Alright so if you guys watched my video from
yesterday which broke down Apple’s 1 and
a half hour long developer video, you’ll
know that Apple mentioned Gaming on their
Apple Silicon Macs many many times, so we
know that Apple is obviously making a big
push for gaming this year.
So in this video, I want to respond to Tailosive
Tech and his viewpoint that gaming isn’t
gonna change at all on Apple Silicon Macs,
and I’ll explain why I think it’s actually
the opposite.
Now I watched Tailosive Tech’s response
to my Apple Silicon gaming video on his Twitch
livestream, and first of all, I respect his
stance and opinion, and I want to thank him
for being humble and respectful. And by the
way, go check out his channel because he makes
some very great videos!
His viewpoint is that even though Apple is
now finally making their Metal graphics tools
available on Windows, and even though iPhone
and iPad games are coming to the Mac, it’s
still not enough to encourage AAA game developers
to start bringing actually great games to
the Mac.
His main point is that there are simply not
enough people that use Macs that actually
want to play games, and I actually agree with
that, at least right now. That’s why we
don’t have very many great games on the
Mac, and that’s the same reason why Rocket
League for the Mac was cancelled.
So now, let me explain my viewpoint and why
I think Apple Silicon is gonna revive gaming
on the Mac.
It’s obvious that this year, Apple is putting
a huge focus on gaming. I’ll quickly list
off the main changes.
For the first time ever, Apple is giving us
full-fledged controller support for third-party
controllers across all of their platforms,
including supporting every single button,
even the rear triggers on the Xbox controllers
and the light bar and the touchpad on the
PS4.
The iPad is finally getting keyboard and mouse
gaming support for the first time ever, which
includes the ability to lock the pointer for
fullscreen games.
Apple Silicon Macs are gonna be able to run
completely unmodified iPhone and iPad apps
and games as is on day 1, which is huge.
And they’re already revamping touch based
controllers to act as mouse pointer clicks
and drags, and even zooms.
And for complex games, since the iPad is getting
keyboard and mouse gaming support, Apple Silicon
Macs will instantly get that functionality
as well for games that adopt it, or they can
of course, use a gaming controller.
Apple completely revamped their Game Center
which now supports cross-platform online multiplayer
gaming across thebac.
Apple is also now allowing the resolution
and UI of landscape iPhone and iPad apps to
be automatically resized to match the native
resolution of Macs, so 16:9 for the iMac and
16:10 for the MacBook.
And Apple is completely changing up their
SwiftUI, Metal APIs and coding so that developers
have to do as little work as possible to support
all of Apple’s platforms, and they’re
gonna continue working on this every year
with each WWDC event.
So basically, Apple is setting the groundwork
so that if a game developer decides to bring
their game to the Mac, it’s gonna be easier
than ever before, it’s gonna have much better
controller input support, and it’s gonna
take less work to actually maintain the game.
Now that’s where we reach the problem, which
is Tailosive Tech’s main point, how will
this encourage game developers to actually
start bringing their games to the Mac?
Well, first of all, the main goal that game
developers have is to make money, and whether
this upsets all of you guys or not, over the
past few years, mobile gaming has been quickly
taking over the gaming market, while PC and
console gaming has been slowly going down.
And this trend is expected to continue, so
realistically, in the long term, if game developers
want to make as much money as possible, they
eventually need to bring their games to the
mobile devices.
And that’s why we’ve recently started
to see AAA game developers transition to mobile
gaming.
Here’s a quick list of some of these games.
Epic Games and Fornite, PUBG Mobile, Blizzard’s
Hearthstone, Activision's call of duty mobile,
Riot Games and League of Legends Wild rift,
Apex Legends mobile, and Blizzard's Diablo
Immortal.
These are some of the first AAA-game Studios
bringing their games to mobile, because that’s
where the money’s at in the future, and
Apple Silicon Macs are gonna be able to run
all of those games.
Now I can agree and admit that the current
x86 AAA Windows games that you love to play
on your PC are not gonna come to the Mac unless
the developer decides to port it over.
But here’s why I think AAA games are still
gonna make it to the Mac.
