhone users. Like when a much used website suddenly is remade with a "mobile first" design approach. Everything becomes huge and space wasting for users with a big screen.

I would assume that a very small portion of AAA gamers are even remotely tempted to spend AAA money on a mobile port. You play these games for the immersion, rather than just a quick time-killing session when taking a break or waiting for the bus. Personally, I'd rather have my teeth pulled out than playing a major AAA title on a phone.

The screen is comparatively tiny, which not only wastes a lot of the graphical appeal, it also makes visual ques much harder to notice. Perhaps even more damning, the interactions of the original games were designed for either a console controller or mouse and keyboard. It's not unusual to have 15 or more keybinds. Squeezing that kind of complex control scheme, which you ideally want to master in a flow state, onto a smallish touch screen often results in a very unsatisfactory experience.

Believeing that porting pricy and dated AAA consaole/PC games to iPhones, or even iPads, would be a successful strategy, just reveals a deep ignorance of hardcore gamer preferences.

I too have a beloved 12 Mini. Funny that Apple decides to just ignore those of us who prefer a smaller form factor. I'll hold on to my perfect size phone until Apple launches a similar sized model again.

Not a lot of that from Apple since, well, you know what. Sadly.