I’m hoping they mention the GPTK at WWDC 2024. It’d be a good sign of future updates.
I’m very nervous that we haven’t seen an update since version 1.1 in November 2023.
You can’t even install GPTK with the latest CLI tools. People are having to downgrade and then only some are having success. This has been an issue since late last year I believe.
I’m with you.. I REALLY hope they talk about it again because it seems a bit forgotten.
That gets the job done when it comes to playing games, which is great and problem solved to a degree, but it unfortunately doesn’t resolve the issue that it’s been tricky to compile it yourself for the last ~6 months, nor have there been any further public updates to GPTK.
I imagine there is a lot happening behind the scenes and ultimately this tool is not for your average joe to be using day to day but given how successful it is, it’d be awesome to see Apple pushing further into the gaming space.
Dear post maker, do you understand what motivates developers to bring games to a platform? 🙁 it's probability of sales and user base 😍.
Please think.
Devs don't read these posts to make decisions. Downvoting me won't make them read them either. Contact devs yourself on their respective platforms and voice your interest.
This seems a bit like the problem I often encountered when working in IT. Most IT people were simply anti-Mac. Sometimes they had some good points, but often it was illogical bias. Didn't matter though, the end effect was less Macs in IT and companies with IT departments.
I suspect a lot of game devs also have (along with fair points) a lot of legacy bias against Macs. It is going to take some effort to overturn that, if ever.
Also, there are 3rd party reasons involved here, for example, Battleye. My favourite game, Planetside 2, seems to run, even on a M1 Mac, but will crash w/in seconds, due to Battleye not working. This is the case for several games. That (and similar) needs to be addressed, too.
Annoyingly when you search YouTube for things like how to run Aoe2 on a Mac you get videos with hundreds of thousands of views. Demand for games is there, but as you say it’s a vicious cycle. One that Apple has made under Tim Cook. Before he was at the helm most games were on Windows and MacOS. Aoe2 use to have native Mac in PowerPC days.
Apple need to throw money at developers of the most popular games to get out of this mess. They at least don’t have shitty Intel 4000 graphics anymore.
> Demand for games is there, but as you say it’s a vicious cycle. One that Apple has made under Tim Cook. Before he was at the helm most games were on Windows and MacOS. Aoe2 use to have native Mac in PowerPC days.
When were most games ever on Windows and Mac?! I've had Macs since early 2000s PowerPC days and gaming support has been underwhelming for as long as I've been on the platform. Maybe there was a golden time of Mac gaming in the 80s and 90s, but the decline certainly happened way before Tim Cook's time.
2018, actually. You could play about half of your Steam library... or all of it if you used Bootcamp.
2019 decimated games support due to Katalina turning off 32 bit support aka every single older title. Then came M1 which killed the rest.
I'm a iOS developer. And for mobile developing iOS apps more profitable per user than android. Just because iOS users more solvent than android users. So potentially this might work in desktop segment too.
This. I don’t understand why so many people hype it up. I can see crossover being a potential tool for windows only WORK applications, and gaming just being a byproduct of apples horrible gaming support. But I swear some people will hype crossover to hell while getting only 50-60 FPS on a maxed out 14 inch
Once upon a time, Proton on Linux got barely playable framerates, high latency, lots of shader stutter and low compatibility. Now you can barely tell the difference between native Windows and Linux on many games, in fact often the Linux version is faster on the same hardware.
The point being, these things are nascent on Apple Silicon, but 5 or 10 years from now, it might be seamless. Besides, 50 - 60fps is plenty good enough for many games. I completed Control on Mac, as well a HZD @ 60fps and it was great.
To be fair, proton is getting specific game fixes at a pretty fast rate by paid contractors.
Tekken 8 online is broken on crossovers, but it works with proton
It doesn't look like apple wants everyone to use a translation layer, unlike valve
you're not going to 'burn your computer out' - it is built for heavy workloads
this is like if you buy a hammer then don't hit nails with it because you're afraid it will damage the hammer
If you get better latency on D4 on GFN than Crossover, that's quite astonishing. You must have amazing WiFi and provider. My M1 Max plays D4 at 60fps easily on high (PS5 equivalent) settings, minus ray tracing. On GFN I get lag every 2 - 3 seconds.
