5 ms·

I wish gaming on Mac became more popular due to the same reason.

by braymundo 3y ago

heliophobicdude 3y ago
What are some broken-down reasons why gaming on Mac didn't take off. I'm sure it's a few different reasons all together
- braymundo 3y ago
  I don't know, but if I had to guess it would that Apple was never really interested in it or in supporting it. I fondly remember some companies (like Blizzard) who would always support Macs, until they stopped (looking at you, Diablo 4).
- dagmx 3y ago
  A lot of people will likely blame APIs etc, but that’s just an easy scapegoat for people outside the game dev industry. The reality is likely just market share, hardware and the makeup of that market share. Macs used to actually be a big gaming platform once upon a time. Myst was a Mac exclusive (built with HyperCard) and Bungie used to make games for macs first before getting bought by Microsoft. But windows got the upper edge: 1. Much larger slice of the market 2. More of the market is made up of gaming enthusiasts than Macs which are usually either targeting light use, education or professional. 3. You can make affordable gaming PCs with windows. You can’t really do it with any kind of Mac because there’s no product for that market between the Mac Mini and iMac (which were targeted at more casual users) up to the Mac Pro and iMac Pro (which were targeted at professional users) It’s easier to target the biggest piece of the pie and the one that will buy your products. That’s why the “API” reason never makes sense, because iOS is THE dominant gaming platform despite having the same APIs as a mac. Game engines often need to support multiple graphics APIs anyway. So Mac gaming did take off, but it fumbled and never recovered. Part of that is that Apple themselves fumbled as a company, on the verge of bankruptcy before the return of Jobs. What made them successful post his return is also what killed gaming on their platforms: they targeted a different audience.
  - __alexs 3y ago
    > iOS is THE dominant gaming platform despite having the same APIs as a mac The problem with OpenGL ES AIUI (especially in the early days) is that it exposes lots of hardware specific weirdness. The reason this works for iOS is the same reason it works for Nintendo etc. Millions of devices with identical hardware.
  - pier25 3y ago
    You can't ignore API reasons though. Before Metal, macOS used to ship with old OpenGL versions. I remember around the Tiger days (10.4) OpenGL was 4-5 years old compared to the version shipped in Windows. And with DirectX, Windows had a better API about two decades before Metal for macOS was released. I do agree with your other points. Macs are expensive so they are always going to be a niche market. And in most countries, Apple products are luxury products. Another point is really that Windows GPUs have always been more powerful. If you wanted to play the latest AAA games at good quality and fps you had to be on Windows. And there's also an ouroboros vicious circle. Devs don't put effort into the Mac because there aren't many gamers on it, and there aren't many gamers on it because dev don't put too much effort. And it doesn't help the decisions that Apple has taken to further ostracize themselves form the desktop gaming market. > iOS is THE dominant gaming platform In the US. Worldwide iOS has like 28% market share I believe. Nevertheless, Apple could really become a gaming powerhouse outside of mobile. If they released an AppleTV with a gamepad and an M3 chip, they bought or partnered with a couple of good console/desktop game studios (not mobile game studios). The AppleTV already has games but there's not a lot of good content and Apple doesn't even provide an official gamepad. It's clear Apple doesn't care much about gaming outside of iOS.
