5 ms·

I'm surprised more PC/Console AAA games aren't being written/ported for iPads and M1 Mac's since they have really good CPUs, GPUs and fast storage. Why is that?

I'm surprised more PC/Console AAA games aren't being written/ported for iPads and M1 Mac's since they have really good CPUs, GPUs and fast storage. Why is that? Is it because of Apple's insistence on Metal? The mobile games market has exploded hugely, there's definitely a big market there.

wilde 4y ago
Combo of Apple’s insistence on Metal and biz model mismatch. You can either make gambling for children or have apple throw pity money at you. No one is buying $70 apps.
notatoad 4y ago
i think it's probably because the people who tend to play AAA PC or Console games already have a PC or console. Could developers really make more money, or would it just be people who already bought the game for PC on steam downloading an additional version for free? the mobile game market has exploded, but AAA games are a different dynamic and a different audience to the casual games popular in the mobile market. and for iPad specifically, apple's 30% cut probably factors into the decision in a big way.
- vageli 4y ago
  > i think it's probably because the people who tend to play AAA PC or Console games already have a PC or console. Could developers really make more money, or would it just be people who already bought the game for PC on steam downloading an additional version for free? Which services give you the game on any platform? In my experience, you have to buy the game on each platform (and for some games, I have purchased them on multiple platforms because they were that good).
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    > Which services give you the game on any platform? The Microsoft Store generally will, ironically. Buying a game on Xbox will often net you the PC version as well (so long as you get it from the Microsoft Store). I think Sony tried a similar thing with the Vita a while ago, but I'm presuming that was a failure.
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    Steam? I guess you could say Steam is the platform but in the past Mac was a seperate platform and except for a handful of exceptions like Blizzard games usually required a seperate purchase. These days buying on Steam gets you the Windows/Mac/Linux versions if available. GOG is similar too. But buying off the Mac app store just gets you the Mac version (why does anyone buy off there ever?). Sony has also done some crossbuy stuff in the past. Their PS1 classics used to be generally PS3/PSP/Vita compatible and some titles were cross PS3/Vita/PS4 like Spelunky or PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale. Microsoft has done some cross Xbox/PC stuff too although you have to buy from their store.
filoleg 4y ago
The game studio making Resident Evil series has announced just a week or two ago during their big presentation a native M1 port of Resident Evil VIII (the most recent one), among many other things. And not only that, they actually talked about it quite a bit in detail, and even showed some actual footage. Overall I agree with you though, this is literally just a single datapoint, and I cannot think of another one. But that seems like a solid start, especially since it is a legitimate AAA game, and they are doing it a year after the (very successful sales-wise) release. So they clearly are doing it for reasons other than just boosting up the initial sales by promising the moon. Looks like they genuinely believe they might make enough money with that M1 port.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  We saw the same thing happen with Eidos and Tomb Raider, but that didn't exactly usher in a new era of MacOS gaming. Time will tell how successful Macs are for gaming, but I don't think the critical issue (the limitations of the software layer) has been fixed.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    > We saw the same thing happen with Eidos and Tomb Raider, but that didn't exactly usher in a new era of MacOS gaming. To be fair, Eidos and Tomb Raider didn't happen during M1 era, it was just a port for devices that were still using x86. Iirc Resident Evil devs explicitly called out working with M1 an what it brings to the table. I agree though, we will see how it goes, somewhat impossible to tell how it is going to pan out. Could easily end up being just a one-off. Realistically, I don't think it is going to usher in a new era of gaming on macOS, but I hope it will slowly move it in that direction. Similar to how it happened with Proton and Linux. It's been out for a while, but only somewhat recently (at some point in the past year or two) has it reached a critical mass on the market.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Proton and Linux work because everyone can contribute to them. Hell, Proton even ran on MacOS up through Mojave, but architectural changes prevented it from going any further. But, like you've said, there's dozens of allegories for why gaming doesn't work on MacOS. I guess we'll just have to see how (if?) Apple addresses that.
MBCook 4y ago