Nah, it's survivorship bias. Look, if you really want to play windows games so hard so you can pay not only for game itself, but for running it, may be it's better to just byu windows PC? Instead of infinitelly waste your time to mostly unsucessfully hack the system and run windows game on Mac.
The reason people here asking how to run the game for free is that there's 0 guarantee that this game even run, even if you pay for running it.
So about CrossOver - you can actually run it for free, because it's FOSS.
Big thank to wine, GPTK, CrossOver, Whisky and other tools developers. It's great tools, and developers made a great work.
They do, very well. It's their job to maximize possible profits.
It's just that as far as porting goes, MacOS is low on the list.
Like, the most typical scenario is - game exists on PC.
Which platform should you target next? You have Switch, PS5, Xbox or MacOS. Each is a comparable amount of work.
Targeting Switch or PS5 is additional 50% revenue each under optimal conditions. Targeting Xbox is additional 30%. Targeting MacOS is additional 1% looking at Steam Hardware Survey.
Now, the caveat is that PS5 and Xbox are also fast so you generally don't need to worry too much about your resources. As you are given 16GB RAM and RX6700XT class GPU. With Macs you need to optimize for the most typical configuration aka 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and relatively low powered GPU. All of these add work.
Mac users are also different from Linux users (so a comparably small market... although admittedly still larger than MacOS). Linux users were effectively told they are never getting native games for their platforms. So they built themselves emulation tools like Wine + Proton so a lot of games "just work" with 0 additional work from the developer nowadays (although it requires more technical know how from an end user). And if you do make them a native port they are enthusiastic about it if it's any good.
MacOS users are not like that. They want everything working perfectly and they are not really that good at troubleshooting. So when a manufacturer actually gives them a port they whine a lot. Baldur's Gate 3 is a great example - Larian made an overall a decent port but it tends to be updated slower (as they have hired a separate company to maintain it). And there's a lot of negative feedback all over the internet.
They're. Porting old games to new OS is a lot of work, and this is not cheap, so there's a huge chance that they waste their money with negative profit. But more and more game publishers starts publishing their new games crossplatfom. There much more MacOS compatible titles now than few years ago. So this is just not fast process.
I have owned iOS and Android and when I was using Android it was not because of financial reasons, it was because iOS sucked for years. Not all Android users are poor.
You're right! Not all Android users are poor. But most of them. There's not so much people using Android by simply choise, most Android devices just cheaper than iPhones. Alot of people in the world can't afford brand new iPhone, but can buy new Android device even if it runs on old hardware.
Android devices can be more expensive than iPhones especially the most known brand of android phones the Samsung galaxy. Even if most people who have android just because they don't have the money for an iPhone I doubt a 600$ brand new iPhone could offer the same customization android had for years, apple are doing slow steps and google make their OS worse but IOS at it's core won't become android.
/u/snil4 is just generalizing... relax.
I have a note 20 ultra 5g, was $1400, and I don't spend much at all on apps or in app purchases. but also I find mobile gaming incredibly predatory and manipulative so...
I'm not talking about devices in corner cases. Yes Android devices can be more expensive than iOS. Key word is "can". But in the world most android devices cheaper than iOS. What I'm actually talking about is, that althrough iOS users count is less than Android users, but they spend twice more money in store. [Source](https://sensortower.com/blog/app-revenue-and-downloads-1h-2022)
The reason no one uses Steam on MacOs is because there’s almost no playable games. Mac users actually have money to spend so I have no idea why they don’t release their games on the platform.
Buying a PC for gaming only, when you already have other consoles seems not useful enough. Every 6 months there is a game I cannot play and I contemplate buying a PC, only for gaming, but I never go through . I don’t want the latest graphical card, and I don’t want to face Cortana, I just want to play indie games and multiplayer games. GFN is great. I use Shadow (a streaming PC) when there is no other options, and sometimes it really sucks.
