Mobile gaming and PC gaming are somewhat different markets. In particular, mobile game development companies don't have any choice but to work with Apple and Google, whereas AAA PC gaming companies have another outlet already.

I like Apple and I like their products but I think if you talk to any sizable mobile developer they'd be able to tell you stories about the difficulties of working with Apple.

Don't PC gaming companies have only one real outlet (Microsoft) to work with? Not to be confused with distribution channels such as Steam.

Are there still games that only come out on PC? I thought most big titles are released on Xbox and Playstation as well?

Not many. For example, Jagged Alliance 3 and the Total War series.

I'm a big fan of Zachtronics games (TIS-100, Shenzen I/O, etc) and they are also PC-only.

Positech Games (Democracy Series) are PC only.

Well I’m not sure I’d draw a meaningful difference between Xbox and PC in this context, but at best you’d then just have two channels: Sony and Microsoft (Xbox/PC) so it’s no different than Apple and Google.

But specifically for computer channels there’s effectively just one: Windows PC.

Most of the "sizable" mobile developers are entangled in the PC/Console game developers if in no other place than on the broad sheet with one generating revenue to pay for the increasingly expensive other. King is a part of Activision Blizzard (and a part of the pending sale to Microsoft). Zynga is a part of Take-Two (Rockstar/2K). Riot is obviously Riot. A half-dozen others are arms of Tencent in one way or another, who in turn is heavily invested in Funcom and Epic and Riot and From Software and less invested but still invested in plenty more like Ubisoft. NetEase is a mobile developer and publisher that also develops (but so far generally doesn't publish) PC and console games and has been buying studios looking to deepen that.

The list goes on; everything videogames is deeply entangled financially. Therefore, the markets must be deeply entangled, too.

I have to wonder if that’s because a lot of the hot mobile gaming companies flew too close to the sun, could not maintain their explosive growth even as they pursued F2P microtransactions hell policies, and ended up getting bought by said PC/console game developers.

My theory reverses your theory's cause and effect: King was a reverse merger that was very nearly a takeover of Activision Blizzard at the time. Zynga was thought to be the same for Take-Two (which at the time was particularly bloodied by bankruptcy-related issues and in a position to be eaten). The EA and Popcap merger is another one that was questionably a reverse merger/near takeover, especially in the way it shook up the executive board at the time. (I forgot about Popcap in the above summary because as a brand to themselves they've quietly sort of disappeared from modern mobile trends, but their logo still often shows up in EA presentations.)

In general, "lowly" mobile gaming still has more active players spending more real-world money at any given time. It's very hard not looking at the bottom lines of some of these companies, especially today's weird Activision Blizzard and not see "the tail wagging the dog" and mobile games effectively sponsoring and/or subsidizing development costs on every other form factor of videogame. The biggest exceptions seem to be Sony and Microsoft themselves, and Microsoft dabbled in mobile gaming over the years, has a big mobile gaming contractor in Arkadium (using the Microsoft brand for Solitaire and Minesweeper, among others, and generating some revenue), and does own one of the largest mobile games of all time (Minecraft) though people often don't think of it as such.

I think it also shows up in executive leadership and how F2P microtransactions hell has been infesting "AAA" and "AA" PC/console development for years now.

From my outside perspective of the industry: "Mobile games" won. PC/console games are the weird, "too expensive" afterthought for most of the videogame industry, subsidized by and beholden to the mobile games. The "gamer culture" that doesn't see most of the mobile games space as interesting or important and doesn't see mobile game players as "gamers" (or worse sees them only as "filthy casuals") is the minority out of touch with market realities.

Admittedly, that's a somewhat extreme perspective and there are plenty of exceptions and gray area and further complications. But whether or not you agree with that perspective, my earlier point remains that overall mobile games and PC/console games are inextricably linked by market forces and treating them as separate markets, and especially treating the mobile games market as somehow inferior, misses a lot of the forest.

(That [currently] Cold War between Apple and Epic has very real stakes, including for PC/consoles, and isn't just a silly "mobile gaming" problem.)

Sure. But it’s about the distribution platform, not the game company financials. Selling games that must be distributed on specific app stores is very different than selling games which are distributed through multiple channels; in the former case, your distributor has a much stronger effect on your ability to make money.

> if you talk to any sizable mobile developer they'd be able to tell you stories about the difficulties of working with Apple

If you're a sizable game developer used to working with Sony or Nintendo, how much harder is it to work with Apple?

For pure mobile devs, how much harder is it to work with Apple vs. Google, and why? If it isn't worth it, why bother? Android seems to have larger market share. How much higher are Apple's platform fees vs. Google's?

I don't think fees are a viable argument anymore. At least not at face value. Last I looked, Google, Apple and Valve all take 30% cuts. I believe Nintendo does too. Unless there are some backroom sweet heart deals at least with the major studios.

My experience is somewhat dated so I can’t say if this is still the truth, but Apple used to refuse to tell the very large company I worked at whether or not their new game would be featured before the featuring page was updated. Getting onto the featured page was critical for initial success. And you just didn’t know what to plan for.

Although, as a casual gamer, I'd like to be able to run the games that I bought in the Apple App Store on my Mac. (e.g. "DeathSpank", a fun spoof of action RPGs, is 32-bit, so it's now unplayable.)

I've used crossover to play Skyrim on my M1 mac (and they just sent me an email saying Apple leveraged crossover code for their porting toolkit), so there might have been an option prior to this - if the performance is good enough for your game.

If you do want crossover, get a free trial, but wait for a discount. I think they discount around 30-40% near the end of the trial and during special sales.

I think you nailed it.

>This toolkit is the means to reopen it. I'm not, and likely won't ever be, in the market for a gaming PC. I can't justify the purchase.