    - dagmx 3y ago
      I just don’t think API matters if the capabilities are there. Look at Linux gaming, OpenGL was up to date and prevalent, but the majority of games are actually translating DirectX to Vulkan and using WINE. Most games are using off the shelf engines that support Metal anyway, so I think api would only matter for the small subset of games using custom engines. Regarding your point of the US, I should clarify that I didn’t mean by market share, though I suppose that’s also true in the US. I meant by profit. According to the WSJ , Apple makes more from gaming than Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and Activision combined worldwide.
- andrewmcwatters 3y ago
  The biggest reason is that Steve Jobs hated games. It’s well documented. John Carmack also had some words to say about graphics on Macs.
  - barbariangrunge 3y ago
    Such as?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Maursault 3y ago
  I don't think the race is over yet, but it is really entirely up to developers, not Apple. Apple Silicon isn't quite 3yo yet, and it is hard to say right now what the gaming landscape will look like in another five years. Technically, however, though it is somewhat of a cheat, as soon as Apple released the first M1 Mac, the new platform instantly had nearly an order of magnitude more games than PC. While there are something like 50K games available through Steam, and x86 Macs only had like 7K, as soon as the M1 was released, early Apple Silicon Mac users had access to something like 450K AppStore games from iOS and iPadOS. Plus, Steam was ported to macOS, and Rosetta 2 allows many x86 PC games to run adequately in emulation (virtualized + emulation). This may not be satisfactory for hard core gamers than need massive fps, but I don't think it can be honestly claimed anymore that Macs suck for gaming. At the very least, they're competitive, and that's only going to get better, though how much better is, again, up to developers.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  I think it might be a chicken/egg problem. Most Macs of don't come with hardware that's good for games. That doesn't matter though because no consumer asks for better gaming hardware in new Macs because there aren't many games. People who care about games, know they don't get it on Macs and thus have either a console or a gaming PC in addition. I play games, but generally it's just a nice surprise if I see that a Steam game supports macOS. It's so far away from being a viable primary gaming system that it's just accepted at this point.
- __alexs 3y ago
  No DirectX support.
  - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
    More like no Vulkan support.
    - __alexs 3y ago
      Apple had long given up on games before Vulkan was even on the drawing board.
      - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
        The good thing about SW is you can always choose to change things in the future. Nothing is stopping Apple to implement support Vulkan now if they wanted to. It's not like they can't afford the engineering effort. Windows supports both DirectX and Vulkan.
        __alexs 3y ago
        Not many games support Vulkan though.
        ChuckNorris89 3y ago
        Game devs aren't gonna bother implementing Vulkan if MacOS doesn't first support it.
    - dagmx 3y ago
      The list of games that directly support Vulkan is incredibly small. As much as it gets bandied about as the solution, it’s not really used all that much without translation layers.
      - smoldesu 3y ago

