Apple and Gaming

Apple needs to put gamers in charge of their gaming initiatives—or at least have a group like they do their pro users group. I don’t think wanting engaging games is unreasonable, but the way the story gets told feels too much like decision-making is being driven by bean-counters. I don’t think they would take that approach with Apple TV+, so maybe they should afford games similar respect.

I like gacha games, so I would not want to see them eliminated from the App Store. I don't think you could do a game like that without a recurring revenue stream (due to regular updates), and a subscription would kill the player base. Look at the MMO market. The only major, subscription-based MMO to launch in the last decade and remain subscription-based is Final Fantasy XIV, which was almost certainly a fluke. Others that launched had to switch their business models (to B2P or F2P) lest they lose too much of their audiences.

I think IAPs need regulated. Many countries, particularly in Asia, already do this. Apple could get out in front of this and impose similar requirements on IAPs in the App Store, but I think Apple is too addicted to services revenue to do that. It’s the same problem they have with refusing to alter their cut or their stance on external subscriptions (even though is going to cause antitrust problems). In all probability, it will take government regulation to induce Apple to change.

kenada said:

Apple needs to put gamers in charge of their gaming initiatives—or at least have a group like they do their pro users group. I don’t think wanting engaging games is unreasonable, but the way the story gets told feels too much like decision-making is being driven by bean-counters.

Click to expand...

Yeah I think this is correct, the last part here. Apple last year pushed services, it felt like a late to the party idea, lets jump on the bandwagon, with games rolled into it. If they really valued games they should have one up'd it to get people on board instead of what they did. Sure there is some good here. But long run I never will see Apple as a gaming platform in the tradition gamer sense, they never have been that interested. Sure they will sell ton's of games and whatnot because of massive user base, but it will never be a gaming platform. But who knows maybe Apple will prove us(me) wrong.

orionquest said:

kenada said:

Apple needs to put gamers in charge of their gaming initiatives—or at least have a group like they do their pro users group. I don’t think wanting engaging games is unreasonable, but the way the story gets told feels too much like decision-making is being driven by bean-counters.

Click to expand...

Yeah I think this is correct, the last part here. Apple last year pushed services, it felt like a late to the party idea, lets jump on the bandwagon, with games rolled into it. If they really valued games they should have one up'd it to get people on board instead of what they did. Sure there is some good here. But long run I never will see Apple as a gaming platform in the tradition gamer sense, they never have been that interested. Sure they will sell ton's of games and whatnot because of massive user base, but it will never be a gaming platform. But who knows maybe Apple will prove us(me) wrong.

Click to expand...

Mobile gaming is already the largest gaming platform by any metric you care to name, and it's not even close. The "ugh, but they're not real games" attitude is incredibly patronizing and anachronistic.

ant1pathy said:

orionquest said:

kenada said:

Apple needs to put gamers in charge of their gaming initiatives—or at least have a group like they do their pro users group. I don’t think wanting engaging games is unreasonable, but the way the story gets told feels too much like decision-making is being driven by bean-counters.

Click to expand...

Yeah I think this is correct, the last part here. Apple last year pushed services, it felt like a late to the party idea, lets jump on the bandwagon, with games rolled into it. If they really valued games they should have one up'd it to get people on board instead of what they did. Sure there is some good here. But long run I never will see Apple as a gaming platform in the tradition gamer sense, they never have been that interested. Sure they will sell ton's of games and whatnot because of massive user base, but it will never be a gaming platform. But who knows maybe Apple will prove us(me) wrong.

Click to expand...

Mobile gaming is already the largest gaming platform by any metric you care to name, and it's not even close. The "ugh, but they're not real games" attitude is incredibly patronizing and anachronistic.

Click to expand...

Agreed. It would do well for people to differentiate "PC Gaming" from "gaming". The former has always been a weak spot on Apple hardware (with Boot camp as a possible mitigation) while the latter is thriving, so much so that Apple designed a core Service around it.

The hurdles to PC Gaming on Mac are not insurmountable, but I think it's clear by now that Apple is not going to alter its over-arching platform strategy just to preserve or induce expansion of PC Gaming on the platform. From their POV, they have great hardware, great APIs and it's up to developers if they want to cater to Mac PC Gamers or not.

