5000 Dollar Apple arcade machine - E-sport oriented Mac rumored for 2020 release

[williamcll]

A new rumor have appeared that Apple may be pushing harder to get more gamers to opt for the Macintosh instead of Windows or Consoles.

Quote

Professional, competitive video game playing—the phenomenon known as esports—has seen double digit growth for much of the past decade. With a massive following, many say it will soon become an official Olympic event. Throughout the U.S., high schools are launching competitive gaming clubs, and even some colleges are offering scholarships to top players. With Apple having launched Apple Arcade this year, could Apple enter the higher end of gaming in the future? It's very possible if the rumor surfacing today becomes a reality.

 

Today, out of the blue, a new rumor from Taiwan claims that Apple is planning to launch an e-sports-centric PC next year with a unit price of up to $ 5,000 (about NT $ 152,100), which will be the first time that Apple has entered the e-sports PC field.It is both a new product and a high unit price. The industry expects that the gross profit margin of Apple's supply chain manufacturers will be positive. (The global e-sports market is expected to leap by $ 1 billion )

 

Apple's main assembly plant, Quanta, major chip suppliers, TSMC, enclosure manufacturer Hongzhun and Kecheng, power supply manufacturer Delta and Lite-On, fan construction standards, wire factory Liangwei, etc., are expected to benefit from The new growth force of Apple gaming PC. According to supply chain sources, in addition to the high unit price of Apple ’s new gaming PC products, it may be a large-screen all-in-one (AIO) or a large-screen gaming laptop. Details are not clear at this time. It is expected to be announced at Apple's Global Developer Conference (WWDC) next June. Apple has actively entered the game industry this year. With the advent of iOS 13 in September, Apple Arcade launched a game subscription service. It initially provided more than 100 exclusive games, and then opened subscription games on iPadOS and tvOS 13. Now it is stationed in macOS Catalina Buyers of all Apple products, whether through mobile phones, tablets or laptops, can use Apple Arcade services.

 

Apple Arcade currently includes action games, adventure games, and puzzle games, offering more than 100 games, new games are released every month and can be played offline. In addition to these games, you can use touch or Siri Remote to control the game. Some games also support other controllers, such as the Xbox wireless controller, PlayStation DualShock 4 and MFi game controllers. However, mobile games or online games can only address simple games. If you want to have an immersive gaming experience or a fierce battle, only high-spec, fast computing gaming PCs can handle the graphic power needed to drive high-end gaming. As Apple enters the field of e-sports PCs, with the encouragement of new hardware product shipments, it is expected to increase new business opportunities for relevant supply chain manufacturers.

 

On one hand the rumor seems to a be an off-the-wall long-shot. On the other, the move into esports could breathe new life into the Mac sector while encouraging PC and console developers to finally put macOS on par with Windows and console release dates which is long overdue.

Source: https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2019/12/rumor-apple-plans-to-launch-a-new-high-end-mac-in-2020-designed-to-address-the-esports-market.html

Thoughts: While dubious by the fact I cannot find the source that the article links to but it seems a lot of other Taiwanese tech sites have mentioned it as well. But who would actually play CSGO or PUBG on a mac anyway?

[PlayStation 2]

Eh, the macOS ports of Valve games are actually pretty alright. Not too stupid of an idea for Apple to finally focus on the gaming aspect of their Mac lineup.

[Bombastinator]

5k is way too much.  It needs to be 3k tops.  2k is more in ballpark.  A 5k machine is the top end of hand built watercooling.  It would have to be better than the absolute best possible price-is-no-object PC and even then the market is too small.

[Bombastinator]

13 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

Eh, the macOS ports of Valve games are actually pretty alright. Not too stupid of an idea for Apple to finally focus on the gaming aspect of their Mac lineup.

Yep.  It’s a major hole and the primary reason I don’t have a mac right now.

