If only the M1 Mac were as powerful as gaming devices like the Nintendo Switch or the Steam Deck. Or the iPhone, which can run games like Resident Evil Village or Death Stranding - not to mention mobile titles like Genshin Impact, or a bunch of great Apple Arcade games.
No idea what Apple is thinking. ;-)
Not to mention the M1 Air is the or near weakest A.S. Mac you can buy.
Nintendo plays like Apple builds. It's clearly a great way to make games.
And of course, "casual" games on Apple's handheld devices can be successful. Even spawning new game paradigms like Niantic's Pokémon Go -- yes, that's from arch-rival Google, but there's no denying Apple's influence in powerful handheld device design.
Unified memory architecture, resemblance to console design...
So yes, actually: there's plenty of hardware capability even in the lower-end Apple Silicon platforms, enough for great games.
Sigh. I remember it as if I were in the room at the time, I knew a couple of people who were there in 1999 when Bungie, already Mac-famous from Marathon, demoed Halo ... then Microsoft bought it. Holy dogcow...
Apple didn't have the cash then to attract game studios, and the longevity of their platform was still a legitimate concern. It's a very different playing field now.
Console design ca. 2001, right down to having its own graphics APIs that nobody else uses
But it clearly lags in 3D gaming performance; the silicon just isn't there to the same degree. It might compete with low-TDP SoC graphics such as AMD's APUs, but it's not a gaming device.
(...and now I resume reading the article...)