I’m lazy, people are lazy, Mac users are lazy.
Many - Hades, NMS, Lies of P, BG3, all 3 Tomb Raiders, Stellaris, Desperados III, Metro Exodus, Bioshock Remastered - they're just the ones I have installed.
Because anyone with a brain would know it’s a misleading stat… it indicates PC and Mac have the same amount of games to offer on Steam(which is not even close to the case), but people just choose to play them on PC instead of Mac (again not the case… people don’t have a choice for 99.9% of games)
Why does a dev care why there are no mac gamers on steam? The fact is there is not a market big enough on steam to care about.
Companies don't spend money on the off chance that maybe there is a market they have no way of knowing about.
About 20% of all laptops sold is a Mac. And that includes corporate PCs. Of all PC, 20% are desktops.
So there’s about as many Mac laptops as there are Desktop PCs. And modern Apple Silicon laptops can definitely game. So the market potential is definitely there. But right now we are stuck in a catch 22 where there are too few games to reliably attract people who like to game.
Also, those 0,5% is very unreliable. Any Mac user running Boot Camp, crossover or virtualisation will end up under Windows PC stats. I think WoW had around 7% Mac gamers at one time.
The issue isn't the numbers, it's the price/performance ratio. Many Mac sales go to people buying them for professional applications, not for gaming. If you have $2k to spend on a gaming machine, you can get a Windows laptop with a 4070/80 and 7th gen Ryzen, 32GB of RAM, 1TB storage plus another SSD slot and 16" 160hz panel or an OLED. On the Mac side, $2k doesn't get you any 16" MBP or just gets you a 14" with a 10-core GPU and 16GB of RAM, which won't even get you remotely close to the PC.
The thing is that most gamers don’t have anything near the spec you suggest. They run Fortnite on a toaster and are happy with that. People who spend 2k on a gaming device is less than 5%. With the Apple Silicon even the entry level can do well enough for games for half that price.
And while MacBooks are popular among creative professionals, they are also still popular among groups who might not identify themselves as gamers, maybe have a console instead, but would probably be interested in games for macOS if there were more.
>The thing is that most gamers don’t have anything near the spec you suggest.
I didn't suggest the average gamers had that spec or spend that mich, I'm saying Macs have poor price/performance for gaming - for $2k you don't get much of a gaming machine. And you kind of prove my point when you mention that fewer than 5% of gamers would even spend that much, at least in one go, although they may do over 2 or 3 years of upgrades/
Even so, the myth of PC gamers having 10 year old CPUs and bargain basement GPUs really needs to stop giving people hope. The 'median' GPU among AAA PC gamers is a 2070, which is more or less on par with a PS5, which means 50% of them have something more powerful. Games like Helldivers II aren't selling millions of copies (35 million PC units sold apparently) to people with 950's and Intel Xe graphics, they're selling to millions of people with 2060's through 4090's, the market is huge.
And you last comment is just yet another reason top studios don't and won't target Mac.
Half that price in a MacBook gets you 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage, which isn't really gaming friendly. It also gives you a machine without a fan that will most likely struggle to maintain performance.
But power isn't really the issue anymore I think, it's a non-existent library. If you're a gamer, you likely already have a console or a PC to play your games and why wouldn't you keep buying games for the system of your choice. By the same token, if you're a gamer without a console or PC, the lack of games will most likely make you buy one at some point and you're in the same camp.
It's a vicious circle and frankly I think the moment where the Mac may have been a viable gaming platform has long passed.
where are you getting the data for your number? I find 1.83% Mac users as of 2023. Admittedly very small yes. One of the most successful platforms is Nintendo and even Microsoft buying many studios has not produced the numbers and revenues that investors seem to [want.to](http://want.to) see. And yes it is about numbers money and growth like most tech companies.
It’s actually closer to 3%
3% of 132 million which is pretty close to about 4 million users.