Gaming on iOS is practically dead. No one wants to pay anything, so about all that gets made is freemium junk full of ads and IAPs. The glory days of amazing iPhone games is gone. Apple Arcade is helping, but it’s never going to turn the tide. It’s a last bastion with a few games. Port a recent game, sell it for $10, watch nothing happen. There are a few great ports out there (I just replayed SotN) but I doubt they make their cost back. Consumable IAPs ruined everything.
- julienfr112 4y ago
  Why is that ? I though people on iOS spend a lot more on apps than on Android ?
  - bhaak 4y ago
    Games are not apps. At least not for your average user. And then you still can only charge a single digit (or at most a low 2 digits) amount of dollars. There's no way you can charge as much as AAA titles with iOS games.
    - MBCook 4y ago
      Don’t be so sure. Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, and many others have thought in tons of money. More than AAA? I’m not sure. But Candy Crush didn’t cost what Horizon Zero Dawn or God of War did either. Not even close. And the game prints money year after year in a way most AAA games don’t. Unless they IAPs too like GTA Online.
      - bhaak 4y ago
        That's the 1% of the 1%. There is only a handful of games that earn even remotely that much.
  - connicpu 4y ago
    It's generally through IAPs in freemium games, people have just become far more resistant to pay-up-front apps. I think a large part is not allowing you to try before you buy, people are afraid of getting burned. Even though freemium games are often horrible after a while of playing (unless you're willing to dump hundreds of dollars into them), the initial experience usually feels pretty fun and you feel good that you got it without having to spend any money to get to that point.
smoldesu 4y ago
The hardware is great for developing games, but the software experience is so cumbersome that it makes sense why game devs don't port to Apple Silicon: - You need to port to ARM (not that bad, but now you're debugging two versions and increasing your dependency graph) - You need to distribute on MacOS/iPad (not insurmountable, but kowtowing to Apple's ever-changing demands is a different game than jumping through Sony/Nintendo's hoops) - You need to port to Metal (pretty hard, requires Mac-specific developers and a separate dev branch) Of course, there are still devs who spend the extra time to make Mac-native games (Factorio and Rimworld), but compared to targeting Linux/Windows the effort doesn't make sense. For Apple to make their platform an attractive gaming platform, they can either a. Allow sideloading < or > b. Welcome third-party graphics APIs to Apple Silicon. Unless they sweeten the deal though, I doubt we'll see many AAA ports in the future.
- Doches 4y ago
  > Mac-native games (Factorio and Rimworld) Rimworld is actually built in Unity, but without using most of Unity's conveniences; I think it just uses it as a sort of platform-independent shim: launch an empty scene and then do everything with userspace render calls rather than Unity's GameObjects. It's certainly not a /typical/ Unity game, but nor is it in any way Mac-native. Not that that detracts from your point, really.
  - Jap2-0 4y ago
    And I think Factorio uses OpenGL (which is cross-platform but deprecated on MacOS) and doesn't distribute via the app store, and is only distributed as x86-64[0], bypassing most of all three of GP's points. [0] It was recently announced for Switch, but from what I've heard there aren't plans to release it for ARM on other platforms in the immediate future.
izacus 4y ago
How many games on AppStore can you see costing 69.99$ and how many people would pay that? The only mobile platform with any adoption is Switch where the audience is used to paying much more for games than on PC/Consoles (equivalent games tend to be even up to twice the price there after awhile). The other, potential mobile competitor, is Steam Deck which shares prices and game library with its desktop counterpart.
baby 4y ago
It’s insane to me that after all these years apple is still somewhat ignoring the gaming market. I basically haven’t played any pc games in like 6y due to that. Thanks god there’s the steamdeck now
- georgeecollins 4y ago
  It's a strategy that served them well early in the life of the company. In the 80's both Atari and Amiga made better price / performance computers than the Apple II. Yeah the Mac was great but it wasn't paying the bills at that point. They positioned themselves as the "serious" company for business and especially in that segment education. I am saying this as someone who has made games for the Macintosh in the 90's and iPhone in 10's. Apple avoids pandering to gamers to make sure they seem adult and serious.
steeleduncan 4y ago
> they have really good CPUs, GPUs The GPUs on macOS and iOS are incredible for mobile processors, especially in terms of power efficiency, but they don't compete with the GPUs in gaming PCs or current generation consoles.
fulafel 4y ago
Many of the game streaming services work well there. iPad native ports are kept back by the small share of users who have a compatible gamepad and AAA games don't work with the touchscreen interface.

