Johar

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'll hold on hard to my beloved iPhone 12 Mini, while watching Apple relentlessly grow iPhone into a more iPad-like form factor. I guess they feel they can improve their bottom line by making the phones ever larger and more expensive.

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 sincerely hope and believe that this isn't what Apple decides to do. It would reek of the inability of pre-Jobs Apple to develop a modern OS. It's one thing for Apple to refrain form competing with Google on regular ad-financed search. Giving up on providing Apple users with a well-crafted AI service with rock solid privacy would be a huge failing - completely unworthy of a resource rich company like Apple. If it does happen, I will never ever use a Google AI service.

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.