Will Apple ever truly enter the gaming market?

[Rasmuff]

~A shower thought~

 

I've had both a Windows desktop and a Macbook for almost 10 years now and I often stop to wonder why I can't game (well and unhindered) on my Mac.
Why is this, actually?

 

Here's my train of thought:

If apple were to enter the computer gaming space (somehow), I feel like they could rock the socks off windows. I know that linux gaming has recently made a rise so why not apple? I'd love to just have a beefy apple computer that could just do everything! That would be awesome. I love the ecosystem and I love the power that comes with my macbook. If I could play my AAA title games and be constantly in my apple ecosystem that I can text from, move photos around easily, enjoy a snappy OS and have my nice keyboard and mouse hooked up to it. That would be an actual dream.

 

So after all this time and espeically going forward, why won't apple design something that will game?
Does everyone at Apple play on a console? lol

[SlashedM]

9 minutes ago, Rasmuff said:

~A shower thought~

 

I've had both a Windows desktop and a Macbook for almost 10 years now and I often stop to wonder why I can't game (well and unhindered) on my Mac.
Why is this, actually?

 

Here's my train of thought:

If apple were to enter the computer gaming space (somehow), I feel like they could rock the socks off windows. I know that linux gaming has recently made a rise so why not apple? I'd love to just have a beefy apple computer that could just do everything! That would be awesome. I love the ecosystem and I love the power that comes with my macbook. If I could play my AAA title games and be constantly in my apple ecosystem that I can text from, move photos around easily, enjoy a snappy OS and have my nice keyboard and mouse hooked up to it. That would be an actual dream.

 

So after all this time and espeically going forward, why won't apple design something that will game?
Does everyone at Apple play on a console? lol

I thought Apple doesn't really like gaming that much, besides apple arcade of course.

 

Also, them moving to ARM is going to make that harder for awhile, and no 32bit support.

 

But its absolutely harder if devs aren't going to natively support it, as much as Linux gaming has made huge improvements, theres no doubting that Windows will almost forever be king when gaming, especially if more games that Microsoft buys out moves to UWP, UWP games never worked outside of Windows (Games like Forza, MS Flight Sim, or any game downloaded using Gamepass iirc.) but also just because devs will prefer developing for Windows because the bigger market.

 

Apple tried making a console, and Linus and Luke even played it iirc. 

[PlayStation 2]

Getting into the gaming market was never Apple's forte. They've had a few stabs at it in the past - the Bandai Pippin and the Mac App Store games come to mind - but Apple's more into refining what Mac owners do the most rather than trying to have a do-it-all OS like what Windows is and like what most other Unix systems can do.

[SansVarnic]

"Will Apple ever truly enter the gaming market?"

No, they have not up to today made any investment for their products to involve gaming. 

The only exception to this is mobile gaming on the iPhone which is more of a coincidental side effect of app developers having access to Apples app store.

 

But just to throw it out there if Apple does decide to invest in gaming, it will the most innovative leap in tech and ideas in years!    /s

[Mling]

The walls of the garden are too high for Apple gaming to take off.

[whm1974]

Doesn't Apple have a High End iMac that is capable of Gaming? Steam does offer MacOS games.

30 minutes ago, SlashedM said:

Apple tried making a console, and Linus and Luke even played it iirc. 

The Apple Pipping as as I recall. It come with one gamepad controller. I think think it was something like a Media Consumption Console that could also play games. Here is the Entry from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pippin

[The1Dickens]

I think the reason Apple will not chase that market is because they have a high level of polish to their software that games just don't reach. Once hardware started moving at pace or faster than major games could be developed, it is just easier to make them 'good enough', then let more powerful hardware pick up the slack. And at some point, it becomes a ball-and-chain to optimize for hardware that you were aiming for when development started. Look at Cyberpunk: It was announced a full year and a half before the Xbox One was released (May, 2012 vs. Nov. 2013).

 

With it being an "after thought" or "by-product of a device that can compute", they don't have to worry about it not being up to the Silver Standard. Look at Texas Instruments: people make games for their calculators, but they don't market them as "gaming calculators".

[p51mustang23]

On the hardware end, gaming and apple just don't get along.  Gamers want and need modularity at the component level.  Apple's business is based on having complete systems that "just work out of the box".  

That said, one prime of example of a game working brilliantly on apple is World of Warcraft.  It runs near flawlessly on apple computers, even ARM.  However WoW is unique in that is has a gem of a game engine that can run on a toaster oven, or max out an rtx3090 if you jack up the settings.  Also Blizzard / Activision has the time, money, and resources to make it work as a 2nd platform for it's MMO. 