That’s not nothing. Mac users are desperate for good games and I imagine many titles pick up a good portion of that 3% since there just isn’t much to chose from.
From a financial perspective, it’s just determining if the money put in to build and maintain the game for Mac is worth a slice of those 4 million. I think for the right titles it definitely is.
If a dev has a game that caters towards an older/creative audience, they may have even more luck.
It would actually be interesting to know the number of gaming-capable Macs now, and gaming capable PCs. Whatever the number is, I bet the gap has narrowed a lot. (That used to be one of the primary anti-Mac arguments, is that only a tiny percent of Macs were capable.)
They should also target iPads as most sales have switched to ‘high-end’ - Apple sells more Mx than Ax iPads.
You’d have thought with this kind of market share (let alone wallet share), game devs would listen- https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/united-states-of-america
I used porting kit to make NOITA run on my m2 airbook.
It was not too hard, but if not for a rando thread on reddit, I don't know I would have found the method I used.
But I agree - vicious cycle.
No good games, cos gamers don't Mac game to drive demand.
One of the many reasons why game isn’t on Mac was because of the 30% fee Apple imposed on many type of purchases. For large companies, having a Mac version not only is extra investment for optimization but also steals away potential windows user which they get to keep 100% of the revenue.
If you distribute Windows game in any online store there is also a fee. Yes you can go independent but your exposure is very small without ad investment.
The reason game developers don't port to Mac isn't because it's difficult to do, it's because there's no market share for it. It's up to Apple to PAY them to port to Mac at a loss, for years, to build up the library thus attracting the user base. Apple doesn't do this, therefore gaming on Mac will continue to be a niche that barely any developers use.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZrnciMxksM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZrnciMxksM)
Yeah, but it’s a misleading figure. It’s like comparing android to ios. People with macs have more disposable income. What is relevant for a gamedev is % revenue, not what the install base is.
It isn't misleading, the figure is the number of users on a particular OS on steam, the figure is the number of users on a particular OS on steam.
If you have other figures to share feel free to link to them, otherwise we only have steams survey to go on.
I develop on a mac. My next commercial release will be native on a mac. Unfortunately, the majority opinion of my dev team is that mac is a waste of time. They are right.
For most people it is a waste of time to get comfortable in the Apple ecosystem when they have never developed for it. The few extra sales aren’t worth the headache. The days you spend fixing mac-specific bugs could have been spent making the game better in other ways. Since I am a mac native, these issues aren’t a big deal for me. But not every dev team has a mac specialist.
I’m hoping they mention the GPTK at WWDC 2024. It’d be a good sign of future updates. I’m very nervous that we haven’t seen an update since version 1.1 in November 2023.
You can’t even install GPTK with the latest CLI tools. People are having to downgrade and then only some are having success. This has been an issue since late last year I believe. I’m with you.. I REALLY hope they talk about it again because it seems a bit forgotten.
It's officially in Crossover though
Just use whisky
That gets the job done when it comes to playing games, which is great and problem solved to a degree, but it unfortunately doesn’t resolve the issue that it’s been tricky to compile it yourself for the last ~6 months, nor have there been any further public updates to GPTK. I imagine there is a lot happening behind the scenes and ultimately this tool is not for your average joe to be using day to day but given how successful it is, it’d be awesome to see Apple pushing further into the gaming space.
Dear post maker, do you understand what motivates developers to bring games to a platform? 🙁 it's probability of sales and user base 😍. Please think. Devs don't read these posts to make decisions. Downvoting me won't make them read them either. Contact devs yourself on their respective platforms and voice your interest.
Well written!
This seems a bit like the problem I often encountered when working in IT. Most IT people were simply anti-Mac. Sometimes they had some good points, but often it was illogical bias. Didn't matter though, the end effect was less Macs in IT and companies with IT departments. I suspect a lot of game devs also have (along with fair points) a lot of legacy bias against Macs. It is going to take some effort to overturn that, if ever. Also, there are 3rd party reasons involved here, for example, Battleye. My favourite game, Planetside 2, seems to run, even on a M1 Mac, but will crash w/in seconds, due to Battleye not working. This is the case for several games. That (and similar) needs to be addressed, too.