[Commodus]

This is one of those rumours that's so ludicrous I'm surprised anyone even published stories referencing it.  It'd require a serious about-face in Apple's strategy.

 

Apple, like anyone, knows that having an esports-capable computer only matters if the games people play are there.  That would require a dramatic commitment to Metal-based, Mac-native versions of games on the part of major game developers -- Activision/Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft, you name it.  It'd also require tuning macOS more for gaming than it has been in the past.  And frankly, I don't see that happening when the company is deprecating OpenGL.  Nor do I see the company somehow fostering an Apple Arcade esports scene.

 

I'm thinking Apple will unveil an iMac redesign in 2020 (c'mon, 6K!), but any additional gaming prowess will be a nice-to-have bonus rather the primary objective.

 

 

[NumLock21]

So basically Mac Pro with RGB

RGB are expensive, Apple charging $5K isn't that ludicrous.

[AndreiArgeanu]

I highly doubt they would do that considering that the success rate for MacOS and macs in general in E-Sports is quite low, and because it's apple I genuinely doubt that the E Sport systems would be upgrade able with 3rd party components basically meaning that you are stuck with whatever apple offers you. Also unless they plan to have a partnership with nvidia I highly doubt they would have much success unless AMD plans to release GPU's that can actually compete with the RTX 2080 or 2080 ti. Plus that if an E-Sport arena would want to switch to such systems it would cost them quite a lot to do so, plus that you need to have people trained  that can work with such machines. So yeah I genuinely doubt that you're going to see an e sports tournament happening on a mac, and genuinely doubt that you will see buying these systems, because if the top end model costs 5000$, and Apple doesn't have a partnership with nvidia you'd probably find maybe 2xRX5700XT, i9 9900KF, and perhaps 64gb of ram, which is not really much value at all.

 

There is a very diminishing chance that apple will enter the e-sports market within the next 5 years.

Plus that the source you gave is kind of questionable at best, it looks like a poorly made website at best, so I wouldn't really trust the article

[Bombastinator]

18 minutes ago, williamcll said:

A new rumor have appeared that Apple may be pushing harder to get more gamers to opt for the Macintosh instead of Windows or Consoles.

Source: https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2019/12/rumor-apple-plans-to-launch-a-new-high-end-mac-in-2020-designed-to-address-the-esports-market.html

Thoughts: While dubious by the fact I cannot find the source that the article links to but it seems a lot of other Taiwanese tech sites have mentioned it as well. But who would actually play CSGO or PUBG on a mac anyway?

Free games that are playable on phones? No one. Professional gamers (or any pro athlete at all really) will play on anything they're paid to though.  But only if performance is equal.  

 

one of those old rambling stories old people like to tell:
Firestone and Goodyear used to compete with each other in auto racing by getting racers to use their tires.  First they charged, then they were free, then they started stuffing the insides of the tires with cash.  At one point though one brand became more useful for one race (something environmental iirc. Exceptionally hot or exceptionally wet or something) and for just that one race one company gained a small performance advantage.  All the racers immediately stopped caring about how much money was in the tires and immediately went with the only slightly better tire.
 

Apple does have an advantage in their GPU mount design.  They can make faster GPUs than anyone else because they can run more watts.  IF that is enough of an advantage, and IF they can make their machines just as fast in every other way, they could own pro gaming.  They’re also probably going to have to be willing to stuff their tires with money fairly often though.

[AndreiArgeanu]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

Apple does have an advantage in their GPU mount design.  They can make faster GPUs than anyone else because they can run more watts.  IF that is enough of an advantage, and IF they can make their machines just as fast in every other way, they could own pro gaming.  They’re also probably going to have to be willing to stuff their tires with money fairly often though.

Apple doesn't make desktop GPUs, AMD does, and AMD doesn't really have any good gaming competitors out there that can fight with the lights of the rtx 2080 or rtx 2080ti. The GPU's in the mac pro are made for productivity not gaming.

