Every year Apple talks about their commitment to gaming, and every year macOS gaming gets worse. It was never in great shape, but switching to Metal, dropping 32-bit support, and launching Apple Silicon killed it deader than a doornail. Then there was the whole Epic debacle, and the Xbox/game streaming apps debacle, and the (multiple) Nvidia debacles... The benefits of those choices usually outweigh the loss, but they mean there will never be significant games on Macs again.

I expect killing their relationships with every game company in the world will make their VR headset efforts rather painful.

> I expect killing their relationships with every game company in the world will make their VR headset efforts rather painful.

That VR headset is going to be a lot more like an iPhone or iPad than a Mac and there's no shortage of games on iOS; they'll be just fine.

Every time I play a mobile game I regret it. They are just built differently and a terrible substitute for anyone actually interested in gaming.

This is kind of a weird take. If you define "gaming" as console/PC gaming, then yeah, of course someone only interested in those won't be interested in mobile games. But that says nothing about people who are interested in mobile games; you're free to define that as not "gaming" if you want, but that doesn't really change the fact that there clearly are people out there who play them, even if you decide that what they're doing is different.

No, I mean gaming as in not a nickel and dime fest. To be clear, I don't mind spending a lot of money on games. What I am saying is that this fundamentally changes the design and core loop of these games. Instead of making it fun, they add all of these mechanics like daily chores, microtransactions, loot boxes, etc... Unfortunately this disaster has been spreading to traditional gaming as well.

Apple is all about user experience, until it comes to gaming. Their gaming ecosystem is trash. It's like going to a Vegas casino without the free food and entertainment.

Yeah, this is very unfortunate development. It is really tough to find good mobile first games that aren't infested with grind or micro transactions.

Apple’s got just the solution for that too: Apple Arcade. No surprise at all if their VR headset comes with a year of Apple Arcade, which will of course have some titles at launch designed for the new hardware.

I enjoyed "Papers, please", FEZ and Pokémon SS (via Retroarch) on iOS/iPadOS. But I wouldn't game any action games on iOS either. The point where I have to use a game pad is where I'd just go to an actual PC or console.

for m1 gaming, nintendo switch emulation works surprisingly well with ryujinx

https://blog.ryujinx.org/the-impossible-port-macos/

I’ve been looking at this out of pure curiosity — it’s surprising that it’s a thing, but maybe it shouldn’t be.

I own a switch (or rather I suppose I should say my kids do) so I don’t need to emulate it, but I do wonder what it would be like to play BotW on a 5k screen. I know it wouldn’t run in 5k, but maybe there are mods or ways to crank up the settings? It would be fun to explore some time.

Even more surprising: it's written in C#

Why do you think it's surprising it's written in c#?

Previously low performance and a still low popularity?

Not sure what your definition or filters are for low popularity but c# and .net in general purpose and application development are very popular according to various developer surveys. Depending on the survey often in the top five to ten.

I wouldn't say it's poor performing, definitely not rust, c or c++ capable, but you can write performant code through various tools, processes and optimisations, or bind to libs written in other languages e.g. rust, c++ to have them handle with that must be incredibly performant. Unity is a good example .net C# and C++ working together to deliver a performant solution.

> I wouldn't say it's poor performing

Let me reiterate that I meant that it was previously low performing. I've developed in .Net since 2009 but only last few years have brought significant improvements in performance.

C# is quite popular in game dev circles because of the ubiquity of the Unity engine which uses it as its scripting language.

Sure, but presumably they did not write an emulator for the switch in the unity engine...

They have a commitment to (mobile) gaming

I'm pretty sure that Apple will bring a major new product like AR/VR to market with a bunch of apps lined up. I doubt the lack of gaming titles is causing them to not bring it to market.

VR/AR is not mobile gaming and its not PC gaming. It's a new method of interaction, especially AR. Gaming will be just one aspect of it.

I suspect a whole new genre. Pokemon Go on steroids.

>I suspect a whole new genre. Pokemon Go on steroids.

Interesting that the canonical example is a game! :)

There was actually a time in Mac gaming in the late '90s through early '00s where most blockbuster strategy games would get ported to Mac OS. And this was when there were way fewer Macs in circulation than there are today. For example Rise of Nations, Age of Mythology, Age of Empires II, Company of Heroes, etc. all had Mac native ports. Today, I'd like to play Age of Empires IV and Company of Heroes 3 but I'll probably need to get a PC for that.