6 ms·

> Then, combine that with GPUs being fairly expensive, and fast moving when it comes to new features. Most game studios aren't going to buy 20 different GPUs an

> Then, combine that with GPUs being fairly expensive, and fast moving when it comes to new features. Most game studios aren't going to buy 20 different GPUs and test their entire game on all of them. This is mostly irrelevant for MacOS/iOS/iPadOS/tvOS. The number of people plugging in an external GPU on Macs is minuscule > for instance with games having poor support for macOS. Games don't have poor support on MacOS because of lack of Vulkan. They have poor support because pretty much no Mac (except maybe the newest M1 macs?) have gamer level GPUs and no market for high end games. Gamers basically know if you want to game, get a PC, and game devs know not to waste money on Mac ports.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Games don't have poor support on MacOS because of lack of Vulkan. They have poor support because pretty much no Mac (except maybe the newest M1 macs?) have gamer level GPUs and no market for high end games. It is basically this: Gamers don't buy Macs (at least not as their only system, or their primary one for gaming) because there are few games. Few gamers buying Macs exclusively means there is little unique Mac demand for games (that is, demand that can't be tapped on another platform, because the potential buyer has it and will buy games on it). Little unique Mac demand for games means few games, and thus the cycle is closed. Breaking out of that is hard, and Apple would probably need to be the one to expend the effort, and Apple doesn't seem to want to do that.
- akira2501 5y ago
  Breaking out of that might be significantly easier if Apple entered the console space, which is something I sort of assumed they would eventually do. I'm not particularly clued in, though.. does anyone have a good reason why they haven't?
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    What's the value proposition for an Apple console? What competitive advantage is it going to have without undercutting some other product?
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Because game developers despise Apple. The only major devs who gave a damn about Mac support was Blizzard, and even then they didn't really care about porting anything other than World of Warcraft to Apple Silicon (or even Mac altogether). Valve tried extending an olive branch a few years ago with Steam Proton support on Mac, but Apple batted it away, and Valve responded by pulling SteamVR support for Mac. The rest of the AAA gaming space absolutely will not care until Vulkan is natively supported on Apple hardware, because there's no way they're going to put their games on it otherwise. Without Vulkan, you're not just missing out on Vulkan titles (of which there are many), but also DirectX ones that would be playable at near-native framerates through translation tech like DXVK. The fact that Apple doesn't have a robust, high-performance graphics API is completely gimping their chances at getting game developers to care, which is why completely broken platforms like Linux and BSD somehow have better game support on hardware that's a fraction of the price. Oh, and there's the fact that the console space is a low-margin industry where their competitors are taking a loss on their product. The PS5 and both new Xboxes are being sold below-cost just to move units, with the expectation that users will pay for digital purchases/subscriptions to compensate. The Nintendo Switch is barely staying underneath $300, to the point that it normally sells at a loss during the holidays just because of shipping prices. Apple is known to drive massive hardware margins, so making a product that's actually worth it's value isn't all that attractive to them. They'd rather have their cake and eat it too, which has worked pretty good for their insane 30% margin they cut off nearly every microtransaction they see. The less attention they draw to that fact, the better.
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      Apple do have a robust high-performance API, Metal. Arguably it has the best ergonomics of any of the low-level graphics APIs. All relevant game engines already have Metal support, too. There's even an equivalent to DXVK in MoltenVK. It's not that different from Microsoft's position. It's possible Apple might make an M1 Apple TV with a decent GPU. Like the Macbook Air, it's likely it'd be cheaper to manufacture than competitors with similar performance. I suppose we'll see.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
  - sidpatil 5y ago
    They did, in the 1990s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin
  - ksec 5y ago
    1. Apple requires Hardware Margins, I am not even aware of a single hardware category they sold that have low / zero margin. 2. Apple constantly pushes changes in their OS and API. Breaking backward compatibility. Part of the reason why many iOS Games dont work after a few iOS update anymore. Compared to console where games are expected to work during the life span of the console. 3. Thirdly and most importantly. There are zero gamers DNA in Apple. They dont understand Gaming.
smoldesu 5y ago
MacOS had great game support for a while, but axing 32-bit libraries and refusing to adopt Vulkan led big players like Valve to drop support for MacOS in many of their programs. For a short while with Mojave, you could reliably play 80% of the PC games on Steam though.
- flying_sheep 5y ago
  I had many 32-bits games in macOS but they were all axed, including big titles like Diablo 2 (not the resurrected one), Warcraft 3, and a lot of indie games. This made me realize why no sensible game companies would develop in Apple platforms, unless the games generate revenue continuously (which are mostly pay-to-win games) God know what Apple would axe next :-/
  - mlajtos 5y ago
    > God know what Apple would axe next :-/ I hope Oculus..eee..I mean Facebook..ah..Meta!
kcb 5y ago
> Games don't have poor support on MacOS because of lack of Vulkan. Proton/Wine/DXVK. Wine works on Mac but DXVK barely does through MoltenVK. The lack of proper Vulkan support is directly why games have poor support on MacOS. I'm almost positive if Mac OS had Vulkan support Valve would be supporting Proton on Mac OS.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Games don't have poor support on MacOS because of lack of Vulkan. They have poor support because pretty much no Mac (except maybe the newest M1 macs?) have gamer level GPUs and no market for high end games. It is basically this: Gamers don't buy Macs (at least not as their only system, or their primary one for gaming) because there are few games. Few gamers buying Macs exclusively means there is little unique Mac demand for games (that is, demand that can't be tapped on another platform, because the potential buyer has it and will buy games on it). Little unique Mac demand for games means few games, and thus the cycle is closed. Breaking out of that is hard, and Apple would probably need to be the one to expend the effort, and Apple doesn't seem to want to do that.

