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This actually makes me wonder if I should sell my Apple stocks, that they even put out something like this (even if only as an "evaluation tool" and based on Cr

This actually makes me wonder if I should sell my Apple stocks, that they even put out something like this (even if only as an "evaluation tool" and based on CrossOvers GPL code) screams as an validation that there is enough developers ignoring Apple/Metal that they're actually starting to hurt from a lack of titles. Sure, everyone doing Unity or Unreal will probably have the middleware take care of the biggest differences and Vulkan being too verbose has kept back the field, but given a choice Metal will still be an afterthought for those making custom engines. One could hope for updated OpenGL/Vulkan support, but nobody is holding their breath anymore.

metmac 3y ago
I think this response lacks the context of the current state of the video game industry. In my mind this is no different than nVidia providing white glove engineering support and optimizations for titles to run on their GPUS. There is a reason nVidia has generally won the consumer GPU arms race over the years over AMD. They go out of their way to support studios and titles, compared to what AMD does imho. It shows that Apple recognizes it needs to lower the barrier of entry for studios to considering targeting Macs. Because compared to the larger gaming market most studios have very little incentive to build and maintain this because Mac’s could account for 1-3% of your player base. Is that worth 1-5 ICs worth of time if you are a small studio. Probably not.
- goosedragons 3y ago
  They also need to focus more on backwards compatibility. If Apple continually makes most of my library unplayable as they have done repeatedly (Classic, Rosetta 1, 32bit) then I wouldn't trust them with gaming. It seems moving forward PlayStation and Xbox are making it a priority, it already was on PC and I don't think Apple will ever have anything with the draw of Nintendo that could surmount that.
  - sylens 3y ago
    This is a huge draw in PC gaming. People love going back to old games and modding them or updating them to run better. Heck, didn't Portal (a 2007 game) just get an RTX update?
- whizzter 3y ago
  As for AMD v Nvidia, imho it's more often a matter of AMD drivers being buggy even if their hardware seems to be almost on par in terms of performance, also right now NVidia has ridden high on both blockchain and now AI trends thanks to CUDA being propietary. And the third paragraph is my point, porting would've been trivial instead of requiring another engineer if they had supported more standard API's, but they refused and now they're hedging their bets on another manufacturers API. It's just such a roundabout way of saying that they feel the pain without going back and fixing the basics.
yurishimo 3y ago
You're gonna sell your stocks in the most successful tech company of all time because they don't have enough video games? I think Apple has proven they can grow a company's value without games. But what we all want is a larger investment in games so the Mac becomes a competitive platform again. Not to mention the headset... we'll see, but there is no reason to expect it won't be an insane commercial success by gen 3.
- AmericanChopper 3y ago
  > But what we all want is a larger investment in games so the Mac becomes a competitive platform again. As a Mac-only user, I really don’t care about games. I guess it’s cool if they work on it, but I wouldn’t want Apple diverting resources away from other areas to try and make it a gaming device.
  - yurishimo 3y ago
    I don't think it's about diverting resources. Apple has the funds to buy more developers to focus on gaming.
    - AmericanChopper 3y ago
      Yeah probably. My main point was mostly that it’s a bit of an overstatement to describe investment in gaming on Mac as something we all want.
- the_gipsy 3y ago
  Right now, the headset exclusively appeals to shareholders and apple cultists.
  - robenkleene 3y ago
    Just like the first iPhone...
- whizzter 3y ago
  That's why I have stocks now (I bought them just before the first post-M1 xmas report because all I could hear about was them hitting out of the ballpark but the stock had hardly moved so I knew it to be undervalued), but past performance never guarantees future performance. Games are a canary, Apple likes to lock in developers with their own API's and that works as long as you are the clear leader but once you're not it'll bite you. Apple mobile leadership since early iPhones attracted developers, but once the mobile market stagnated developers has looked elsewhere. And the headset, I have a hard time seeing that people who buy Apple laptops,etc for their atheistic will put on these ski-goggles on a daily basis? And that's not even mentioning the pricepoint. Apple had a runway after Jobs left the first time before things got bad, sure they know their history now and will do their darnedest not to repeat history but whilst Ive wasn't the right person to build professional machines, I can't wonder if he was still the type of person Apple needed for "personal devices" like the headset.
valzam 3y ago
Apple has video games, there are probably more people playing games on iPhone than ps5/Xbox combined. Many very popular Moba/eSports titles also work on Mac (LoL, all things blizzard, cs:go). The fact that there aren't many AAA games (that you can play on consoles anyway, not your laptop) is not a problem for Apple.
- maleldil 3y ago
  > all things blizzard Recent Blizzard games (Diablo 2 Ressurected, Diablo 4) require DirectX 12 and aren't natively available for macOS.
  - shoo_pl 3y ago
    Overwatch before that too. Its surprising how on one hand a huge effort is put into World of Warcraft running smoothly on macOS (they always implement all the new Metal features with every expansion and it was the first native Apple Silicon game) but completely abandoned macOS for new titles.
    - oefrha 3y ago
      Blizzard since mid to late 2010s is basically a different company from the one that pumped out Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo. The old company’s dead.
      - maleldil 3y ago
        I think you misunderstood your parent's comment. Blizzard _today_ takes to maintain World of Warcraft's macOS build. The same Blizzard is releasing all new titles as Windows-only. This difference between WoW and there rest is what puzzles you parent.
        oefrha 3y ago
        Of course they won’t drop a good chunk of their existing subscribers overnight; once the initial work is done, maintenance shouldn’t take a ton of resources, especially considering it’s still a cash cow. Likewise, they are sort of maintaining SC2 with these tiny balance patches, and it’s still working on macOS, but it’s clearly the last echo of the old company.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