I wish gaming on Mac became more popular due to the same reason.

heliophobicdude 3y ago

What are some broken-down reasons why gaming on Mac didn't take off. I'm sure it's a few different reasons all together

braymundo 3y ago
I don't know, but if I had to guess it would that Apple was never really interested in it or in supporting it. I fondly remember some companies (like Blizzard) who would always support Macs, until they stopped (looking at you, Diablo 4).
dagmx 3y ago
A lot of people will likely blame APIs etc, but that’s just an easy scapegoat for people outside the game dev industry. The reality is likely just market share, hardware and the makeup of that market share. Macs used to actually be a big gaming platform once upon a time. Myst was a Mac exclusive (built with HyperCard) and Bungie used to make games for macs first before getting bought by Microsoft. But windows got the upper edge: 1. Much larger slice of the market 2. More of the market is made up of gaming enthusiasts than Macs which are usually either targeting light use, education or professional. 3. You can make affordable gaming PCs with windows. You can’t really do it with any kind of Mac because there’s no product for that market between the Mac Mini and iMac (which were targeted at more casual users) up to the Mac Pro and iMac Pro (which were targeted at professional users) It’s easier to target the biggest piece of the pie and the one that will buy your products. That’s why the “API” reason never makes sense, because iOS is THE dominant gaming platform despite having the same APIs as a mac. Game engines often need to support multiple graphics APIs anyway. So Mac gaming did take off, but it fumbled and never recovered. Part of that is that Apple themselves fumbled as a company, on the verge of bankruptcy before the return of Jobs. What made them successful post his return is also what killed gaming on their platforms: they targeted a different audience.
- __alexs 3y ago
  > iOS is THE dominant gaming platform despite having the same APIs as a mac The problem with OpenGL ES AIUI (especially in the early days) is that it exposes lots of hardware specific weirdness. The reason this works for iOS is the same reason it works for Nintendo etc. Millions of devices with identical hardware.
- pier25 3y ago
  You can't ignore API reasons though. Before Metal, macOS used to ship with old OpenGL versions. I remember around the Tiger days (10.4) OpenGL was 4-5 years old compared to the version shipped in Windows. And with DirectX, Windows had a better API about two decades before Metal for macOS was released. I do agree with your other points. Macs are expensive so they are always going to be a niche market. And in most countries, Apple products are luxury products. Another point is really that Windows GPUs have always been more powerful. If you wanted to play the latest AAA games at good quality and fps you had to be on Windows. And there's also an ouroboros vicious circle. Devs don't put effort into the Mac because there aren't many gamers on it, and there aren't many gamers on it because dev don't put too much effort. And it doesn't help the decisions that Apple has taken to further ostracize themselves form the desktop gaming market. > iOS is THE dominant gaming platform In the US. Worldwide iOS has like 28% market share I believe. Nevertheless, Apple could really become a gaming powerhouse outside of mobile. If they released an AppleTV with a gamepad and an M3 chip, they bought or partnered with a couple of good console/desktop game studios (not mobile game studios). The AppleTV already has games but there's not a lot of good content and Apple doesn't even provide an official gamepad. It's clear Apple doesn't care much about gaming outside of iOS.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    I just don’t think API matters if the capabilities are there. Look at Linux gaming, OpenGL was up to date and prevalent, but the majority of games are actually translating DirectX to Vulkan and using WINE. Most games are using off the shelf engines that support Metal anyway, so I think api would only matter for the small subset of games using custom engines. Regarding your point of the US, I should clarify that I didn’t mean by market share, though I suppose that’s also true in the US. I meant by profit. According to the WSJ , Apple makes more from gaming than Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and Activision combined worldwide.
andrewmcwatters 3y ago
The biggest reason is that Steve Jobs hated games. It’s well documented. John Carmack also had some words to say about graphics on Macs.
- barbariangrunge 3y ago
  Such as?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Maursault 3y ago
I don't think the race is over yet, but it is really entirely up to developers, not Apple. Apple Silicon isn't quite 3yo yet, and it is hard to say right now what the gaming landscape will look like in another five years. Technically, however, though it is somewhat of a cheat, as soon as Apple released the first M1 Mac, the new platform instantly had nearly an order of magnitude more games than PC. While there are something like 50K games available through Steam, and x86 Macs only had like 7K, as soon as the M1 was released, early Apple Silicon Mac users had access to something like 450K AppStore games from iOS and iPadOS. Plus, Steam was ported to macOS, and Rosetta 2 allows many x86 PC games to run adequately in emulation (virtualized + emulation). This may not be satisfactory for hard core gamers than need massive fps, but I don't think it can be honestly claimed anymore that Macs suck for gaming. At the very least, they're competitive, and that's only going to get better, though how much better is, again, up to developers.
ajmurmann 3y ago
I think it might be a chicken/egg problem. Most Macs of don't come with hardware that's good for games. That doesn't matter though because no consumer asks for better gaming hardware in new Macs because there aren't many games. People who care about games, know they don't get it on Macs and thus have either a console or a gaming PC in addition. I play games, but generally it's just a nice surprise if I see that a Steam game supports macOS. It's so far away from being a viable primary gaming system that it's just accepted at this point.
__alexs 3y ago
No DirectX support.
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago
  More like no Vulkan support.
  - __alexs 3y ago
    Apple had long given up on games before Vulkan was even on the drawing board.
    - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
      The good thing about SW is you can always choose to change things in the future. Nothing is stopping Apple to implement support Vulkan now if they wanted to. It's not like they can't afford the engineering effort. Windows supports both DirectX and Vulkan.
      - __alexs 3y ago
        Not many games support Vulkan though.
        ChuckNorris89 3y ago
        Game devs aren't gonna bother implementing Vulkan if MacOS doesn't first support it.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    The list of games that directly support Vulkan is incredibly small. As much as it gets bandied about as the solution, it’s not really used all that much without translation layers.
    - smoldesu 3y ago