With so many AAA games being "exclusive" to specific platforms, I think Apple's internal marketing and strategy tell them that those consumers are gonna buy a Windows PC or console anyway, so chasing that market by adopting or supporting other development paradigms isn't really a winning strategy long term.

Mobile gaming is already the largest gaming platform by any metric you care to name, and it's not even close. The "ugh, but they're not real games" attitude is incredibly patronizing and anachronistic.

Click to expand...

I feel like you're arguing semantics and taking issue with the letter of what orionquest is saying rather than the meaning. I think it's clear the challenge is not "can I play games (speaking broadly/generically) on an Apple device" but rather, why is there so little support on Apple platforms for large-budget, immersive, often adult-themed and targeted games that are the headliners for "gaming" as a genre? Destiny. Halo. Doom Ultimate. All Of Us. The Wolfenstein sequels. These are just the handful off the top of my head. And what many of these have in common is they are the result of exclusive publishing and financial relationships between a parent company and a development house.

Microsoft and Sony have platforms that are, in a way, just as bespoke and isolated as Apple's. Their approach has been to put real money behind A-level games to draw headliners and exclusives to their platform (I've played Halo and its sequels competitively for almost a decade. It's a 5 billion dollar franchise with each new title crossing $100M in development expenses. Halo: Infinite, the 6th installment coming in 2021, is rumored to be closer to $200M). Apple's message seems to be: We'd rather encourage more of what already exists on our largest platform. Sure, iOS devices make up a super successful gaming platform, the biggest ever—no question. But with a startling lack of depth or variety.

Contrast Apple and gaming with their approach to original content for AppleTV+. Apple just dropped $120M, winning a bidding war with Warner Bros, for exclusive rights to an upcoming Will Smith movie. That movie may or may not be any good, but Apple shows it has the stomach to throw its war chest around to land tentpole features and draw attention to its nascent video platform. In addition, they've spent big money funding animation, comedies, dramas, children's programming, science fiction, even documentaries. From shorts to feature-length films. Surprising levels of depth and breadth. They're actually aggressive about it. It's cool to see Apple take a creative platform so seriously. All we hear about is how great and awesome their ARM chip efforts are and how great and awesome the Mac will be as a result. It'd be nice to see some truly killer games take advantage of that, not yet more "match 3 puzzle games."

But hey, it's Apple's platform and Apple's wallet. They can choose to embrace gaming and the opportunity of what their technological prowess allows to whatever extent they like.

cateye said:

Mobile gaming is already the largest gaming platform by any metric you care to name, and it's not even close. The "ugh, but they're not real games" attitude is incredibly patronizing and anachronistic.

Click to expand...

I feel like you're arguing semantics and taking issue with the letter of what orionquest is saying rather than the meaning. I think it's clear the challenge is not "can I play games (speaking broadly/generically) on an Apple device" but rather, why is there so little support on Apple platforms for large-budget, immersive, often adult-themed and targeted games that are the headliners for "gaming" as a genre? Destiny. Halo. Doom Ultimate. All Of Us. The Wolfenstein sequels. These are just the handful off the top of my head. And what many of these have in common is they are the result of exclusive publishing and financial relationships between a parent company and a development house.

Microsoft and Sony have platforms that are, in a way, just as bespoke and isolated as Apple's. Their approach has been to put real money behind A-level games to draw headliners and exclusives to their platform (I've played Halo and its sequels competitively for almost a decade. It's a 5 billion dollar franchise with each new title crossing $100M in development expenses. Halo: Infinite, the 6th installment coming in 2021, is rumored to be closer to $200M). Apple's message seems to be: We'd rather encourage more of what already exists on our largest platform. Sure, iOS devices make up a super successful gaming platform, the biggest ever—no question. But with a startling lack of depth or variety.

...
All we hear about is how great and awesome their ARM chip efforts are and how great and awesome the Mac will be as a result. It'd be nice to see some truly killer games take advantage of that, not yet more "match 3 puzzle games."

But hey, it's Apple's platform and Apple's wallet. They can choose to embrace gaming to whatever extent they like, but there's a reason I have only 3 games on my iOS devices I play with any regularity and none on my Macs.

Click to expand...

