That said, it's been a year since the M1 release, and Apple could have paid a few hundreds/millions for a few AAA game ports. They didn't, and that says how much they care about gaming on these devices.
Apple's bread and butter is iOS gaming (where it takes in more game profit than Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Activision combined) rather than Windows PC game ports to macOS.
Any source on this "game profit" metric ? It seems plausible, but I was looking for the details of this calculation/estimation. For example, what percentage of App Store revenue is game related ?
> Windows PC game ports to macOS.
I specifically said AAA games, not Windows PC games.
Spoken like someone who has never seen how poorly Microsoft's x86 to ARM emulation works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA
They had difficulty getting programs to work at all, much less have acceptable performance under emulation.
Sometimes I wonder why they are still a software company. I really like their keyboards and mice. Their software, not so much.
Games are developed currently to run on x86 Windows machines. Predominantly Windows machines. If the game is designed to run on MacOS, then more likely you'll see a performant experience. The issue isn't inherently architecture or Apple's chips, it's the lack of software choices available on the platform. Though you can now argue that Apple's platform has increased significantly due to the compatibility with the App Store bringing games from mobile to the desktop.
Gamers would like to play the games they've bought (or free to play that they've dedicated time to) on platforms those games support, and most of those games do not support MacOS, or Linux. However, with Proton emulation, and EasyAC & BattlEye now working with Valve to improve Anti-Cheat on Linux, we may see a greater compatibility with the aforementioned systems enabling cross-platform play.