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> If Apple supported gaming more You mean if gaming supported Apple more, right? The industry's reliance on DirectX and the frameworks that build on it are lar

by jachee 5y ago

> If Apple supported gaming more You mean if gaming supported Apple more, right? The industry's reliance on DirectX and the frameworks that build on it are largely what keep gaming so PC-centric. If we saw AAA studios embrace macOS-compatible (or better yet Open Source) graphics architecture, the need to have separate gaming PCs (and the insanely expensive GPUs associated therewith) would evaporate.

minimaxir 5y ago
Even games running on engines like Unity and UE4 that support macOS/Metal don't support macOS because the userbase size isn't worth the overhead. It's a chicken and egg problem, although Apple Arcade is a good approach to try and bridge that gap.
- nightski 5y ago
  There is no chicken and egg. Apple has tens of billions of dollars. If they wanted to support games it could be done really quickly. They straight up are anti-gaming unless it is of the exploitative micro-transaction mobile kind where they can reap that store tax.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Yeah, it's pretty sad to see them pimping the likes of Genshin Impact. Even among the people who do play and enjoy it, I've yet to meet anyone who will defend it as anything other than a Breath of the Wild ripoff with a slot machine-shaped tumor attached to it's hip.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
Right, it's the studio's fault, not because Metal is a dogshit API with dogshit performance. And instead of paying 900$ for a RTX 3090, you could pay 4000 for something with the equivalent power of a 3060Ti that you can't upgrade without buying an entire new SoC. But go on, blame directx for being the one API actually moving things forwards. Not Apple's shitty behavior.
- jachee 5y ago
  You got a source on $900 3090s? I can't find 'em for under $2000.
l-p 5y ago
> As of June 3, 2021, there is no native support for Vulkan API provided by Apple devices. > Apple deprecated OpenGL in iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 Mojave in favor of Metal, but it is still available as of macOS 11 Big Sur (including Apple silicon devices). The latest version supported for OpenGL is 4.1 from 2011. OSX accounts for 2.62% of Steam users. Implementing another graphics backend is prohibitively expensive for small studios whereas you could implement either OpenGL or Vulkan and get the other 97.38%. And that's without factoring in the required investment in single-use hardware, people, and skills. DirectX is another safe choice but I try to stay away from anything proprietary or Microsoft-related.
- aseipp 5y ago
  Not really. Small studios don't even bother writing their own rendering path most of the time; they're using alternative engines (Unity) or middleware (SDL, bgfx/libgdx/webgpu/whatever) to solve the problem entirely because they have better problems to actually slove. Honestly the real issue is you probably wouldn't get many users or make a whole ton of money, really. Unless you target iOS or iPads, but that can add some significant constraints to the game. (But sometimes it's OK; Divinity Original Sin 2 basically works fine on an M1 Mac or an M1 iPad, as long as you have a Xbox controller to go with it.) I think as programmers we desperately want to believe it's just a matter of programming and that we're in the critical path here, but it really isn't. Most of that stuff is a solved for a lot of cases. And if it was technological constraints, honestly, there's like a whole host of actual technological concerns, all of them really boring and crappy and not "cool" like rendering (like how do you CI and QA the damn thing, what kind of impacts might it have on your build system, do all the 3rd party things you have work here, etc.) Rendering is just "cool" to talk about but it's not actually as important as those; by the same token you never see giant threads on here about like OS-specific sound APIs or whatever... There just aren't many Mac gamers and the hardware is kind of expensive to buy and test on for most purposes in that case.
MattSteelblade 5y ago
It's Apple's refusal to support Vulkan that is it's biggest detriment to the gaming industry.
georgeecollins 5y ago
>> You mean if gaming supported Apple more, right? I can tell you from long experience-- more than 20 years ago I produced a Mac games with Apple's financing and as recently as five years ago I produced a game that sold over $100m on an Apple device-- Apple has been extremely consistent in their attitude. They are much less supportive of gaming then Microsoft or Sony. Part of it is that they see games as a lesser use of their devices over other use cases. Another part is that they consistently promote the kind of experiences they wish their customers wanted over the experiences their customers choose.
coconut08 5y ago
if they would just support vulkan they could basically pick up directx for free off of the back of valve
mhh__ 5y ago
Why would you spend a huge chunk of your R&D money supporting a platform with users who don't game built by a company that won't spend a tiny amount of their R&D budget supporting industry standard technology that's been established for years.
asiachick 5y ago
AFAIK Unreal and Unity but support Metal. It's a chicken and egg thing. There is no game market on MacOS because no gamers are on MacOS because there are no games on MacOS so there are no gamers on MacOS .... Of course consumer level macs have never had GPUs that could run AAA games. I don't know what an M1 MacBook Air's perf is. If it's able to run AAA games and a reasonable framerate then maybe a market would build? But if you're limiting gamers to M1 Pro/M1 Max/M1 Ultra users only then it's probably a pretty small market?
- my123 5y ago
  The M1 MacBook Air is between the GTX 1050 and the 1060 GPU perf-wise. Not especially high but allows for a bunch of titles to run acceptably.
makeitdouble 5y ago
Apple and the gaming industry is a long and complicated relationship, that is I think best surfaced by the Epic vs Apple trial. Apple makes a huge part of its revenue from mobile gaming, while ferociously antagonizing the game makers and the main players of the industry (still remember their beef with Nvidia for instance) which makes it a bad bet to embrance Apple platform outside of the most dominant ones.