Yea, exactly. I’ve found some incredibly fun games on iOS, but generally that just isn’t where the games I want to play end up. The recent-ish addition of controller support certainly helped with games like Marathon, but more attention is needed. I sincerely hope they keep pushing forward, but all the great hardware in the world doesn’t help me when I want to play the latest From Software game, or VR gems like HL: Alyx.

Certainly, if Apple could improve (substantially), I’d prefer to buy games for iOS (or the Mac with full cross-device compatibility) over buying on consoles. Consoles are, for me, a necessary evil to get the games I want. The limited cross-generation compatibility and the limited space in my infotainment area means that they’re always my last choice for where to buy games. I can easily pop open Steam and fire up a game from a decade ago. I can’t do the same with my old PS3 because it’s sitting boxed up somewhere and the games won’t work on a modern console.

cateye said:

Contrast Apple and gaming with their approach to original content for AppleTV+. Apple just dropped $120M, winning a bidding war with Warner Bros, for exclusive rights to an upcoming Will Smith movie. That movie may or may not be any good, but Apple shows it has the stomach to throw its war chest around to land tentpole features and draw attention to its nascent video platform. In addition, they've spent big money funding animation, comedies, dramas, children's programming, science fiction, even documentaries. From shorts to feature-length films. Surprising levels of depth and breadth. They're actually aggressive about it. It's cool to see Apple take a creative platform so seriously. All we hear about is how great and awesome their ARM chip efforts are and how great and awesome the Mac will be as a result. It'd be nice to see some truly killer games take advantage of that, not yet more "match 3 puzzle games."

Click to expand...

I think the obvious difference here is reach. Apple has something like a 1.3 billion device installed base capable of playing AppleTV+ content. The Mac installed base is a fraction of that. And the part of the Mac installed base that is realistically capable of giving a good user experience on a $100M AAA PC game is even smaller than that. Apple needs to reach critical mass of devices capable of playing AAA games before they can push on AAA gaming. That means one of three things:

• 1-Sell more high end Macs
• 2-Radically increase the graphics capability of low end Macs
• 3-Figure out how to make AAA games work on other screens (like AppleTV and iPad)

The first two are an an open question with the ARM transition. I think it's reasonably likely that Apple will choose to allocate enough chip design resources to make huge gains in GPU performance at the low end. What will happen to the top end MacBook Pros and high end iMacs is a little murkier.

The third option seems like the road they're going down with controller support. They would clearly love to be able to say, "If you have a AAA game on Windows you can port it to "Apple" and have it run on both Macs and AppleTV. Given a sufficiently performant next generation AppleTV, that could substantially increase the installed base target for any developer weighing whether to port to the Mac.

But these things all need to be in place BEFORE Apple starts backing up the money truck to AAA developers or it's just a waste of cash.

@cateye

I think you make a valid point that Apple could throw a lot of money to get exclusive titles, but there would still the the issue that those AAA titles would be isolated on a platform that can't really compete with all the other production houses concurrently developing for existing platforms.

For the budget conscious gamer that is trying to decide which platform to spend their money on, for Apple to compete against Sony or MS, they'd have to build a massive library of titles to try and play in that space.

AppleTV+ might seem analogous, but it isn't really because that platform also plays all the other content as well. AppleTV+ doesn't have to provide 100% of the value proposition for having an AppleTV device, it just adds another option to an already rich content library. If AppleTV *only* streamed AppleTV+ content, it would be dead as the Dodo.

It should be said, that I personally would love it if Apple pursued an AppleTV+ model with respect to AAA PC Gaming. I have largely stopped playing PC Games because the desire to deal with BootCamp or maintain a "gaming box" Windows PC just isn't worth it to me any more. I've gravitated to console gaming to scratch that itch.

But I don't expect Apple to embark on such a path because it really is tangential to their core businesses and strategies. No one is likely to buy a Mac just to play an exclusive gaming title. Big AAA titles might be a value add to people who already want to buy a Mac, but I doubt it is a major factor and I'm sure Apple has a lot of market research and data to measure it.

I don't know if there are serious PC Gamers at key leadership roles in Apple to drive such a thing, but even if there were, they probably just have consoles or Windows PCs for that purpose just like most serious PC gamers.

edited to add: wrylachlan presented a similar argument to mine in a better structured way. props.

