So against games that they just became a Patron supporter of Blender [1]...
[1] https://www.blender.org/press/apple-joins-blender-developmen...
[1] https://www.blender.org/press/apple-joins-blender-developmen...
Besides supporting creator workflows (Final Cut Pro, best in class laptop graphics, Blender etc) doesn't mean they want to directly support gamers as buyers, just that they believe creators who produce games (or other media) are strong market for them go after.
The marketing is designed strongly towards the WFH post pandemic designer market. They either had to ship their expensive Mac desktops to their home or come in and work at office last year. This laptop's graphics performance pitch is for that market to buy/upgrade now.
The M* Mac Pros will start out with built-in graphics starting at the M1 Max level and going 4 or perhaps 8x higher, still using integrated graphics.
The fact that Apple now supports $5K dedicated graphics cards on the pro series suggests that the pro M* Macs will be able to use any graphics card (that supports Metal) that you can buy.
The fact that Apple's store was crashing continually after the new laptops were announced suggests that the market for Mac games is going to grow a lot faster than anyone thinks...
Delivery dates are even now within 1 week after shipping starts (Nov 3-10), so demand seems within their initial estimates.
Hardware is not only reason gaming is not strong on Mac. Microsoft had a decent hardware and software offering for their Nokia phones in the later years, that didn't help them.
It will take ecosystem of developers investing years of effort in building a deep catalog. Game publishers are not going to risk spending that kind of effort unless there is already enough of market for large titles to recover the money, while this can grow organically, to compete with MS who have XBox as well as dominance in PC gaming, Apple will need to be active in their attempt.
A lot of effort in dev community engagement, incentivize publishers to release on their platform, get exclusive deals etc. After all this, it still may fail. Apple has not shown any interest in even trying to do that so far.
I would expect demand to taper off during pre order phase. People who would pre order are likely to do it earlier than later, to not have to wait for a month like now.
The rest are going to wait for reviews be able to check it out at a store and buy one when they need it/afford it or at a store over the next months.