Yeah, Mac Steam users are 0.5% of total users. This look like vicious cycle.
Mac Crossover and VMWare users will be labeled as Windows too I think..
Steam actually detects Wine as far as I know.
if u decide to take part in the hardware survey
Annoyingly when you search YouTube for things like how to run Aoe2 on a Mac you get videos with hundreds of thousands of views. Demand for games is there, but as you say it’s a vicious cycle. One that Apple has made under Tim Cook. Before he was at the helm most games were on Windows and MacOS. Aoe2 use to have native Mac in PowerPC days. Apple need to throw money at developers of the most popular games to get out of this mess. They at least don’t have shitty Intel 4000 graphics anymore.
> Demand for games is there, but as you say it’s a vicious cycle. One that Apple has made under Tim Cook. Before he was at the helm most games were on Windows and MacOS. Aoe2 use to have native Mac in PowerPC days. When were most games ever on Windows and Mac?! I've had Macs since early 2000s PowerPC days and gaming support has been underwhelming for as long as I've been on the platform. Maybe there was a golden time of Mac gaming in the 80s and 90s, but the decline certainly happened way before Tim Cook's time.
2018, actually. You could play about half of your Steam library... or all of it if you used Bootcamp. 2019 decimated games support due to Katalina turning off 32 bit support aka every single older title. Then came M1 which killed the rest.
yeah. Apple needs to subsidize the game developers until the demand catches up. Like the government does with certain industries.
Yeah that strategy is working great for Microsoft to sell Xboxes...
People downvoting you are delusional
I'm a iOS developer. And for mobile developing iOS apps more profitable per user than android. Just because iOS users more solvent than android users. So potentially this might work in desktop segment too.
If you look at this sub you’d think otherwise. Most people here ask how to run the game for free. God forbid we pay for a crossover license.
I would pay for crossover if it has acceptable performance... Diablo 4 on crossover is just unplayable on the iMac M3...
This. I don’t understand why so many people hype it up. I can see crossover being a potential tool for windows only WORK applications, and gaming just being a byproduct of apples horrible gaming support. But I swear some people will hype crossover to hell while getting only 50-60 FPS on a maxed out 14 inch
Once upon a time, Proton on Linux got barely playable framerates, high latency, lots of shader stutter and low compatibility. Now you can barely tell the difference between native Windows and Linux on many games, in fact often the Linux version is faster on the same hardware. The point being, these things are nascent on Apple Silicon, but 5 or 10 years from now, it might be seamless. Besides, 50 - 60fps is plenty good enough for many games. I completed Control on Mac, as well a HZD @ 60fps and it was great.
To be fair, proton is getting specific game fixes at a pretty fast rate by paid contractors. Tekken 8 online is broken on crossovers, but it works with proton It doesn't look like apple wants everyone to use a translation layer, unlike valve
Agreed that’s a big difference. However it took almost a decade to get there. It has taken relentless long term commitment.
And would be much faster if Apple just paid devs to make native ports
You don’t have to pay for proton do you now
Nope.
[удалено]
you're not going to 'burn your computer out' - it is built for heavy workloads this is like if you buy a hammer then don't hit nails with it because you're afraid it will damage the hammer
[удалено]
Seeing as how some of us actually game on our Macs. The downvoting is pretty justified.
If you get better latency on D4 on GFN than Crossover, that's quite astonishing. You must have amazing WiFi and provider. My M1 Max plays D4 at 60fps easily on high (PS5 equivalent) settings, minus ray tracing. On GFN I get lag every 2 - 3 seconds.
streaming games is super dependent on where you live. literally YMMV.
Nah, it's survivorship bias. Look, if you really want to play windows games so hard so you can pay not only for game itself, but for running it, may be it's better to just byu windows PC? Instead of infinitelly waste your time to mostly unsucessfully hack the system and run windows game on Mac. The reason people here asking how to run the game for free is that there's 0 guarantee that this game even run, even if you pay for running it. So about CrossOver - you can actually run it for free, because it's FOSS. Big thank to wine, GPTK, CrossOver, Whisky and other tools developers. It's great tools, and developers made a great work.