From the other thread:

0xD34DC0DE said:

ScifiGeek said:

japtor said:

Yeah I'm curious what "engagement" means here exactly, cause this is pretty vague:

Click to expand...

I think it's pretty clear, that they want games that don't end, so people want to keep playing them indefinitely, and thus keep paying their monthly subscription fees.

So these games that have infinite replay, and some addictive mechanism is what they are looking for.

Click to expand...

Those are the kind of games I hate. If there is no end to a game, there is no satisfaction to be gained. The App Store has no shortage of grindy games, endless runners, Idle whatevers. I was under the impression that Apple Arcade was to break free of these kind of games and give developers more freedom to create good games that don’t use psychological mindfucks to keep players addicted to the endless grind.

Click to expand...

(Ignoring that Grindstone isn’t endless...) That’s still a bit open to interpretation, cause something like Tetris fits the bill too then. If the additive mechanism is the gameplay itself is still that a problem? Compared to the usual App Store psychological grind to drive IAP it’s different but still technically "engagement".

As for the broader topic (not just AA), when I think about the hurdles it always comes back to money. The big publishers aren’t going to give up their ~$60 price points, while the dominant games in Apple land are centered around being free with oodles of money to be made in IAP. Not really sure what they can do, lead by example and buy a highly anticipated big ass AAA game and put it on the store for $60? Course if that fails it’d probably just reinforce the free+IAP model.

Probably related issue is that the majority of the money is coming from iPhone use and trying to piggy back off that. Galaxy brain strategy: don’t bother with big games on iPhone . Just being associated with mobile gaming kinda kills the value expectations. That shouldn’t be the case, but ultimately it is, for now at least. Maybe establish "serious" gaming on bigger screens and later leverage that into validating phone gaming.

I hate the whole idea of core/casual categorization but it’s kind of the case with mobile gaming vs everything else right now. Wreaking havoc on the gatcha/IAP model like other countries would probably have massive effect alone really, I’m not sure any company is willing to deal that massive of a blow to themselves and the devs relying on it, so legislation seems like the only option. (And you know how good the US is about that! :facepalm

ant1pathy said:

orionquest said:

kenada said:

Apple needs to put gamers in charge of their gaming initiatives—or at least have a group like they do their pro users group. I don’t think wanting engaging games is unreasonable, but the way the story gets told feels too much like decision-making is being driven by bean-counters.

Click to expand...

Yeah I think this is correct, the last part here. Apple last year pushed services, it felt like a late to the party idea, lets jump on the bandwagon, with games rolled into it. If they really valued games they should have one up'd it to get people on board instead of what they did. Sure there is some good here. But long run I never will see Apple as a gaming platform in the tradition gamer sense, they never have been that interested. Sure they will sell ton's of games and whatnot because of massive user base, but it will never be a gaming platform. But who knows maybe Apple will prove us(me) wrong.

Click to expand...

Mobile gaming is already the largest gaming platform by any metric you care to name, and it's not even close. The "ugh, but they're not real games" attitude is incredibly patronizing and anachronistic.

Click to expand...

To be clear, I wasn’t distinguishing between mobile or other types of games. I don’t think Apple gets mobile games either. It was an accident that iOS turned out to be the big mobile platform that it is. Let’s also not forget that it was Apple who fired the salvo by creating Apple Arcade and by positioning it as something apart from the rest. When I say gamers, I mean people who play games.

I don’t think the people at Apple making these decisions really play games or particularly understand them (not in the way they have music people working on music stuff or pro people giving feedback on pro stuff). Of course, you need diverse gamers. Over half the market is women, but if you just focused on AAA shit, you’d get a distorted picture.

As far as my criticisms of Apple Arcade games go, they’re not shallow because they are mobile. They are shallow because they lack depth. When I tried Apple Arcade, there were a bunch of games with lovely designs that just got boring to play quickly. Mini Motorways and Outlanders were two I tried with that problem. I’d also lump this Sayonara Wild Hearts into this group, which I felt had floaty controls and boring gameplay, but I’m obviously in the minority on disliking that one (not that being critically seems to mean much for keeping or getting subscribers).

