{"id":41652,"date":"2024-01-04T13:40:01","date_gmt":"2024-01-04T18:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=41652"},"modified":"2024-02-01T09:41:13","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T14:41:13","slug":"apples-mac-gaming-push","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/04\/apples-mac-gaming-push\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple’s Mac Gaming Push"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raymond Wong<\/a> (MacRumors<\/a>, Slashdot<\/a>):<\/p>\n

No doubt “losing” in gaming for decades has not been fun for Apple. It’s certainly painful and disappointing for Mac users both new and old, who have to buy a separate PC or console to play AAA games. But in 2023, the winds of change began to blow.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Gaming on the Mac in the 1990s until 2020, when Apple made a big shift to its own custom silicon, could be boiled down to this: Apple was in a hardware arms race with the PC that it couldn’t win. Mac gamers were hopeful that the switch from PowerPC to Intel CPUs starting in 2005 would turn things around, but it didn’t because by then, GPUs started becoming the more important hardware component for running 3D games, and the Mac’s support for third-party GPUs could only be described as lackluster.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

When Apple announced the M3 chips<\/a> at its “Scary Fast” October event<\/a>, it touted certain hardware features built into the silicon that were big firsts for Macs. There’s the aforementioned hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shaders, which make games look more realistic with real-time lighting and models with more detailed polygons and textures. But the feature few people are talking about, and the one that could make games on M3-powered Macs and future Apple computers really shine, is Dynamic Caching.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t think the hardware<\/a> has been the main problem. I wonder how much they’re doing with developers behind the scenes because I doubt Game Porting Toolkit and this PR push on their own are convincing anyone.<\/p>\n

\n

When I ask Apple’s marketing managers what they’re doing to improve the distribution of games on the Mac, specifically through the Mac App Store, I get less assuring responses. I remind them that, unlike the App Store for iOS, developers have had a rocky history getting their software sold on the Mac App Store. Panic, makers of the indie game Firewatch<\/em> and the Playdate handheld, famously gave up<\/a> on bringing its critically acclaimed Untitled Goose Game<\/em> to the Mac App Store because of some seemingly arbitrary Mac App Store policies (though it’s still available on Mac via other platforms like Steam).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n