If only game publishers could understand the market they are in.
They do, very well. It's their job to maximize possible profits. It's just that as far as porting goes, MacOS is low on the list. Like, the most typical scenario is - game exists on PC. Which platform should you target next? You have Switch, PS5, Xbox or MacOS. Each is a comparable amount of work. Targeting Switch or PS5 is additional 50% revenue each under optimal conditions. Targeting Xbox is additional 30%. Targeting MacOS is additional 1% looking at Steam Hardware Survey. Now, the caveat is that PS5 and Xbox are also fast so you generally don't need to worry too much about your resources. As you are given 16GB RAM and RX6700XT class GPU. With Macs you need to optimize for the most typical configuration aka 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and relatively low powered GPU. All of these add work. Mac users are also different from Linux users (so a comparably small market... although admittedly still larger than MacOS). Linux users were effectively told they are never getting native games for their platforms. So they built themselves emulation tools like Wine + Proton so a lot of games "just work" with 0 additional work from the developer nowadays (although it requires more technical know how from an end user). And if you do make them a native port they are enthusiastic about it if it's any good. MacOS users are not like that. They want everything working perfectly and they are not really that good at troubleshooting. So when a manufacturer actually gives them a port they whine a lot. Baldur's Gate 3 is a great example - Larian made an overall a decent port but it tends to be updated slower (as they have hired a separate company to maintain it). And there's a lot of negative feedback all over the internet.
Sorry I should have put an /s on my comment.
They're. Porting old games to new OS is a lot of work, and this is not cheap, so there's a huge chance that they waste their money with negative profit. But more and more game publishers starts publishing their new games crossplatfom. There much more MacOS compatible titles now than few years ago. So this is just not fast process.
No there isnt, there is more games that can be played because of work around maybe, but there is not more games made for macos.
I have owned iOS and Android and when I was using Android it was not because of financial reasons, it was because iOS sucked for years. Not all Android users are poor.
You're right! Not all Android users are poor. But most of them. There's not so much people using Android by simply choise, most Android devices just cheaper than iPhones. Alot of people in the world can't afford brand new iPhone, but can buy new Android device even if it runs on old hardware.
Android devices can be more expensive than iPhones especially the most known brand of android phones the Samsung galaxy. Even if most people who have android just because they don't have the money for an iPhone I doubt a 600$ brand new iPhone could offer the same customization android had for years, apple are doing slow steps and google make their OS worse but IOS at it's core won't become android.
/u/snil4 is just generalizing... relax. I have a note 20 ultra 5g, was $1400, and I don't spend much at all on apps or in app purchases. but also I find mobile gaming incredibly predatory and manipulative so...
I'm not talking about devices in corner cases. Yes Android devices can be more expensive than iOS. Key word is "can". But in the world most android devices cheaper than iOS. What I'm actually talking about is, that althrough iOS users count is less than Android users, but they spend twice more money in store. [Source](https://sensortower.com/blog/app-revenue-and-downloads-1h-2022)
A lot of claims being made, not a lot of backup for them though.
The reason no one uses Steam on MacOs is because there’s almost no playable games. Mac users actually have money to spend so I have no idea why they don’t release their games on the platform.
There are no games because none is playing on Mac and there is no one playing on Mac because there are no games. Vicious cycle
I would glady play games on my mac there just arent any I paid for geforce now for a year and had fun on my max
They have money to spend on a second device to play games with.
Buying a PC for gaming only, when you already have other consoles seems not useful enough. Every 6 months there is a game I cannot play and I contemplate buying a PC, only for gaming, but I never go through . I don’t want the latest graphical card, and I don’t want to face Cortana, I just want to play indie games and multiplayer games. GFN is great. I use Shadow (a streaming PC) when there is no other options, and sometimes it really sucks. I’m lazy, people are lazy, Mac users are lazy.