[AndreiArgeanu]

9 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

So basically Mac Pro with RGB

RGB are expensive, Apple charging $5K isn't that ludicrous.

Yeah, but isn't E-Sports about getting the most FPS, and best frame times, not being blinded by LED's. RGB is not really expensive actually, if you want to pump a high end system full of RGB you'd be looking at spending around 500$ extra.

Also the Mac Pro runs on Xeon CPU's which haven't really been known for their gaming performance. At last unless Apple plans to secure a deal with nvidia, AMD doesn't really have much to compete with the RTX 2080 ti or RTX 2080 in the gaming market.

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Apple doesn't make desktop GPUs, AMD does, and AMD doesn't really have any good gaming competitors out there that can fight with the lights of the rtx 2080 or rtx 2080ti. The GPU's in the mac pro are made for productivity not gaming.

Yup.  Theyd need different board designs.

They’d probably do some sort of dual chip system.  Just like they did with their current Mac pros.  Would a 2x 5700xt be interesting?  A regular pcie slot couldn’t handle one.  Not enough room for cooling.  PCs can’t handle a gpu that needs more radiator than they can fit.  A Mac could though.

 

I could see PCs coming back at macs though.  Water cooled GPUs.  Wattage limitations on competitive gaming rigs.  That’s how they got Shelby cobras out of auto racing.  The things were faster because they could use more gas, so they limited the amount of available gas.

[TetraSky]

But... Why?

Who would buy an expensive Mac, just to play the handful of games available on it, when they can get a much cheaper Windows based PC to do the same thing and more? To use bootcamp? Come on.

 

I just don't see any e-sport team shelling out that much money. Sure there's a lot of money involved in prizes... But you need to win for that.

 

The only way I can see Mac being used in e-sport, is if the e-sport team gets them for free, but who will buy them that? Apple? Hah! A lot of sponsors in E-sports, are also making "gaming" hardware, like Corsair, Asus, MSI, Steelseries, etc etc... There's no way they will buy a Mac for them and be satisfied with just their logo being on the player's clothes. E-sport players are basically walking showcases for the hardware and peripherals of these companies, it ain't gonna work with Apple. Meaning their only sponsors available would be the ones who don't make anything and are satisfied with just their brand name being somewhere in view... Not sure who though.

[DrMacintosh]

42 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

Eh, the macOS ports of Valve games are actually pretty alright. Not too stupid of an idea for Apple to finally focus on the gaming aspect of their Mac lineup.

There's no reason why Macs are not capable of gaming. The only reason they current cant is that Apple locks out the APIs that devs want to use and Apple does not put "gaming" GPUs inside their Macs. We are only now seeing Apple focus on putting good GPUs in their systems. 

[AlexGoesHigh]

Two words: Magic mouse.

 

You can't game with it at all, there's no way they are serious about this unless they kill it for something similiar to a realiable 2 button mouse.

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, TetraSky said:

Who would buy an expensive Mac, just to play the handful of games available on it, when they can get a much cheaper Windows based PC to do the same thing and more?

Well the idea is that more developers would start making games for the Mac. As for why anyone would choose it, just ask all the people that choose an iPhone over anything else. Apple has distinguished themselves on software. 

 

If I could get a consumer grade Mac tower, I would much rather be using that than my current machine even though I built it for a significantly better value proposition than this theoretical Mac could. 

[DrMacintosh]

2 minutes ago, AlexGoesHigh said:

You can't game with it at all, there's no way they are serious about this unless they kill it for something similiar to a realiable 2 button mouse.

Other mice work with macOS. 

[PlayStation 2]

3 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

There's no reason why Macs are not capable of gaming. The only reason they current cant is that Apple locks out the APIs that devs want to use and Apple does not put "gaming" GPUs inside their Macs. We are only now seeing Apple focus on putting good GPUs in their systems. 

No one said or implied that you couldn't use a Mac for gaming.