akira2501 5y ago
Breaking out of that might be significantly easier if Apple entered the console space, which is something I sort of assumed they would eventually do. I'm not particularly clued in, though.. does anyone have a good reason why they haven't?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  What's the value proposition for an Apple console? What competitive advantage is it going to have without undercutting some other product?
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Because game developers despise Apple. The only major devs who gave a damn about Mac support was Blizzard, and even then they didn't really care about porting anything other than World of Warcraft to Apple Silicon (or even Mac altogether). Valve tried extending an olive branch a few years ago with Steam Proton support on Mac, but Apple batted it away, and Valve responded by pulling SteamVR support for Mac. The rest of the AAA gaming space absolutely will not care until Vulkan is natively supported on Apple hardware, because there's no way they're going to put their games on it otherwise. Without Vulkan, you're not just missing out on Vulkan titles (of which there are many), but also DirectX ones that would be playable at near-native framerates through translation tech like DXVK. The fact that Apple doesn't have a robust, high-performance graphics API is completely gimping their chances at getting game developers to care, which is why completely broken platforms like Linux and BSD somehow have better game support on hardware that's a fraction of the price. Oh, and there's the fact that the console space is a low-margin industry where their competitors are taking a loss on their product. The PS5 and both new Xboxes are being sold below-cost just to move units, with the expectation that users will pay for digital purchases/subscriptions to compensate. The Nintendo Switch is barely staying underneath $300, to the point that it normally sells at a loss during the holidays just because of shipping prices. Apple is known to drive massive hardware margins, so making a product that's actually worth it's value isn't all that attractive to them. They'd rather have their cake and eat it too, which has worked pretty good for their insane 30% margin they cut off nearly every microtransaction they see. The less attention they draw to that fact, the better.
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    Apple do have a robust high-performance API, Metal. Arguably it has the best ergonomics of any of the low-level graphics APIs. All relevant game engines already have Metal support, too. There's even an equivalent to DXVK in MoltenVK. It's not that different from Microsoft's position. It's possible Apple might make an M1 Apple TV with a decent GPU. Like the Macbook Air, it's likely it'd be cheaper to manufacture than competitors with similar performance. I suppose we'll see.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
- sidpatil 5y ago
  They did, in the 1990s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin
- ksec 5y ago
  1. Apple requires Hardware Margins, I am not even aware of a single hardware category they sold that have low / zero margin. 2. Apple constantly pushes changes in their OS and API. Breaking backward compatibility. Part of the reason why many iOS Games dont work after a few iOS update anymore. Compared to console where games are expected to work during the life span of the console. 3. Thirdly and most importantly. There are zero gamers DNA in Apple. They dont understand Gaming.

smoldesu 5y ago

MacOS had great game support for a while, but axing 32-bit libraries and refusing to adopt Vulkan led big players like Valve to drop support for MacOS in many of their programs. For a short while with Mojave, you could reliably play 80% of the PC games on Steam though.

flying_sheep 5y ago
I had many 32-bits games in macOS but they were all axed, including big titles like Diablo 2 (not the resurrected one), Warcraft 3, and a lot of indie games. This made me realize why no sensible game companies would develop in Apple platforms, unless the games generate revenue continuously (which are mostly pay-to-win games) God know what Apple would axe next :-/
- mlajtos 5y ago
  > God know what Apple would axe next :-/ I hope Oculus..eee..I mean Facebook..ah..Meta!

kcb 5y ago

> Games don't have poor support on MacOS because of lack of Vulkan. Proton/Wine/DXVK. Wine works on Mac but DXVK barely does through MoltenVK. The lack of proper Vulkan support is directly why games have poor support on MacOS. I'm almost positive if Mac OS had Vulkan support Valve would be supporting Proton on Mac OS.