For a AAA shooter, apple would be a little tiny 4th platform.  Why bother?

[NineEyeRon]

Apple are already will into the gaming market, gaming drives a good portion of their domestic mobile market.

 

The introduction of Apple Arcade signalled they support and encourage gaming.

 

Apple do not have an interest in the already saturated and well catered for “PC” and console gaming space, it wouldn’t make them much money.

 

If you want PC games and console games buy a PC or a console. 
 

If you have an Apple device then enjoy the huge variety of games available for it.

 

Casual and Mobile gaming still comes under the gaming banner, PC and Console gaming is a subsection and we must recognise it requires specialist hardware that Apple don’t provide (apart from a few exceptions) . We can’t keep think PC and Console gaming is all gaming.

[Amias]

Until Apple cracks the GPU market, I don't see them really giving it much attention. You could just feel the disdain and hate Apple exudes having had to use Nvidia and then ATi GPU's within their products. 

 

Now they're formally designing their own Silicon, it'll be interesting to see how the Apple iGPU's stand up. Already they've basically trounced Intel iGPU's however that's a low target.

 

It's whether or not they can provide anything on the scale of ATi and Nvidia's offerings.

 

I honestly have no idea ... I imagine we'll get landed firmly between the Intel shit-tier iGPU performance and Nvidia/Ati RTX/Radeon performance. Apple won't commit enough to compete with them (too much power, cooling etc), however their expertise in the area has no doubt allowed them to surpass Intel's shoddy offerings giving at least medium graphics casual gaming some traction on Apple hardware.

[igormp]

10 hours ago, Rasmuff said:

I've had both a Windows desktop and a Macbook for almost 10 years now and I often stop to wonder why I can't game (well and unhindered) on my Mac.
Why is this, actually?

Likely because your model lacks a powerful enough GPU.

 

10 hours ago, Rasmuff said:

I know that linux gaming has recently made a rise so why not apple?

Steam has more games supporting MacOS than Linux. The problem is that Apple killed most 32bit programs from running because they wanted to, and most of their product line lacks a good enough GPU for anything other than most indie platformers.

 

10 hours ago, Rasmuff said:

If I could play my AAA title games

Yeah, no go with the current GPUs they're using.

[Guest]

They intentionally left the gaming market and then windows became the gaming computer. 

 

Apple basically dominates the mobile gaming sector. I heard some reliable sources stating that Apple phone users are much more willing to spend money on an app than Android users. They also spend more AND ... I forgot but basically for mobile gaming, Apple is the one that makes money. 

[Mooshi]

When your included mouse looks like a glossy bar of soap, I don't think fast pace gaming is their top priority.

[Tristerin]

My 2 copper coins - if it will make them money to do so, they will.  Hell I didnt see the M1 coming, so that tells me they are capable of anything.

[Video Beagle]

I've done plenty gaming on my iMac. It's really a matter if publisher do mac versions or not. As others have said, though, the mac market is relativly small so a lot won't do the investment. (Aspyr's business model for a long time was partnering to do mac versions of games). Usually, only BIG NAME titles get ported to the mac...and by name, I mean outside the world of gaming, so like Star Wars, LEGO...Maybe the M1 era will make Macs more appealing to game developers...maybe not.. (I mean, I'm part of a game development team that is doing some drooling over every M1racle report that comes out, but that's more cuz we're tech geeks than in terms of market space).

 

[Spindel]

On 1/6/2021 at 8:30 AM, p51mustang23 said:

On the hardware end, gaming and apple just don't get along.  Gamers want and need modularity at the component level.  Apple's business is based on having complete systems that "just work out of the box".  
 

*Looks at the console market that dwarfs PC gaming market*

 

You have no idea what you are talking about

[Frugivore8894]

If apple did want to make there own "gaming" chip/ PC ( and yes i think it would have to be a chip Maybe a combined CPU, GPU not a SoC) they vary well could its clear via iphone and now mac that they can make a killer GPU and CPU. i think that in a Apple gaming PC that the RAM and storage would be have to be modular maybe with a few M.2s. As for the form factor i would think that It would be a smaller mac pro tower stile design with a opaque side panels. Obviously the GPU AND CPU would be soldered on but i still think it would have expandable RAM and storage.

[The Torrent]

I wonder if apple are planning their own subscription based cloud gaming platform...