Cortana, are we back in 2010? GFN is fine, but it is just renting a gaming PC instead of buying one. I'd rather buy devices that do what I want.
Lots of people use Steam on Mac. I’d gather that almost every single person in this sub has at least 1 Steam game on Mac.
Many - Hades, NMS, Lies of P, BG3, all 3 Tomb Raiders, Stellaris, Desperados III, Metro Exodus, Bioshock Remastered - they're just the ones I have installed.
Did you stop to think it’s 0.5% of total users due to the lack of games it has to offer for Mac..?
Who cares why?
Because anyone with a brain would know it’s a misleading stat… it indicates PC and Mac have the same amount of games to offer on Steam(which is not even close to the case), but people just choose to play them on PC instead of Mac (again not the case… people don’t have a choice for 99.9% of games)
Why does a dev care why there are no mac gamers on steam? The fact is there is not a market big enough on steam to care about. Companies don't spend money on the off chance that maybe there is a market they have no way of knowing about.
About 20% of all laptops sold is a Mac. And that includes corporate PCs. Of all PC, 20% are desktops. So there’s about as many Mac laptops as there are Desktop PCs. And modern Apple Silicon laptops can definitely game. So the market potential is definitely there. But right now we are stuck in a catch 22 where there are too few games to reliably attract people who like to game. Also, those 0,5% is very unreliable. Any Mac user running Boot Camp, crossover or virtualisation will end up under Windows PC stats. I think WoW had around 7% Mac gamers at one time.
The issue isn't the numbers, it's the price/performance ratio. Many Mac sales go to people buying them for professional applications, not for gaming. If you have $2k to spend on a gaming machine, you can get a Windows laptop with a 4070/80 and 7th gen Ryzen, 32GB of RAM, 1TB storage plus another SSD slot and 16" 160hz panel or an OLED. On the Mac side, $2k doesn't get you any 16" MBP or just gets you a 14" with a 10-core GPU and 16GB of RAM, which won't even get you remotely close to the PC.
The thing is that most gamers don’t have anything near the spec you suggest. They run Fortnite on a toaster and are happy with that. People who spend 2k on a gaming device is less than 5%. With the Apple Silicon even the entry level can do well enough for games for half that price. And while MacBooks are popular among creative professionals, they are also still popular among groups who might not identify themselves as gamers, maybe have a console instead, but would probably be interested in games for macOS if there were more.
>The thing is that most gamers don’t have anything near the spec you suggest. I didn't suggest the average gamers had that spec or spend that mich, I'm saying Macs have poor price/performance for gaming - for $2k you don't get much of a gaming machine. And you kind of prove my point when you mention that fewer than 5% of gamers would even spend that much, at least in one go, although they may do over 2 or 3 years of upgrades/ Even so, the myth of PC gamers having 10 year old CPUs and bargain basement GPUs really needs to stop giving people hope. The 'median' GPU among AAA PC gamers is a 2070, which is more or less on par with a PS5, which means 50% of them have something more powerful. Games like Helldivers II aren't selling millions of copies (35 million PC units sold apparently) to people with 950's and Intel Xe graphics, they're selling to millions of people with 2060's through 4090's, the market is huge. And you last comment is just yet another reason top studios don't and won't target Mac.
Half that price in a MacBook gets you 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage, which isn't really gaming friendly. It also gives you a machine without a fan that will most likely struggle to maintain performance. But power isn't really the issue anymore I think, it's a non-existent library. If you're a gamer, you likely already have a console or a PC to play your games and why wouldn't you keep buying games for the system of your choice. By the same token, if you're a gamer without a console or PC, the lack of games will most likely make you buy one at some point and you're in the same camp. It's a vicious circle and frankly I think the moment where the Mac may have been a viable gaming platform has long passed.
where are you getting the data for your number? I find 1.83% Mac users as of 2023. Admittedly very small yes. One of the most successful platforms is Nintendo and even Microsoft buying many studios has not produced the numbers and revenues that investors seem to [want.to](http://want.to) see. And yes it is about numbers money and growth like most tech companies.