wilde 4y ago

Combo of Apple’s insistence on Metal and biz model mismatch. You can either make gambling for children or have apple throw pity money at you. No one is buying $70 apps.

notatoad 4y ago

i think it's probably because the people who tend to play AAA PC or Console games already have a PC or console. Could developers really make more money, or would it just be people who already bought the game for PC on steam downloading an additional version for free? the mobile game market has exploded, but AAA games are a different dynamic and a different audience to the casual games popular in the mobile market. and for iPad specifically, apple's 30% cut probably factors into the decision in a big way.

vageli 4y ago
> i think it's probably because the people who tend to play AAA PC or Console games already have a PC or console. Could developers really make more money, or would it just be people who already bought the game for PC on steam downloading an additional version for free? Which services give you the game on any platform? In my experience, you have to buy the game on each platform (and for some games, I have purchased them on multiple platforms because they were that good).
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > Which services give you the game on any platform? The Microsoft Store generally will, ironically. Buying a game on Xbox will often net you the PC version as well (so long as you get it from the Microsoft Store). I think Sony tried a similar thing with the Vita a while ago, but I'm presuming that was a failure.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  Steam? I guess you could say Steam is the platform but in the past Mac was a seperate platform and except for a handful of exceptions like Blizzard games usually required a seperate purchase. These days buying on Steam gets you the Windows/Mac/Linux versions if available. GOG is similar too. But buying off the Mac app store just gets you the Mac version (why does anyone buy off there ever?). Sony has also done some crossbuy stuff in the past. Their PS1 classics used to be generally PS3/PSP/Vita compatible and some titles were cross PS3/Vita/PS4 like Spelunky or PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale. Microsoft has done some cross Xbox/PC stuff too although you have to buy from their store.

filoleg 4y ago

The game studio making Resident Evil series has announced just a week or two ago during their big presentation a native M1 port of Resident Evil VIII (the most recent one), among many other things. And not only that, they actually talked about it quite a bit in detail, and even showed some actual footage. Overall I agree with you though, this is literally just a single datapoint, and I cannot think of another one. But that seems like a solid start, especially since it is a legitimate AAA game, and they are doing it a year after the (very successful sales-wise) release. So they clearly are doing it for reasons other than just boosting up the initial sales by promising the moon. Looks like they genuinely believe they might make enough money with that M1 port.

smoldesu 4y ago
We saw the same thing happen with Eidos and Tomb Raider, but that didn't exactly usher in a new era of MacOS gaming. Time will tell how successful Macs are for gaming, but I don't think the critical issue (the limitations of the software layer) has been fixed.
- filoleg 4y ago
  > We saw the same thing happen with Eidos and Tomb Raider, but that didn't exactly usher in a new era of MacOS gaming. To be fair, Eidos and Tomb Raider didn't happen during M1 era, it was just a port for devices that were still using x86. Iirc Resident Evil devs explicitly called out working with M1 an what it brings to the table. I agree though, we will see how it goes, somewhat impossible to tell how it is going to pan out. Could easily end up being just a one-off. Realistically, I don't think it is going to usher in a new era of gaming on macOS, but I hope it will slowly move it in that direction. Similar to how it happened with Proton and Linux. It's been out for a while, but only somewhat recently (at some point in the past year or two) has it reached a critical mass on the market.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Proton and Linux work because everyone can contribute to them. Hell, Proton even ran on MacOS up through Mojave, but architectural changes prevented it from going any further. But, like you've said, there's dozens of allegories for why gaming doesn't work on MacOS. I guess we'll just have to see how (if?) Apple addresses that.