by jachee 5y ago

minimaxir 5y ago

Even games running on engines like Unity and UE4 that support macOS/Metal don't support macOS because the userbase size isn't worth the overhead. It's a chicken and egg problem, although Apple Arcade is a good approach to try and bridge that gap.

nightski 5y ago
There is no chicken and egg. Apple has tens of billions of dollars. If they wanted to support games it could be done really quickly. They straight up are anti-gaming unless it is of the exploitative micro-transaction mobile kind where they can reap that store tax.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Yeah, it's pretty sad to see them pimping the likes of Genshin Impact. Even among the people who do play and enjoy it, I've yet to meet anyone who will defend it as anything other than a Breath of the Wild ripoff with a slot machine-shaped tumor attached to it's hip.

ohgodplsno 5y ago

Right, it's the studio's fault, not because Metal is a dogshit API with dogshit performance. And instead of paying 900$ for a RTX 3090, you could pay 4000 for something with the equivalent power of a 3060Ti that you can't upgrade without buying an entire new SoC. But go on, blame directx for being the one API actually moving things forwards. Not Apple's shitty behavior.

jachee 5y ago
You got a source on $900 3090s? I can't find 'em for under $2000.

l-p 5y ago

> As of June 3, 2021, there is no native support for Vulkan API provided by Apple devices. > Apple deprecated OpenGL in iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 Mojave in favor of Metal, but it is still available as of macOS 11 Big Sur (including Apple silicon devices). The latest version supported for OpenGL is 4.1 from 2011. OSX accounts for 2.62% of Steam users. Implementing another graphics backend is prohibitively expensive for small studios whereas you could implement either OpenGL or Vulkan and get the other 97.38%. And that's without factoring in the required investment in single-use hardware, people, and skills. DirectX is another safe choice but I try to stay away from anything proprietary or Microsoft-related.

aseipp 5y ago
Not really. Small studios don't even bother writing their own rendering path most of the time; they're using alternative engines (Unity) or middleware (SDL, bgfx/libgdx/webgpu/whatever) to solve the problem entirely because they have better problems to actually slove. Honestly the real issue is you probably wouldn't get many users or make a whole ton of money, really. Unless you target iOS or iPads, but that can add some significant constraints to the game. (But sometimes it's OK; Divinity Original Sin 2 basically works fine on an M1 Mac or an M1 iPad, as long as you have a Xbox controller to go with it.) I think as programmers we desperately want to believe it's just a matter of programming and that we're in the critical path here, but it really isn't. Most of that stuff is a solved for a lot of cases. And if it was technological constraints, honestly, there's like a whole host of actual technological concerns, all of them really boring and crappy and not "cool" like rendering (like how do you CI and QA the damn thing, what kind of impacts might it have on your build system, do all the 3rd party things you have work here, etc.) Rendering is just "cool" to talk about but it's not actually as important as those; by the same token you never see giant threads on here about like OS-specific sound APIs or whatever... There just aren't many Mac gamers and the hardware is kind of expensive to buy and test on for most purposes in that case.

MattSteelblade 5y ago

It's Apple's refusal to support Vulkan that is it's biggest detriment to the gaming industry.

georgeecollins 5y ago

>> You mean if gaming supported Apple more, right? I can tell you from long experience-- more than 20 years ago I produced a Mac games with Apple's financing and as recently as five years ago I produced a game that sold over $100m on an Apple device-- Apple has been extremely consistent in their attitude. They are much less supportive of gaming then Microsoft or Sony. Part of it is that they see games as a lesser use of their devices over other use cases. Another part is that they consistently promote the kind of experiences they wish their customers wanted over the experiences their customers choose.

coconut08 5y ago

if they would just support vulkan they could basically pick up directx for free off of the back of valve

mhh__ 5y ago

Why would you spend a huge chunk of your R&D money supporting a platform with users who don't game built by a company that won't spend a tiny amount of their R&D budget supporting industry standard technology that's been established for years.

asiachick 5y ago

AFAIK Unreal and Unity but support Metal. It's a chicken and egg thing. There is no game market on MacOS because no gamers are on MacOS because there are no games on MacOS so there are no gamers on MacOS .... Of course consumer level macs have never had GPUs that could run AAA games. I don't know what an M1 MacBook Air's perf is. If it's able to run AAA games and a reasonable framerate then maybe a market would build? But if you're limiting gamers to M1 Pro/M1 Max/M1 Ultra users only then it's probably a pretty small market?

my123 5y ago
The M1 MacBook Air is between the GTX 1050 and the 1060 GPU perf-wise. Not especially high but allows for a bunch of titles to run acceptably.

makeitdouble 5y ago

Apple and the gaming industry is a long and complicated relationship, that is I think best surfaced by the Epic vs Apple trial. Apple makes a huge part of its revenue from mobile gaming, while ferociously antagonizing the game makers and the main players of the industry (still remember their beef with Nvidia for instance) which makes it a bad bet to embrance Apple platform outside of the most dominant ones.