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Comment by jfkebwjsbx | Hacker News Reader

It is spot on. Macs are less than 5% of the Steam audience, software now needs notarization, developer tools cost money in the form of hardware, GPU drivers are buggy (unless you use Metal and buy into Apple ecosystem), modern OpenGL was abandoned years ago, etc. So developers only target macOS if the game gets big enough.

From the point of view of gamers, it is annoying. The recent 32-bit support drop killed a huge amount of macOS games. Now I have to bootcamp to play some of my favorite games. The GPU performance is also quite bad due their fight with NVIDIA.

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> GPU drivers are buggy (unless you use Metal

Metal drivers are buggy as well and it's sometimes even better to use OpenGL:

https://twitter.com/pcwalton/status/1255250372215611397

https://twitter.com/pcwalton/status/1255571085304541184

https://twitter.com/pcwalton/status/1267962397722988545

https://twitter.com/pcwalton/status/1260636769852157954

Those were on Intel Metal Drivers.

Hopefully drivers quality will improve once Apple take full control of their GPU as well.

I'm wondering if any of this will change now that Apple is going all-in on vertical integration, basically unifying their platforms so you can write a game once and run it on Mac, AppleTV, iPad and iPhone with (almost) no changes. Their hardware will all run comparable Apple CPU's & GPU's, same API's, appear to fully support game controllers etc, and the development and deployment platform are pretty much the same thing. This makes a small step towards a unified platform for light gaming.

I get that MacBooks and AppleTV's will never be anywhere near the performance of PC, Xbox or PlayStation, but Nintendo has shown that doesn't have to matter. I'm pretty sure any Apple SoC used in the last ~2 years already beats the Nintendo Switch for example. All Apple needs to do is put some effort towards getting more 'real' games in their store, ie: games like you would play on switch with traditional controls, and not glorified mobile games that also have to work with the ridiculous AppleTV remote.

My feeling has been for a long time already that Apple is really leaving a huge opportunity on the table here. But the vibe I got from WWDC keynote and platform state of the union was that they seem to have more focus on this now, showing unity, maya and some other tools that can be used for game dev, running on their Apple Silicon. So who knows what they are planning...

> I'm wondering if any of this will change now that Apple is going all-in on vertical integration, basically unifying their platforms so you can write a game once and run it on Mac, AppleTV, iPad and iPhone

Nothing will change. Mobile games will continue being mobile games. Hardly anyone else will bring their games to the "unified platform" for the simple fact that you cannot run the same game on desktop and mobile.

I think that currently there are some games in Apple Arcade that works on macOS, iOS and Apple TV; that said we’re not talking about the usual AAA games of course.

> I think that currently there are some games in Apple Arcade that works on

Mobile games will continue being mobile games.

;)

That's the only type of game that can work on both desktop and mobile.

If you can run iOS apps on mac in the future, that includes games too.

Of course, but it doesn't factor in the interface and input differences. It is next to impossible to port a game optimized for PC to mobile. And nobody cares about mobile games making their way onto desktops.

> the vibe I got from WWDC keynote and platform state of the union was that they seem to have more focus on this now

It doesn't matter - I don't think they really understand the dynamics of the traditional gaming market. They are bewildered that their strong position in the mobile-game arena, which is due almost entirely to the economic characteristics of their customers' demographic, is doing nothing to improve their position in the desktop/AAA game, which plays by a different set of rules and appeals to very different constituencies.

It's a bit like little chains of trendy indie cinemas were trying to get Marvel or Warner to make films with them in mind: it ain't going to happen, they just don't care, their business works on a different level both on quality and quantity.

With the recent move to ARM, you won't be able to use bootcamp for games anymore either.

I think this move was the final nail in coffin for Mac gaming.

I've always found it frustrating that a 3k Mac has a barely acceptable GPU compared to its PC counterparts.

> The recent 32-bit support drop killed a huge amount of macOS games. Now I have to bootcamp to play some of my favorite games.

I just see no reason to upgrade the OS to the version that dropped 32-bit support. High Sierra runs everything and feels great.

Xcode 11.5+ runs only on Catalina. If you want to use it, you’re mostly forced to.

This is one of the real problems: Apple knows that a significant chunk of desktop/laptop users are iOS devs, and while they started to use Xcode as a carrot, it’s now very clearly a warship-mounted harpoon, dragging everyone along in to waters infested with piranha (biting in to freedom of speech, ability to use 3rd party tools, ability to hack away at the hardware of our choice, and many others).

> Macs are less than 5% of the Steam audience

Isn’t this one a bit of a chicken/egg situation?

If you're only 5% of the market, you can't afford to try vendor lock-in tactics. But that's exactly what Apple is doing with Metal.

Maybe, but Apple's choices (described by other replies ITT) only made it worse. Deprecating OpenGL and dropping 32-bit compatibility, for instance.

As a developer, you don't have much incentive to fix it yourself.

In fact, one could argue that you’re actually penalized for trying to fix it yourself.

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