Comment by jwells89 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jwells89 | Hacker News Reader

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If Apple could someone make Macs relevant for gaming again it'd be interesting, but I'm not sure what the roadmap to that result looks like. Implementing Vulkan support would likely help, but PC games are still chiefly written with DirectX, which is a big part of why Proton is necessary.

Perhaps the key is for them to work closely with Valve to make Proton work well on macOS, which would also neatly deal with the 32-bit issue because WINE/CrossOver on macOS handles 32-bit Windows binaries just fine despite macOS having dropped support for 32-bit Mac binaries ages ago.

This however seems unlikely because even setting aside the issue of how Apple might see doing this as pushing users to a competing marketplace, it also cedes some amount of the Mac's functionality and thus marketability to a third party which Apple has never been keen on.

> but I'm not sure what the roadmap to that result looks like.

The only real impediment is that they need to care. The one thing in common across all successful gaming platforms is that the platform owner cares a lot and works closely with game devs to make things work:

- Microsoft/Nvidia/AMD ship game-specific patches and optimizations for Windows games

- console makers work closely with third-party devs and give advice, feedback, certification, etc.

- Valve specifically has put tons of effort into SteamOS and certifies individual games as ready/not ready for the Steam Deck

All it takes is a platform owner who cares, and cares on the level of interventions for particular games, but this is totally foreign to Apple's DNA (both in general, and for games in particular). They'd need a huge culture shift.

> Perhaps the key is for them to work closely with Valve to make Proton work well on macOS

Apple are doing something very similar already with their Game Porting Kit framework. It supports DX12 games translated to Metal and runs very well. This effort only become public this year, though, so the fruits of that labour are yet to be borne.

You are not allowed to release and sell a game using the Game Porting Kit. Apple will strike you down for that. It's only here to help developers port their games to use Metal, which is peak Apple: force everyone to use your unused, non standard API to support a few thousand customers.

But then again, let's face the truth: Apple doesn't care about having Counter Strike on your Macbook. They make billions doing absolutely fuck all and taking 30% of all microtransactions on all App Store games.

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