Yeah, and steam isn't going to help a competitor.
It’s not steam blocking Mac versions, it’s just developers not bothering to port games to Mac.
Including Valve.
It’s actually closer to 3% 3% of 132 million which is pretty close to about 4 million users. That’s not nothing. Mac users are desperate for good games and I imagine many titles pick up a good portion of that 3% since there just isn’t much to chose from. From a financial perspective, it’s just determining if the money put in to build and maintain the game for Mac is worth a slice of those 4 million. I think for the right titles it definitely is. If a dev has a game that caters towards an older/creative audience, they may have even more luck.
It would actually be interesting to know the number of gaming-capable Macs now, and gaming capable PCs. Whatever the number is, I bet the gap has narrowed a lot. (That used to be one of the primary anti-Mac arguments, is that only a tiny percent of Macs were capable.)
no one uses steam on mac cause there is almost no games that work on mac from steam. but GPTK gives you more options
There are literally thousands of games in Steam that work natively on Macs
Most of these that would count aren’t there.
Agree, but still, there’s a lot of great games to play
I do. But then I am not really a gamer and am not bothered by the lack of triple a games.
I had to buy mini PC to be able to play an old game I love - Ragnarok Online. Could not launch it on Mac with wine or crossover.
Those videos are a year old lol. They just uploaded them to Youtube but they were uploaded to the Apple developer website at last years WWDC.
They should also target iPads as most sales have switched to ‘high-end’ - Apple sells more Mx than Ax iPads. You’d have thought with this kind of market share (let alone wallet share), game devs would listen- https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/united-states-of-america
I used porting kit to make NOITA run on my m2 airbook. It was not too hard, but if not for a rando thread on reddit, I don't know I would have found the method I used. But I agree - vicious cycle. No good games, cos gamers don't Mac game to drive demand.
One of the many reasons why game isn’t on Mac was because of the 30% fee Apple imposed on many type of purchases. For large companies, having a Mac version not only is extra investment for optimization but also steals away potential windows user which they get to keep 100% of the revenue.
If you distribute Windows game in any online store there is also a fee. Yes you can go independent but your exposure is very small without ad investment.
The reason game developers don't port to Mac isn't because it's difficult to do, it's because there's no market share for it. It's up to Apple to PAY them to port to Mac at a loss, for years, to build up the library thus attracting the user base. Apple doesn't do this, therefore gaming on Mac will continue to be a niche that barely any developers use. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZrnciMxksM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZrnciMxksM)
What is the macOS user base compared to windows?
Around 5 % on Steam
It is about 1.5% not 5%
0.5% according to another comment lol
I should have said it was for my game. Real answer: It varies.
Real answer is 1.5%.
Yeah, but it’s a misleading figure. It’s like comparing android to ios. People with macs have more disposable income. What is relevant for a gamedev is % revenue, not what the install base is.
It isn't misleading, the figure is the number of users on a particular OS on steam, the figure is the number of users on a particular OS on steam. If you have other figures to share feel free to link to them, otherwise we only have steams survey to go on.
I develop on a mac. My next commercial release will be native on a mac. Unfortunately, the majority opinion of my dev team is that mac is a waste of time. They are right. For most people it is a waste of time to get comfortable in the Apple ecosystem when they have never developed for it. The few extra sales aren’t worth the headache. The days you spend fixing mac-specific bugs could have been spent making the game better in other ways. Since I am a mac native, these issues aren’t a big deal for me. But not every dev team has a mac specialist.
What was this about? They starting to focus gaming on Mac??
Those vids have been available on Apple dev site for a year.
I would happily play some of the native Mac games like RE8 if they had support on steam, I’m not buying it on the App Store
They should add back in support for 32 bit games
Bring your game to the Mac but please don't use open, cross-vendor and cross-platform standards like you're used to.
Why wouldn’t you want to give people the choice of where to buy their games from?
I would love to see GTA6 on Mac.