Apple’s latest gaming efforts won’t move the needle

Believe it or not, Apple is already dominant in gaming. Most games, globally, are played on mobile phones, and despite the greater sales of Android-powered phones, the iPhone is the mobile gaming device.

But it still feels like Apple is always looking to break through with real gamers. At WWDC this year, it had another pitch for gamers and game developers, and it felt just like the last few years: big promises about how great gaming is on Apple’s platforms, how great it can be for developers. There’s even a dedicated Games app now!

However, just as the efforts of the last few years have been unsuccessful at turning Apple’s platforms into something “gamers” care about, so too will this year’s effort fail to move the needle. It boils down to the same thing: Apple just isn’t tackling the core problems that keep gaming enthusiasts off its platforms.

There are gamers, and there are Gamers

By most accounts, about 3 billion or so people play video games, with about half of those primarily playing mobile games, with console and PC gamers split between the other half. Mobile gaming brings in a lot more revenue, too. So if you play games, mobile or otherwise, you’re a gamer.

But then there are the “gamers.”

Apple’s new gaming efforts are an attempt to attract this group, those people whose preferred entertainment is playing video games, who make it part of their cultural identity, and who play primarily on console or PC. This group of core enthusiasts is often focused on large-scale, big-budget AAA games. Games you play with a controller or keyboard and mouse, not a touchscreen. The kind of big-brand games that spawn movies and TV shows.

Apple is definitely making it possible for those kinds of games to be on its platforms, but it’s not making it preferable to play them or even publish them there.

The Games app barely scratches the surface

To attract these core gamers, Apple is trying two things this year. One is introducing a new Games app on each of its gaming platforms—iPhone, iPad, and Mac—that pulls together your friends list, achievements, and leaderboards (from Game Center) for its social activities, such as issuing challenges to friends or playing multiplayer games. It also shows all the games you ever bought from the App Store and gives access to Apple Arcade.

This stuff is fine, but the most lackluster part of it is the social capabilities. System-level voice chat and parties that integrate with multiplayer games are table stakes for real gaming platforms, and it’s just not a part of what Apple has built into its platform, for gamers or developers. And on the Mac, the Games app isn’t of much use if it doesn’t pull in games you’ve installed from other stores or downloaded directly from the web.

It’s not all useless. The new game overlay is long overdue. While you’re in a game, it pulls up a quick overlay menu for relevant system settings or your friends list. It’s years late, but at least it’s here.

The other change is improvements to Metal 4 on macOS Tahoe and other developer tools. They’re adding frame interpolation and de-noising. Again, years behind PC gaming, but at least they’re closing the gap.

The cost and value problem

The main issue that Apple hasn’t addressed is simple: non-mobile Mac gaming is a terrible value proposition for gamers, even by Apple’s standards. People expect to pay a bit more for an Apple device, but to get equivalent gaming performance as a PlayStation 5, which is a five-year-old console that costs $450, mind you, you need at least an M4 Pro. And the cheapest way to get that a $1,400 Mac mini.

A similarly-priced gaming PC would deliver at least twice the actual real-world game performance as that Mac mini. To achieve decent performance in those top-end AAA games, you need to step up to a Mac Studio with M4 Max, and pay for the upgrade to the “full” version of the chip with 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores.

That’s $2,500! And while you can definitely spend that much and more on a gaming PC, it would be a lot faster when it comes to playing games rather than editing video or audio with 100 tracks.

Think of it this way–what if an $800 iPhone actually delivered HALF the performance of some $500 Samsung Galaxy phone? When it comes to playing premium, AAA, “controller or keyboard” class games, that’s where Apple’s platforms are. Half the performance, twice the price.

But there are other value problems, too. Apple’s keyboards are terrible for gaming, so you need a replacement. Don’t get me started on their mice.

Even if the games were there (and they’re not, as I’ll discuss below), Apple simply has nothing that comes close to a traditional console or a gaming PC in terms of cost and performance. We’re not talking about the “Apple tax” of 10 or 20 percent—it’s just wildly off base.

Apple needs to sell Macs with literally double the GPU performance at the same price, or an Apple TV that costs twice as much with 6-8x the graphics performance, to make them even reasonable–not leading–choices for gamers. It’s just not going to happen.

The games just aren’t there

Even if the hardware didn’t have a terrible price/performance ratio, the games just aren’t there. Apple’s call out to big games on the way this year? Crimson Desert and InZOI, a couple of South Korean games that aren’t anywhere near the top of a gamer’s most-wanted list.

The “incredible games just arrived” slide was full of stuff first released on console or PC years ago, such as the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes (2019 and 2020), Sniper Elite 4 (2017), Valheim (2021), and Control (2019).

The “even more on the way” slide wasn’t much better. Sniper Elite 5, Cyberpunk 2077, Dead Island 2, and the latest Hitman trilogy? These are perfectly fine games, but if you’re a “gamer,” you played and moved on from them a long time ago. Basically, the future of premium, non-mobile gaming on an Apple gaming devcice is a tiny fraction of the hits from years ago.

Gamers care about playing the latest games, while they’re still new and all the other gamers are still talking about them online. While Twitch viewers are tuning in. The best games of last year (or four years ago) just aren’t part of the zeitgeist anymore.

Apple is for mobile, not premium gaming

Apple dominates mobile gaming because iPhones deliver the best game performance at competitive prices, and even the more affordable iPhones run circles around similarly priced Android phones. You can find a cheaper phone, but it won’t come close to matching an iPhone’s game performance. And perhaps more importantly, every major mobile game is a day one release on iPhone, sometimes exclusively.

It’s the exact opposite with the premium games that gamers care about. Macs give you far worse gaming performance at a far higher price than the consoles or Windows PCs Apple is trying to lure gamers from. The core gaming features, such as unified voice chat, parties, and multiple user log-in for couch co-op, just aren’t there in any meaningful way. The games users care about most will be lucky to arrive on Apple’s platforms in three or four years, with precious few exceptions (notably Assassin’s Creed Shadows).

An Apple TV 4K is cheaper than most consoles, but it’s about as powerful as a 13-year-old PlayStation 4. It needs literally eight times the graphics performance to catch up to a five-year-old PS5. It’s just not going to cut it with gamers, and it’s not even close.

Imagine if the iPhone found itself in the same situation as Apple’s other platforms, with respect to gaming: A bit player in mobile gaming market because other phones offer more than twice the game performance at a lower price, and had all the hot games YEARS ahead of iPhone. What would Apple do? What changes would it make to iPhone hardware, software, and its policies and business decisions that affect gamers and publishers?

Those are the changes Apple needs to make with the Mac and Apple TV if it wants to move the needle with gamers. Not a new gaming app.

Author: Jason Cross, Senior Editor, Macworld