One more thought. The go/no go decision on the part of a dev deciding whether to port a AAA game from Windows or Console to Apple platforms has two components:

• 1 - how much money do I stand to make? and,
• 2 - how much is it going to cost me? (in both direct developer salary AND the opportunity cost of that developer not working on my next great thing)

In a world in which you could just one click recompile between Windows and Mac, the Mac would have a thriving gaming scene because there would be no reason for devs not to port their games. In our world, porting is significantly burdensome and it's not a sure thing that a port will recoup investment. So that suggests another strategy that Apple could pursue - try to make it easier on devs to port games.

That would look like supporting the underlying technologies. Obviously they're not going to implement DirectX 12 on Apple platforms any time soon. But they can do things like invest engineering effort in liaising with key engine developers like Unity to make those middleware layers run well on Apple platforms. And they do appear to be doing that.

I mentioned this in the other thread, but I think it bears repeating - there are some macro level trends in the gaming world that play in Apple's favor here. As AAA games get increasingly complex, there is a desire on the part of devs to minimize risks by abstracting the art and story from the engine and to rely increasingly on middleware. Think of all the innovative games that used bespoke engines in the past decade and I'd bet that the vast majority of them are implementable in Unity with very little in the way of customization. What that means going forward is that Apple can concentrate their resources on middleware vendors to make it increasingly easier for game devs to port their games.

[edit]Also, with PC, Xbox, Playstation and Switch all big enough to draw ports, there is this compounding expertise on doing ports writ large. IDEs are better at supporting it, dev houses have more people with experience at it, code bases are designed from the get go with the expectation that they will be cross-platform. All that plays to Apple's advantage.[/edit]

They can drive the cost/benefit ratio of porting from both sides.

japtor said:

From the other thread:

0xD34DC0DE said:

ScifiGeek said:

japtor said:

Yeah I'm curious what "engagement" means here exactly, cause this is pretty vague:

Click to expand...

I think it's pretty clear, that they want games that don't end, so people want to keep playing them indefinitely, and thus keep paying their monthly subscription fees.

So these games that have infinite replay, and some addictive mechanism is what they are looking for.

Click to expand...

Those are the kind of games I hate. If there is no end to a game, there is no satisfaction to be gained. The App Store has no shortage of grindy games, endless runners, Idle whatevers. I was under the impression that Apple Arcade was to break free of these kind of games and give developers more freedom to create good games that don’t use psychological mindfucks to keep players addicted to the endless grind.

Click to expand...

(Ignoring that Grindstone isn’t endless...) That’s still a bit open to interpretation, cause something like Tetris fits the bill too then. If the additive mechanism is the gameplay itself is still that a problem? Compared to the usual App Store psychological grind to drive IAP it’s different but still technically "engagement".

Click to expand...

I might need to backtrack on what I said, there are some "endless" games I very much enjoy. One such that exists on Apple Arcade. Crossy Road Castle is a very fun 1-4 player endless coop. I don't hate them all. But I very much hate the ones with IAPs. I grew up on arcade games so I should love IAPs, right? But it's not the same. The games now are even more focused than arcade games on getting your money. It's not even about skill anymore.

All I was trying to say in the ARM Mac thread was that Apple Arcade was supposed to be different than the usual mobile gaming (or at least that's how I interpreted it)... it was more than just offering an ad-free, IAP-free experience... it was to allow developers to experiment with new genres and create more immersive games by not having to worry about finding ways to monetize their games through IAPs or ads. So, and even though I enjoyed that game, Grindstone was not the type of game I expected to be on Apple Arcade. I'm not upset, there should definitely be a healthy balance of many different genres. Though, I think I would be upset if all the games on Apple Arcade were puzzle games, endless games, etc. Thankfully, we're not there yet. There are games like Shantae, Monomals, Sneaky Sasquatch (yeah, I'm not afraid to say I love that game), Spyder, LEGO Builder, INMOST, Cat Quest II, What the Golf, and a probably quite a few others I haven't played yet. I hope we keep seeing those kinds of games even if they are deemed unpopular. If the fate of Apple Arcade rests on a handful of games that will keep people paying the ultra low $5/month so that other types of games can exist, I'm good with that.

