3 ms·

> but the lack of high-quality games in Apple's ecosystem is odd. Its not surprising, and not because of anticompetitive contracts. - Apple is a completely di

> but the lack of high-quality games in Apple's ecosystem is odd. Its not surprising, and not because of anticompetitive contracts. - Apple is a completely different CPU architecture, graphics architecture, and graphics API. Thats not an easy port for most studios. - There is no evidence that the Mac gamer consumer base is large. Maybe it is, but thats a chicken and egg problem. - Many (a large fraction?) of Macs run the base M1/M2 in shells that can't sustain high power for very long, with a small combined CPU/GPU RAM pool of 16GB. Or even worse, 8GB. This would provide an unsatisfactory experience in many modern PC games, even with really fast Proton-esque translation layers. > Why can't Apple do what Linux does and allow Windows games to run on Mac? I dunno the answer to that, but this question answers your original question. Most "big" game devs do precisely zero linux testing. The handful that do basically boot up Steam on Ubuntu or a Steam Deck and check if the game starts up and runs for a bit. Thats a remarkable level of turnkey compatibility that Apple is nowhere close to yet.

behnamoh 3y ago
> - There is no evidence that the Mac gamer consumer base is large. Maybe it is, but thats a chicken and egg problem. But Mac users also tend to pay more for apps in general. I imagine if someone paid +$2000 for an MBP, they would be willing to spend $50 on a Mac game. Heck, maybe we're even ok with paying a premium just to get our games ported to Mac. ($100 for COD MW3? I'd do it even though it's expensive for me as a student).
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  > Heck, maybe we're even ok with paying a premium just to get our games ported to Mac. On this point specifically, price parity is a prickly subject among game devs. For instance, there are allegations of Steam harassing devs who charge less for games on storefonts with fees cheaper than Steam's 30% cut, hence you never see a game cheaper on Epic Games than it is on Steam. And IIRC thats actually policy on the iOS AppStore and Google Play... How that survives antitrust law, I don't know. There's also the issue of things simply going wrong on the less popular storefronts, with MS's Store being a particularly good example. Publishers don't like that kind of fuss.
  - Iulioh 3y ago
    ------ >For instance, there are allegations of Steam harassing devs who charge less for games on storefonts with fees cheaper than Steam's 30% cut ----- Isn't it in the steam guidelines? Or it was for steam keys sold outside steam iirc
    - brucethemoose2 3y ago
      That is for stores that sell Steam Keys. Last I checked, there's nothing in the TOS about other storefronts on other system.
ankurdhama 3y ago
> Apple is a completely different CPU architecture, graphics architecture, and graphics API. Thats not an easy port for most studios. If major game engines support Apple platform as one of the backends then this should not be a problem.

behnamoh 3y ago

> - There is no evidence that the Mac gamer consumer base is large. Maybe it is, but thats a chicken and egg problem. But Mac users also tend to pay more for apps in general. I imagine if someone paid +$2000 for an MBP, they would be willing to spend $50 on a Mac game. Heck, maybe we're even ok with paying a premium just to get our games ported to Mac. ($100 for COD MW3? I'd do it even though it's expensive for me as a student).

brucethemoose2 3y ago
> Heck, maybe we're even ok with paying a premium just to get our games ported to Mac. On this point specifically, price parity is a prickly subject among game devs. For instance, there are allegations of Steam harassing devs who charge less for games on storefonts with fees cheaper than Steam's 30% cut, hence you never see a game cheaper on Epic Games than it is on Steam. And IIRC thats actually policy on the iOS AppStore and Google Play... How that survives antitrust law, I don't know. There's also the issue of things simply going wrong on the less popular storefronts, with MS's Store being a particularly good example. Publishers don't like that kind of fuss.
- Iulioh 3y ago
  ------ >For instance, there are allegations of Steam harassing devs who charge less for games on storefonts with fees cheaper than Steam's 30% cut ----- Isn't it in the steam guidelines? Or it was for steam keys sold outside steam iirc
  - brucethemoose2 3y ago
    That is for stores that sell Steam Keys. Last I checked, there's nothing in the TOS about other storefronts on other system.

ankurdhama 3y ago

> Apple is a completely different CPU architecture, graphics architecture, and graphics API. Thats not an easy port for most studios. If major game engines support Apple platform as one of the backends then this should not be a problem.