As I wrote my comment above, I suddenly thought of Nintendo's strategy: sufficient hardware to support a fantastic experience.

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.