I wonder which game developers lost their contract with Apple.

cateye said:

Microsoft and Sony have platforms that are, in a way, just as bespoke and isolated as Apple's. Their approach has been to put real money behind A-level games to draw headliners and exclusives to their platform (I've played Halo and its sequels competitively for almost a decade. It's a 5 billion dollar franchise with each new title crossing $100M in development expenses. Halo: Infinite, the 6th installment coming in 2021, is rumored to be closer to $200M). Apple's message seems to be: We'd rather encourage more of what already exists on our largest platform. Sure, iOS devices make up a super successful gaming platform, the biggest ever—no question. But with a startling lack of depth or variety.

Click to expand...

I want to unpack this one a bit. Your traditional gaming sources are consoles, which we will place the PS and XBox into with the Nintendo offerings being an outlier, and PC gaming.

Consoles are at or below margin hardware products that generate profits from game sales and online account subscriptions. Doesn't sound like a market that Apple would be willing to play in; the ATV could theoretically do this, and even more so leveraging the A-series (and upcoming Mac-series) chips for astonishing grunt, but you still have the "doesn't include controllers" hurdle to overcome. And that kind of effort is years in the making as well. Apple would need to commit, heavily, to gaming on this platform for 5+ years before showing any real traction (if there's traction to be had).

The PC gaming space is dominated by commodity boxes with easy internal upgrades to Ship Of Theseus a machine over time. I have one of these in my office; I have piece by piece replaced every item over the past decade plus from my last from-scratch build, with a new case/PSU/fans just a few months ago. The hardware is thin margin and generally agnostic; you buy whatever is at the sweet spot for pricing in the tier you wish to invest in and you're off. Again, not really a market that fits with Apple's bespoke premium hardware mentality. You're not going to find many gamers willing to pay a 30% margin on the hardware that can't be upgraded in post.

Contrast Apple and gaming with their approach to original content for AppleTV+. Apple just dropped $120M, winning a bidding war with Warner Bros, for exclusive rights to an upcoming Will Smith movie. That movie may or may not be any good, but Apple shows it has the stomach to throw its war chest around to land tentpole features and draw attention to its nascent video platform. In addition, they've spent big money funding animation, comedies, dramas, children's programming, science fiction, even documentaries. From shorts to feature-length films. Surprising levels of depth and breadth. They're actually aggressive about it. It's cool to see Apple take a creative platform so seriously. All we hear about is how great and awesome their ARM chip efforts are and how great and awesome the Mac will be as a result. It'd be nice to see some truly killer games take advantage of that, not yet more "match 3 puzzle games."

Click to expand...

Apple is looking to get a slice of the "media subscription" market with the AppleTV+ play (same with Apple Music and their other efforts in this space) to return profits on these investments. That market is really nothing like games; it can be accessed to the same or near same fidelity on an enormous swath of devices, requires little to no post delivery support (no bug fixes or patches), the content remains "relevant" forever, and is a subscription service that the general public understands and accepts as "the way it is". Apple can throw $120M at a movie and be done and slowly realize the return on that cost from now to infinity with immediate distribution to 100% of their devices. Buying a game is a totally different animal and has almost no commonality besides "spend money".

I see a path where the years long work on Metal could lead to more engines incorporating it. Allowing a larger target surface of "ARM everywhere running Metal" leading to easier porting or beginning development that could target the entire suite of Apple devices. The slow inclusion of more options for controllers makes AAA games far more viable for iPhones / iPads / AppleTVs / Macs. Game studios will go where the money is. If it was nothing but a checkbox for "runs on Apple stuff" and all of the sudden they had full access to that market, everyone would do that. If it required a ground up rebuild of the entire game, no one would do that. The truth will be somewhere in the middle, and the farther it can shade towards "checkbox and done" the more likely it will become. Apple, unless they want to go through extensive engineering work at the expense of other pursuits, can only do so much. I feel strongly that Metal is the right path. It might take another 5 or even 10 years before the gains are fully realized. But next gen or next next gen game engines have a much higher likelihood of incorporating Metal since the new target is "every computer device Apple sells", which is a market that dwarfs anything except Android.

ant1pathy said:

Mobile gaming is already the largest gaming platform by any metric you care to name, and it's not even close. The "ugh, but they're not real games" attitude is incredibly patronizing and anachronistic.

Click to expand...

Yeah I didn't really mean it what way, @cateye said it more eloquently then I did.
But I can see how it could have been interpreted that way.