I think there's a segment of Mac users who own Windows machines exclusively for gaming. I think the value in these capabilities isn't that people will buy Apple Silicon machine primarily as gaming machines, I think the value is in enabling someone in the Apple ecosystem who plays games occasionally to opt-out of owning a Windows machine.

Yeah, I would be thrilled if this eventually enabled even 50% of my existing Steam library to work on my M1 Mac. If we get a few new releases to be Mac native, that’s just icing on the cake.

The post quoted did indeed nail it IMO.

But I don't think those who pulled the trigger on buying a whole PC in addition to Mac just to game are the audience here: those people clearly value PC gaming a lot, spending that kind of money and going through that much trouble having the necessary setup at home, taking space and time to build and maintain. Those who care that much won't be satisfied with the state of Mac gaming and continue owning those PCs.

It's for those who would like to play on Mac but currently don't play at all on anything because games they'd like to play don't work on the only performance computing device they have - that Mac.

The second category of people I'd like to add are those who were really on a fence between getting a Mac and a PC (probably laptop at this point, as laptops are sufficiently similar for such a fence to be realistic, desktop PC and desktop Mac are very different machines in comparison), could have gone either way, but would prefer a Mac slightly, but also wanted to play games - not enough to own 2 computers, but enough to begrudgingly choose a PC over a Mac just for that reason.

Those folks are likely to buy a Mac instead next time they buy a new computer, which is probably going to be years from now, for some - years from the point in time when gaming on Mac because actually accessible and good, not immediately on spot.

Hi, actual mac gamer here, I use Geforce Now to play games. Got myself a founders edition account and while I would have liked to have access to all my weird little indie games, the major games I play is on it OldWorld, Generation Zero, Stellaris, Timberborn, Elite Dangerous, etc..

Apple is never going to be taken seriously by the PC gaming industry, there is to much old wounds from being burned by Apple. So the next best thing as a MAc Gamer is to go with a streaming game service and run parallells for weird little indie games.

the only reason they are opening up for gaming on the Mac platform now is the Apple Vision system.

There is no VR games for mac, VR Chat is not for mac. To get Vision any traction they need to have Entertainment on it. Or Porn. But Apple is staunchly anti-Porn.

But we all know that their new VR movie recording system is going to be used for porn more so than birthday parties.

"I think there's a segment of Mac users who own Windows machines exclusively for gaming. I think the value in these capabilities isn't that people will buy Apple Silicon machine primarily as gaming machines, I think the value is in enabling someone in the Apple ecosystem who plays games occasionally to opt-out of owning a Windows machine."

: raises hand :

> I'm not, and likely won't ever be, in the market for a gaming PC. I can't justify the purchase.

Coincidentally you are in the market every couple of years for new Apple hardware because of planned obsolescence. Why? Because Apple designs proprietary metal that they are unwilling / unable to support every few years because they instead develop new hardware that completely breaks backwards compatibility. Then release updates to sandbag your older hardware when you still refuse to upgrade.

I just think it's funny that you'll buy three highly proprietary Mac computers every three years but you won't buy one industry standardized PC that does it all and can be upgraded. And Apple banks on you doing that and takes you to the cleaners every chance they can. And you still bag on PC's citing the economical sensibility of Apple.

Every couple of years? My MacBooks typically last a lot longer than that. I know some people do chase the latest releases but in my experience MacBooks remain plenty usable for years after purchase.

I won’t buy an industry standardized PC that can be upgraded because I need a laptop. PC laptops aren’t a whole lot more upgradable than Apple ones, it just comes with the territory.

> And you still bag on PCs

The defensiveness here is unwarranted. At no point did I “bag on” PCs. I simply stated that I am not in the market to buy a standalone PC just for playing games.

I really can’t understand this argument. Apple has the least planned obsolescence of any major manufacturer available.

The only upgradeable laptop you can buy is the Framework, which is more expensive than a baseline MBP. It also didn’t exist until a few years ago, so we don’t know if it has 10 years of longevity. What I do know is that my 2015 MBP still has hours of battery life even after being used daily for many years.

As far as software, 2017 MBPs can download Ventura, which will be supported until 2025, which seems like a long time to me.

The vast majority of PC laptops let you upgrade at least the SSD. Usually the WiFi card is socketed too and can be swapped out. And it's really not THAT hard to find laptops that still have socketed RAM if you care to.

Had you bought a ThinkPad T450 instead of your 2015 MBP, you could have upgraded the RAM, upgraded the SSD with a standard M.2 NVMe drive instead of having to hunt for a compatible one with an adapter (don't worry Apple closed that loophole in 2016, no more upgrades at all), easily replaced the battery if need be and still be running Windows 10 which is supported to at least 2025.

Apple's support is better on iOS devices than the incredibly low bar set by Android, but in the computer space they are incredibly unpredictable (will this model be supported 5 or 10 years? Who knows!) and not particularly good.

I suspect we might have to agree to disagree here, but the T450 and 2015 MBP make very different tradeoffs. I might be looking at the wrong model, but I see a 1600x900 screen (while my MBP had a 2560x1600 screen), and (admittedly high quality) plastic case vs aluminum. Immediately before the MBP I owned a Dell XPS laptop that stopped charging ~2 years into ownership.

Aren't the processors not upgradeable in either case? I really doubt you could happily use a Haswell i5 processor in 2023 without feeling limited.. even if just because software (the OS, websites, etc.) assume a higher performance floor.

Obviously there's tradeoffs. Your previous post mentioned that a 2017 MBP is still usable on Ventura and supported until 2025, is a 2017 14nm dual core i5 really a huge leap over a 2015 14nm dual core i5? Which would be more usable the one stuck at 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD and a bit faster CPU or the one upgraded with 16GB RAM (~$40), a $70 1TB SSD and a slower CPU?