d_2

Marvin said:

Johar said:

Apple calls itself a gaming company because it's generating tons of revenue from the mostly casual mobile gaming market. However, I would never call them a gaming company - in the same way that I wouldn't call a TV maker like LG a movie company.

Like someone else said in a post above, there's a long list of actions that Apple need to take to get even close to earning the right to call themselves a gaming company.

All Apple needed to do to justify being described as a games company is invest in producing games, which they do for Apple Arcade:

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/09/heres-all-the-apple-arcade-exclusives-so-far/
https://toucharcade.com/2021/04/19/fantasian-apple-arcade-exclusive-interview-hironobu-sakaguchi-final-fantasy-terra-battle/

This puts them in competition with other games companies similar to how investing in movies and TV puts them in competition with movie companies.

They could make some moves to boost Mac gaming, maybe they will over time. It looks like their priority is iOS gaming due to the volume of users.

Apple could buy their way into gaming on the Mac by buying a big game company like EA, Take Two, Ubisoft, Activision, Crytek. Each would come with a game engine (Frostbite, Dunia, CryEngine). Crytek would probably be the cheapest option, some of the others are valued at tens of billions. Tencent is supposedly looking at buying them:

https://www.thegamer.com/tencent-might-buy-crytek/
https://www.thegamer.com/tencent-secured-more-games-ma-deals-in-2020-than-any-other-studio/

They don't have much of a games portfolio though. I don't think Apple owning an engine would help them much, a lot of the engines have support for Metal anyway and Amazon has an open source game engine based on CryEngine.

Apple would benefit more from a large games portfolio and popular IP that they can make new titles with. If they owned EA, they'd attract millions of players with exclusive Mass Effect games. But EA is $40b and they would run into some issues because a few games (like the next Mass Effect game) are being developed on Unreal Engine so they'd have to pay Epic a cut of the sales.

Developing new exclusive games is far too slow a process for Apple to gain a foothold in gaming. The other companies own dozens of studios and would produce at least 10x the yearly output of Apple owning a single studio.

It looks like their strategy is to leverage the player volume on iOS and get those games working on Mac. That will cover a lot of the casual games market. For the Mac side, I think their best bet is to do what Valve is doing to get Windows games on Linux with a compatibility layer. Once there's a few thousand games running, gamers will start playing on the Mac and buying games there and the developers will follow with native ports.

Social gaming is what keeps players on a platform like Roblox, Minecraft, GTA Online. Apple is trying this with an upcoming game in November that works on all their devices and exclusive to them:

https://www.starwars.com/news/lego-star-wars-castaways

I expect Apple has a similar feeling about wholesome content as they do about TV content and this type of game checks all the right boxes.

GeorgeBMac said:

Just to compare how far this came:  In 1986 I had to set up an online demonstration of a computer system for 20-30 executives of a steel company up in Detroit.  To do so I had to use bleeding edge technology:

I lugged a state of the art "portable computer" up to Detroit.   I was a 40 pound Compaq the size of a small overnight suitcase.  The keyboard clipped onto the front of it and was connected by a cord.  It also had a black & white screen about 3-4 inches square.

There was of course no mouse or trackpad since this was all done with DOS.

For a "Projector" I used a Kodak screen transparency that laid on top of an overhead projector and was connected to the laptop via (I think) a serial cable.

Going form that to having something with a real screen, mouse and keyboard all in a single unit that could sit on your lap was like a moon shot in comparison -- just 5 years later.  

The pace of computer technology advancements back then was mind boggling.

JWSC said:

jd_in_sb said:

If Tesla can do it then so can Apple. 

I’m not sure anyone out there can do what Tesla has already done.  They have a clear technological lead over every other competitor.  As Tesla technology continues to advance rapidly, it’s going to be a challenge to leapfrog them.

Having said that, Tesla is not without its flaws.  The materials and paint finish on its vehicles is underwhelming in some cases.  Sometimes the fit and finish is underwhelming.  Depends on the day the vehicle was manufactured.  While greatly improved from earlier days, they still have more “production hell” to go through.  Tesla interior design, while clean, is a bit staid.  Apple has the potential to do a much better job on the physical product with UI, UX, and human factors.  The downside here is that those attributes will be easy for competitors to copy and improve.

TheObannonFile said:

Regarding nomenclature, I think Apple M series will follow Apple A series pretty closely. M2 = replacement for M1. M1X across the board in Pro devices. M1Z in Mac Pro with CPU and GPU core options. (Or, M2Z if it’s another year. Or they will just step out of A and Z and just list specs). We shall see.