metmac 3y ago

I think this response lacks the context of the current state of the video game industry. In my mind this is no different than nVidia providing white glove engineering support and optimizations for titles to run on their GPUS. There is a reason nVidia has generally won the consumer GPU arms race over the years over AMD. They go out of their way to support studios and titles, compared to what AMD does imho. It shows that Apple recognizes it needs to lower the barrier of entry for studios to considering targeting Macs. Because compared to the larger gaming market most studios have very little incentive to build and maintain this because Mac’s could account for 1-3% of your player base. Is that worth 1-5 ICs worth of time if you are a small studio. Probably not.

goosedragons 3y ago
They also need to focus more on backwards compatibility. If Apple continually makes most of my library unplayable as they have done repeatedly (Classic, Rosetta 1, 32bit) then I wouldn't trust them with gaming. It seems moving forward PlayStation and Xbox are making it a priority, it already was on PC and I don't think Apple will ever have anything with the draw of Nintendo that could surmount that.
- sylens 3y ago
  This is a huge draw in PC gaming. People love going back to old games and modding them or updating them to run better. Heck, didn't Portal (a 2007 game) just get an RTX update?
whizzter 3y ago
As for AMD v Nvidia, imho it's more often a matter of AMD drivers being buggy even if their hardware seems to be almost on par in terms of performance, also right now NVidia has ridden high on both blockchain and now AI trends thanks to CUDA being propietary. And the third paragraph is my point, porting would've been trivial instead of requiring another engineer if they had supported more standard API's, but they refused and now they're hedging their bets on another manufacturers API. It's just such a roundabout way of saying that they feel the pain without going back and fixing the basics.

yurishimo 3y ago

You're gonna sell your stocks in the most successful tech company of all time because they don't have enough video games? I think Apple has proven they can grow a company's value without games. But what we all want is a larger investment in games so the Mac becomes a competitive platform again. Not to mention the headset... we'll see, but there is no reason to expect it won't be an insane commercial success by gen 3.

AmericanChopper 3y ago
> But what we all want is a larger investment in games so the Mac becomes a competitive platform again. As a Mac-only user, I really don’t care about games. I guess it’s cool if they work on it, but I wouldn’t want Apple diverting resources away from other areas to try and make it a gaming device.
- yurishimo 3y ago
  I don't think it's about diverting resources. Apple has the funds to buy more developers to focus on gaming.
  - AmericanChopper 3y ago
    Yeah probably. My main point was mostly that it’s a bit of an overstatement to describe investment in gaming on Mac as something we all want.
the_gipsy 3y ago
Right now, the headset exclusively appeals to shareholders and apple cultists.
- robenkleene 3y ago
  Just like the first iPhone...
whizzter 3y ago
That's why I have stocks now (I bought them just before the first post-M1 xmas report because all I could hear about was them hitting out of the ballpark but the stock had hardly moved so I knew it to be undervalued), but past performance never guarantees future performance. Games are a canary, Apple likes to lock in developers with their own API's and that works as long as you are the clear leader but once you're not it'll bite you. Apple mobile leadership since early iPhones attracted developers, but once the mobile market stagnated developers has looked elsewhere. And the headset, I have a hard time seeing that people who buy Apple laptops,etc for their atheistic will put on these ski-goggles on a daily basis? And that's not even mentioning the pricepoint. Apple had a runway after Jobs left the first time before things got bad, sure they know their history now and will do their darnedest not to repeat history but whilst Ive wasn't the right person to build professional machines, I can't wonder if he was still the type of person Apple needed for "personal devices" like the headset.

valzam 3y ago

Apple has video games, there are probably more people playing games on iPhone than ps5/Xbox combined. Many very popular Moba/eSports titles also work on Mac (LoL, all things blizzard, cs:go). The fact that there aren't many AAA games (that you can play on consoles anyway, not your laptop) is not a problem for Apple.

maleldil 3y ago
> all things blizzard Recent Blizzard games (Diablo 2 Ressurected, Diablo 4) require DirectX 12 and aren't natively available for macOS.
- shoo_pl 3y ago
  Overwatch before that too. Its surprising how on one hand a huge effort is put into World of Warcraft running smoothly on macOS (they always implement all the new Metal features with every expansion and it was the first native Apple Silicon game) but completely abandoned macOS for new titles.
  - oefrha 3y ago
    Blizzard since mid to late 2010s is basically a different company from the one that pumped out Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo. The old company’s dead.
    - maleldil 3y ago
      I think you misunderstood your parent's comment. Blizzard _today_ takes to maintain World of Warcraft's macOS build. The same Blizzard is releasing all new titles as Windows-only. This difference between WoW and there rest is what puzzles you parent.
      - oefrha 3y ago
        Of course they won’t drop a good chunk of their existing subscribers overnight; once the initial work is done, maintenance shouldn’t take a ton of resources, especially considering it’s still a cash cow. Likewise, they are sort of maintaining SC2 with these tiny balance patches, and it’s still working on macOS, but it’s clearly the last echo of the old company.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]