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iMac owner chiming in; late 2013 model. Gaming on OSX for me is hit and miss. Many of the games I have recently played have been advanced Wine wrappers and the

iMac owner chiming in; late 2013 model. Gaming on OSX for me is hit and miss. Many of the games I have recently played have been advanced Wine wrappers and they work out pretty well. One company, Wargaming, has done pretty good with this model but they don't provide true support as the wrapper itself does introduce a lot of variable. Blizzard was a mainstay for my buying but even though I have not tried Overwatch the fact it was not made available for OSX does not bode well. If one of your longest supporters suddenly drops off, what does that say? Was there some scare introduced with suggestions they may move off Intel? I never put any real faith into it and to be honest it might be the straw for me if it ever did happen. Still a lot comes down to Apple really doesn't push their desktops and laptops as being used for games. They will put a "performance" claim on their website showing improvement over past models but not much beyond that. I rely on sites like barefeats to see if performance has ticked up enough to warrant a new purchase; as you can see for me my system is fine for what is there. the saving grace has always been, just use bootcamp. It works, I don't need a new machine, and it can use the latest video drivers from the manufacturers site.

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
Perhaps Overwatch seemed too graphically demanding for most Macs to be worth porting?
- overcast 9y ago
  Nah, Overwatch plays on a wide variety of hardware. It's not very graphically demanding, and you definitely don't need a powerful machine for it. Blizzard's stance has always been to get their games on as many machines as possible.
- SilverHawk 9y ago
  Do not underestimate modern intel iGPUs! Even games like Fallout 4 can be made to run on these as long as you can accept lower graphical fidelity, resolution and 30 fps rather than a smooth 60+ framerate (the latter of which is common on gaming consoles, anyway). Here's a video of Fallout 4 running on a Macbook Pro : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW3A81BScMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW3A81BScMU Running on Intel's GPU. Macs with dedicated GPUs with either NVIDIA or AMD hardware will perform much better. Overwatch has no trouble running on more recent Macs, if you install Windows through bootcamp. Compared to many other AAA games, it's quite light. Hardware is not the issue here. The biggest problem running games on Mac OS X is the terrible graphic stack. It's simply underperforming. Whether it's the drivers or something else, I can't say. However, from my personal experience having used Mac OS X, Linux and Windows on the same Mac, Windows tends to perform best, Linux a close second, and MacOS a very distant last. This stays true even for games that were "natively" ported to MacOS, such as Diablo 3. They still run better on Windows. And as for people who play windows games through Wine.. those games run better on linux than on MacOS. And that tends to be a major problem with running games on lower end macs.. for example, Dark Souls can run fine on a Mac Mini if you play it through Wine under Linux, or natively on Windows. But Wine on MacOS will perform significantly worse. Not enough to make the game unplayable, but it's a much less enjoyable experience. MacOS is just unfit for the purpose. I'm not a 'hardcore gamer' per se, and do not chase the treadmill of latest and greatest with the best possible graphics, but I still enjoy playing games from time to time and I ended up nuking MacOS from the mini I use as a media center connected to the TV. The next time I buy a tiny computer to put next to the tv, it will be an Intel NUC.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
    > Do not underestimate modern intel iGPUs! I'm not! It doesn't run very well on my 2013 MacBook Air at lowest settings.
vbezhenar 9y ago
AFAIK Blizzard's WoW works faster on Windows on the same machine. I'm playing it on my Macbook with dedicated GPU (GT 650M), it's quite terrible, basically I have to play on lowest settings with 720x450 resolution (1440x900 with half resolution and upscaling) to have some playable FPS (10-30, drops to single digit sometimes). And WoW uses Metal API, not some wrapper.
- Tanegashima 9y ago
  Your GPU doesn't have Metal.

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago

Perhaps Overwatch seemed too graphically demanding for most Macs to be worth porting?

overcast 9y ago
Nah, Overwatch plays on a wide variety of hardware. It's not very graphically demanding, and you definitely don't need a powerful machine for it. Blizzard's stance has always been to get their games on as many machines as possible.
SilverHawk 9y ago
Do not underestimate modern intel iGPUs! Even games like Fallout 4 can be made to run on these as long as you can accept lower graphical fidelity, resolution and 30 fps rather than a smooth 60+ framerate (the latter of which is common on gaming consoles, anyway). Here's a video of Fallout 4 running on a Macbook Pro : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW3A81BScMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW3A81BScMU Running on Intel's GPU. Macs with dedicated GPUs with either NVIDIA or AMD hardware will perform much better. Overwatch has no trouble running on more recent Macs, if you install Windows through bootcamp. Compared to many other AAA games, it's quite light. Hardware is not the issue here. The biggest problem running games on Mac OS X is the terrible graphic stack. It's simply underperforming. Whether it's the drivers or something else, I can't say. However, from my personal experience having used Mac OS X, Linux and Windows on the same Mac, Windows tends to perform best, Linux a close second, and MacOS a very distant last. This stays true even for games that were "natively" ported to MacOS, such as Diablo 3. They still run better on Windows. And as for people who play windows games through Wine.. those games run better on linux than on MacOS. And that tends to be a major problem with running games on lower end macs.. for example, Dark Souls can run fine on a Mac Mini if you play it through Wine under Linux, or natively on Windows. But Wine on MacOS will perform significantly worse. Not enough to make the game unplayable, but it's a much less enjoyable experience. MacOS is just unfit for the purpose. I'm not a 'hardcore gamer' per se, and do not chase the treadmill of latest and greatest with the best possible graphics, but I still enjoy playing games from time to time and I ended up nuking MacOS from the mini I use as a media center connected to the TV. The next time I buy a tiny computer to put next to the tv, it will be an Intel NUC.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  > Do not underestimate modern intel iGPUs! I'm not! It doesn't run very well on my 2013 MacBook Air at lowest settings.

vbezhenar 9y ago

AFAIK Blizzard's WoW works faster on Windows on the same machine. I'm playing it on my Macbook with dedicated GPU (GT 650M), it's quite terrible, basically I have to play on lowest settings with 720x450 resolution (1440x900 with half resolution and upscaling) to have some playable FPS (10-30, drops to single digit sometimes). And WoW uses Metal API, not some wrapper.

Tanegashima 9y ago
Your GPU doesn't have Metal.