[AndreiArgeanu]

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I could see PCs coming back at macs though.  Water cooled GPUs.  Wattage limitations on competitive gaming rigs.  That’s how they got Shelby cobras out of auto racing.  The things were faster because they could use more gas, so they limited the amount of available gas.

There wouldn't be any limitations though, that wouldn't make sense.

[TetraSky]

10 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Well the idea is that more developers would start making games for the Mac.

Except, just because you build it, it doesn't mean the users will flock to your platform.

 

This is a bit of an apple to orange comparison, but just look at the WiiU. It could've been so much more, but it flopped hard, because few bought it due to the lack of good software for it and no software was made due to lack of users... It's a catch 22.

The way I see it, unless Apple makes their entire product line going forward capable of gaming(without overheating, throttling and no integrated GPU at high cost), I don't expect this "niche" new product to take off and be adopted by the majority of developers. It really would have to be extremely easy to port a Windows game over to Mac to be worth their time for the few purchases they can expect out of it in the first couple years.

[dizmo]

$5k for an at-best mid range system. Solid.

[Bombastinator]

34 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

But... Why?

Who would buy an expensive Mac, just to play the handful of games available on it, when they can get a much cheaper Windows based PC to do the same thing and more? To use bootcamp? Come on.

 

I just don't see any e-sport team shelling out that much money. Sure there's a lot of money involved in prizes... But you need to win for that.

 

The only way I can see Mac being used in e-sport, is if the e-sport team gets them for free, but who will buy them that? Apple? Hah! A lot of sponsors in E-sports, are also making "gaming" hardware, like Corsair, Asus, MSI, Steelseries, etc etc... There's no way they will buy a Mac for them and be satisfied with just their logo being on the player's clothes. E-sport players are basically walking showcases for the hardware and peripherals of these companies, it ain't gonna work with Apple. Meaning their only sponsors available would be the ones who don't make anything and are satisfied with just their brand name being somewhere in view... Not sure who though.

E-sports teams buy their own hardware?! One would think the majority of an esport franchise’s income would be the amount of money they ARE PAID to use hardware.  Stuff with great big logos on it.  Mouse pads in particular.  If I was a pizza franchise I’d be trying to develop a box that made a decently stable mouse pad so I could pay an esports athlete to use it as a mousepad and then claim his mousepad was better because it had pizza in it.  It doesn’t have to be an actually better device.  It just has to be near enough to equal to not matter.

[Bombastinator]

14 minutes ago, dizmo said:

$5k for an at-best mid range system. Solid.

If they try to sell an anything less than absolutely fricken top tier system for top tier money they’re going to face plant hard.  For 5k They’d have to make a system that was palpably better than ANYTHING that could be home built and then they’d have to be willing to lose money on it because 5k is too much for most buyers.

[dizmo]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

If they try to sell an anything less than absolutely fricken top tier system for top tier money they’re going to face plant hard.  For 5k They’d have to make a system that was palpably better than ANYTHING that could be home built and then they’d have to be willing to lose money on it because 5k is too much for most buyers.

AMD doesn't make such a GPU, and they won't work with Nvidia. So. They can't really do any better.

[NumLock21]

56 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

Yeah, but isn't E-Sports about getting the most FPS, and best frame times, not being blinded by LED's. RGB is not really expensive actually, if you want to pump a high end system full of RGB you'd be looking at spending around 500$ extra.

Also the Mac Pro runs on Xeon CPU's which haven't really been known for their gaming performance. At last unless Apple plans to secure a deal with nvidia, AMD doesn't really have much to compete with the RTX 2080 ti or RTX 2080 in the gaming market.

I trust Apple more than whatever that is you're blabbering about.

[AndreiArgeanu]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

I trust Apple more than whatever that is you're blabbering about.

Apple not got powerful gpu because  use amd

rgb not important in esports

xeon not for gaming

nvidia got better gpu than amd

 

Is that clear enough?