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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

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
    > Apple do have a robust high-performance API, Metal. Metal is neither robust, or, arguably, high-performance when compared to DirectX or Vulkan. > Arguably it has the best ergonomics of any of the low-level graphics APIs. It's not a low-level API. By Apple's own admission, Metal is hopelessly high-level and can only achieve the ergonomics it has by abstracting away all the features that gamedevs care about and putting the keys to the kingdom in Apple's hands. > All relevant game engines already have Metal support, too. I like how you qualify this with "relevant", as if I'd come up with a list of all the engines without Metal support and you'd wave them away as irrelevant since they don't support Metal. Plus, Metal isn't just a compilation target. A "port" to Apple Silicon doesn't entail checking off a new box on the compiler, it's a long and arduous process of porting shaders, bytecode, 32-bit libraries, x86-based libraries, API calls and more. Since Apple provides game developers no incentive to do that work, they continue to refuse porting to their system. > There's even an equivalent to DXVK in MoltenVK. It's not that different from Microsoft's position. Yeah, except the main difference is that DXVK gets near-native performance, while MoltenVK is far too slow to be considered for regular use. Do you honestly think a Proton-like compatibility layer could be built on a technology that needs to translate Vulkan code into a higher-level, slower API? Keep dreaming. > 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. Comedy-freaking-gold right here. Let's say that you're right, and Apple does release an Apple TV with an M1 processor in it. I'm going to give you an insane benefit of the doubt, and we'll assume that they cut down the price to $500 (using the Mac Mini as a starting point). At peak performance, the M1 can churn through a measly 2.4 teraflops. There are last-gen consoles that were faster than that, not even to compare them to the 11 teraflops that the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 pump out. Okay, so let's put a faster GPU in there: the M1 has 8 GPU cores, so getting it to be as embarrassingly parallel as it's peers would require us to multiply it's core count by 4 or 5 factors. That would require a whopping 32 GPU cores, the same amount that the $2500+ Macbook Pros carry. If they did make a $500 console of that ilk, they'd be losing money on every unit shipped for the GPU alone. I genuinely have no idea where you're getting any of this stuff. Maybe read up on game development before responding?
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.

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
  > Apple do have a robust high-performance API, Metal. Metal is neither robust, or, arguably, high-performance when compared to DirectX or Vulkan. > Arguably it has the best ergonomics of any of the low-level graphics APIs. It's not a low-level API. By Apple's own admission, Metal is hopelessly high-level and can only achieve the ergonomics it has by abstracting away all the features that gamedevs care about and putting the keys to the kingdom in Apple's hands. > All relevant game engines already have Metal support, too. I like how you qualify this with "relevant", as if I'd come up with a list of all the engines without Metal support and you'd wave them away as irrelevant since they don't support Metal. Plus, Metal isn't just a compilation target. A "port" to Apple Silicon doesn't entail checking off a new box on the compiler, it's a long and arduous process of porting shaders, bytecode, 32-bit libraries, x86-based libraries, API calls and more. Since Apple provides game developers no incentive to do that work, they continue to refuse porting to their system. > There's even an equivalent to DXVK in MoltenVK. It's not that different from Microsoft's position. Yeah, except the main difference is that DXVK gets near-native performance, while MoltenVK is far too slow to be considered for regular use. Do you honestly think a Proton-like compatibility layer could be built on a technology that needs to translate Vulkan code into a higher-level, slower API? Keep dreaming. > 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. Comedy-freaking-gold right here. Let's say that you're right, and Apple does release an Apple TV with an M1 processor in it. I'm going to give you an insane benefit of the doubt, and we'll assume that they cut down the price to $500 (using the Mac Mini as a starting point). At peak performance, the M1 can churn through a measly 2.4 teraflops. There are last-gen consoles that were faster than that, not even to compare them to the 11 teraflops that the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 pump out. Okay, so let's put a faster GPU in there: the M1 has 8 GPU cores, so getting it to be as embarrassingly parallel as it's peers would require us to multiply it's core count by 4 or 5 factors. That would require a whopping 32 GPU cores, the same amount that the $2500+ Macbook Pros carry. If they did make a $500 console of that ilk, they'd be losing money on every unit shipped for the GPU alone. I genuinely have no idea where you're getting any of this stuff. Maybe read up on game development before responding?

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.