MBCook 4y ago

Gaming on iOS is practically dead. No one wants to pay anything, so about all that gets made is freemium junk full of ads and IAPs. The glory days of amazing iPhone games is gone. Apple Arcade is helping, but it’s never going to turn the tide. It’s a last bastion with a few games. Port a recent game, sell it for $10, watch nothing happen. There are a few great ports out there (I just replayed SotN) but I doubt they make their cost back. Consumable IAPs ruined everything.

julienfr112 4y ago
Why is that ? I though people on iOS spend a lot more on apps than on Android ?
- bhaak 4y ago
  Games are not apps. At least not for your average user. And then you still can only charge a single digit (or at most a low 2 digits) amount of dollars. There's no way you can charge as much as AAA titles with iOS games.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    Don’t be so sure. Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, and many others have thought in tons of money. More than AAA? I’m not sure. But Candy Crush didn’t cost what Horizon Zero Dawn or God of War did either. Not even close. And the game prints money year after year in a way most AAA games don’t. Unless they IAPs too like GTA Online.
    - bhaak 4y ago
      That's the 1% of the 1%. There is only a handful of games that earn even remotely that much.
- connicpu 4y ago
  It's generally through IAPs in freemium games, people have just become far more resistant to pay-up-front apps. I think a large part is not allowing you to try before you buy, people are afraid of getting burned. Even though freemium games are often horrible after a while of playing (unless you're willing to dump hundreds of dollars into them), the initial experience usually feels pretty fun and you feel good that you got it without having to spend any money to get to that point.

smoldesu 4y ago

The hardware is great for developing games, but the software experience is so cumbersome that it makes sense why game devs don't port to Apple Silicon: - You need to port to ARM (not that bad, but now you're debugging two versions and increasing your dependency graph) - You need to distribute on MacOS/iPad (not insurmountable, but kowtowing to Apple's ever-changing demands is a different game than jumping through Sony/Nintendo's hoops) - You need to port to Metal (pretty hard, requires Mac-specific developers and a separate dev branch) Of course, there are still devs who spend the extra time to make Mac-native games (Factorio and Rimworld), but compared to targeting Linux/Windows the effort doesn't make sense. For Apple to make their platform an attractive gaming platform, they can either a. Allow sideloading < or > b. Welcome third-party graphics APIs to Apple Silicon. Unless they sweeten the deal though, I doubt we'll see many AAA ports in the future.

Doches 4y ago
> Mac-native games (Factorio and Rimworld) Rimworld is actually built in Unity, but without using most of Unity's conveniences; I think it just uses it as a sort of platform-independent shim: launch an empty scene and then do everything with userspace render calls rather than Unity's GameObjects. It's certainly not a /typical/ Unity game, but nor is it in any way Mac-native. Not that that detracts from your point, really.
- Jap2-0 4y ago
  And I think Factorio uses OpenGL (which is cross-platform but deprecated on MacOS) and doesn't distribute via the app store, and is only distributed as x86-64[0], bypassing most of all three of GP's points. [0] It was recently announced for Switch, but from what I've heard there aren't plans to release it for ARM on other platforms in the immediate future.

izacus 4y ago

How many games on AppStore can you see costing 69.99$ and how many people would pay that? The only mobile platform with any adoption is Switch where the audience is used to paying much more for games than on PC/Consoles (equivalent games tend to be even up to twice the price there after awhile). The other, potential mobile competitor, is Steam Deck which shares prices and game library with its desktop counterpart.

baby 4y ago

It’s insane to me that after all these years apple is still somewhat ignoring the gaming market. I basically haven’t played any pc games in like 6y due to that. Thanks god there’s the steamdeck now

georgeecollins 4y ago
It's a strategy that served them well early in the life of the company. In the 80's both Atari and Amiga made better price / performance computers than the Apple II. Yeah the Mac was great but it wasn't paying the bills at that point. They positioned themselves as the "serious" company for business and especially in that segment education. I am saying this as someone who has made games for the Macintosh in the 90's and iPhone in 10's. Apple avoids pandering to gamers to make sure they seem adult and serious.

steeleduncan 4y ago

> they have really good CPUs, GPUs The GPUs on macOS and iOS are incredible for mobile processors, especially in terms of power efficiency, but they don't compete with the GPUs in gaming PCs or current generation consoles.

fulafel 4y ago

Many of the game streaming services work well there. iPad native ports are kept back by the small share of users who have a compatible gamepad and AAA games don't work with the touchscreen interface.