APK Wing Blog

Is Mac Gaming Dead?

This is a buzz question is PC gaming people. The MAC fanboys always keep up their hope that some day the scene may improve and they get to play every good game that is released on other platforms. But it depends on both the game developers as well as Apple to make this wish come true.

There has been slight development from Apple’s side in recent days. UBisoft getting on board to make games for Mac is a good starting step. But still App store has only AAA or AA rates games which need to change asap.

First, there was the graphics control device they were supplying which sounded like horrible hardware. Then we have the abominable graphics cards from Radeon. And then, the mind-boggling move to sunset support for 32-bit games on Catalina essentially every Mac game ever made. Looking for all the world as if macOS gaming was a thing of the past and that iOS games were all they cared about. From a financial perspective, this made perfect sense.

Soon after that, the M1 ships started to ship and a MacBook Air could play Tomb Raider LICENSE The addition of the M1 Pros and Max laptops made sure that games like Dying Light could be played without any stuttery or performance related troubles. There was a discernible uptick in performance for the whole library when running though Rosetta compared to any previous manner of native execution. We also discovered the Game Porting Toolkit was unleashed and we began musing to ourselves about how Mac gaming could virtually go toe-to-toe with Windows.

As a software engineer, of course I know it’s just code. There is no technical reason why it should not be again possible in theory. It all comes down to want and perseverance — there isn’t some intrinsic reason that Windows is somehow more suitable as a platform than Mac; it’s just had decades worth of investment poured into it. Windows is a platform that dates back all the way to day 0. And then it started coming together; you could run Elden Ring at 30fps on an M1 Max, and even use guns. Dreaming I finally Had the Balls to Dream: Last week, I sold my stupid Steam Deck so that way all of my games go back onto Mac it is too fucking big.

We’re still in the process of finalizing our results, but the GPTv2 was released today and early reports have come in that games which used to be unplayable are now better performing. And AVX… plus every little thing else. This, I think we can all agree, is the day that gaming on a Mac in any meaningful sense of those words entered its modern era. With how far things have come in this amount of time, we find it hard to believe that there will be much the Mac won’t technically play outside of old legacy titles from decades past. It would take a huge whack from Apple to kill the momentum that has been built, but sadly, this is still an option.

But anyway, we have to say thanks to Apple. You have managed to reassure me that I did the right thing in that regard, and boy oh boy do I want to make sure it was because if Syber is anything like Nintendo then I just bought myself another console for a bedroom.

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