Because Apple Silicon chips in the iPhone
and iPad have been getting so powerful in
recent years, in fact even supporting Ray
Tracing, this shows us that the Apple Silicon
Macs are gonna be even more powerful.
And based on calculations I made in a previous
video, Apple Silicon Macs have a TON of potential.
So within a couple of years of chip improvements,
like TSMC’s 3nm process in 2022, the performance
will be so good that game developers will
realize that they can build much better games
for these chips than ever before.
And since the mobile gaming market is taking
over PC gaming with each passing year, more
and more AAA game developers will start creating
better and better mobile games which will
eventually become the AAA games of the future
that will run on ARM-based Macs and ARM-based
PCs many years down the road.
And since those games for the Mac will use
the same codebase as on the iPad, the iPhone
and the Apple TV, the developer doesn’t
have to optimize and fix bugs for the various
platforms separately.
This was the reason why Minecraft for the
Apple TV was cancelled and why Rocket League
on Mac was cancelled. The developers had to
invest a lot of extra time to maintain their
games for those platforms, which they won’t
have to do in the future.
So basically, this is how I can imagine AAA
gaming on Apple Silicon Macs playing out in
the future.
A game developer will create a game with very
high-quality graphics for the Mac, and then
make minor and relatively easy adjustments
like lowering the graphics quality presets,
the resolution and adjusting the UI for every
other Apple platform, like the Apple TV, the
iPad and the iPhone.
And that way, their game supports all Apple
Devices while only having to do the major
bulk of the code work one time for the Mac,
so they’re reaching the maximum amount of
the Apple gaming market.
So if a game developer ultimately wants to
create a game for the iPhone, they can do
their code work as if it’s for the Mac,
and reach all of Apple’s platforms at once
instead of just the iPhone, which is definitely
worth the work of adjusting the UI and resolution
across platforms.
And the beauty of it is that when there’s
a bug that needs fixing, or code optimizations
that need to be done, the developer only has
to do it once, since the main code is shared
across the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple TV
and the Mac.
This alone will make it well worth it for
developers to bring their games to the Mac.
And since Apple now supports Universal purchase
across all of their platforms, you can buy
the game just once and have access to it across
all of your Apple devices.
So a player can play that game on their Apple
TV on the big screen, or on their MacBook
at a coffee shop, or on their iPad on the
couch, or on their iPhone while on the bus,
and their progress is automatically saved
across all of the platforms.
And that person playing on their Mac will
get online multiplayer crossplay support so
they can play with players using any Apple
device platform, depending on the input controller
device he’s using.
Now of course, all of this won’t happen
overnight, it may take a couple of years to
see this kind of gaming fully implemented.
But I can tell you that it’s definitely
gonna begin when Apple Silicon Macs start
making it to the market later this year, and
game developers realize that they can kill
4 platforms with one code by building their
games for the Mac first.
And it’ll definitely start to begin when
Activision Blizzard and other game studios
announce how much revenue their new mobile
games have already brought in, like the current
Call of Duty Mobile and future games like
Diablo immortal and League of Legends Wild
Rift.
And the even bigger point is that if these
initial changes to gaming that Apple made
to their platforms at this year’s WWDC already
make all of the things that I mentioned possible,
imagine what Apple is gonna announce at future
WWDC events over the next couple of years
that will make it even easier and more worth
it for developers to bring their games to
the Mac.
So based on all of that, I’m extremely confident
that Apple Silicon is gonna improve the gaming
situation for the Mac, since it’ll support
where the future gaming market is currently
headed, which is gaming on ARM architecture-based
chips.
And this transition will be sped up significantly
if over the next couple of years, Apple Silicon
turns out to be much more powerful than we’re
expecting, which may in turn cause the next
version of Windows to support both x86 and
ARM-based chips.
And maybe in a couple of years, Intel will
have no other choice than to start investing
more into making ARM-based chips.
However, I do want to agree with Tailosive
Tech on one point, that the current x86 Windows
games that are available on PCs right now
probably won’t be making it to the Mac,
and for that, I actually found a really great
solution to that problem.
So if you want to know how that will be possible,
click that subscribe button above so you don’t
miss out on my next video. And definitely
check out Tailosive Tech’s channel right
over there. Thanks for watching, and we’ll
see you in the next video!