I don't expect someone to purchase Apple hardware strictly for gaming, but it still feels like it doesn't have a real home it's just a sideline thing, and they are not serious enough about it.

kenada said:

As far as my criticisms of Apple Arcade games go, they’re not shallow because they are mobile. They are shallow because they lack depth.

Click to expand...

Can you clarify what you mean by this? What kind of games, for you, have depth? Any platform from any era, just looking to understand where your thoughts are.

ant1pathy said:

I feel strongly that Metal is the right path. It might take another 5 or even 10 years before the gains are fully realized. But next gen or next next gen game engines have a much higher likelihood of incorporating Metal since the new target is "every computer device Apple sells", which is a market that dwarfs anything except Android.

Click to expand...

I think this is important. Dropping OpenGL, direct booting to Windows, and ARM64-only seems like a step back for gaming in the moment, because it directly impacts popular games today that Mac users might already feel left out of or it removes the current kludge they are using to try and play those games on Mac.

But Apple is a company that always focuses on long-term strategy, and I think having powerful APIs and "insanely great" products that consumers want to buy and own will yield good results for future gaming.

But it won't change that the major game franchises right now are already pet-projects for established platforms that would be really hard for Apple to crack into. The best strategy they can adopt is to present a common platform and invite developers to ask themselves why they should continue to ignore the entirety of Apple's install base.

But Apple throwing money at a promising developer to adopt Metal for a new franchise would certainly be feasible (and arguably smart if they want it). Getting an already popular franchise to switch has a lot less ROI, IMO.

Potentially idiotic ridicule-worthy question - is there any chance a future ARM AppleTV/Mac mini would have such beastly GPU/CPU performance that it actually beat out whatever the current gen consoles of the time where? As in, is there any chance Apple would stealth their way into having the most powerful living-room friendly games machine, purely as a happy side effect?

Not idiotic at all. That was always the promise of Apple's efforts, and they've used the throwaway tagline (I believe it was during the introduction of the 2018 iPad Pro? Someone correct me...) of having "XBox-level graphics performance" without really defining what that meant (like... which XBox?) I don't think they're lying or anything, through. What they've created really could be that powerful, depending how it's leveraged.

But as this thread attests, it wouldn't necessarily matter if there aren't developers willing to invest the development costs to use that power for a $4.99 or $9.99 game if they could instead leverage similar power on the Playstation or XBox and sell for $59.99. Or hell, leverage the vastly inferior power of the Switch, sell for $59.99, and make even more money off its huge audience. The ecosystem that each parent company cultivates really does matter, perhaps even more than the raw power of their device.

I dunno how the Playstation 5 or XBox Series X slot into all of this. My understanding is the XSX will be similar to a solid mid- to high-end gaming PC you could build today. But it won't go on sale for several months yet, so... who knows what it will be roughly equivalent to in the marketplace once that time comes.

ant1pathy said:

kenada said:

As far as my criticisms of Apple Arcade games go, they’re not shallow because they are mobile. They are shallow because they lack depth.

Click to expand...

Can you clarify what you mean by this? What kind of games, for you, have depth? Any platform from any era, just looking to understand where your thoughts are.

Click to expand...

Take a game like SimCity or even The Sims. You can play those games for years, continuing to refine and build new cities or have new experiences (in the case of The Sims). Right now, I’m playing Epic Seven, which is one of those gacha games people here don’t seem to like. It has multiple layers at which you can optimize your group (gear, team composition, tactics) and several different types of content. There are plenty of different kinds of games across different genres that make you keep want to play them (e.g., Kerbil Space Program, Stellaris, OpenRA, openTTD, etc). Oh, Threes is another good one.

Let me expand a bit on Mini Motorways and Outlanders. MM was particularly irritating because it’s superficially the kind of game I should like (an optimization problem), but it turns into a fight against its limitations. If you try to play it like SimCity, you’ll lose because there is a point where it is impossible to respond quickly enough to problems, and trying to play to figure out how to mitigate that was boring because there is no way to speed up the early game. Outlanders actually had depth (or appeared to), but you were constrained by what the scenario allowed you to do. If you accomplished the primary objective, you couldn’t stick around to finish secondary objectives, and restarting and waiting around to finish them was again kind of boring. However, I see it did get a sandbox mode, so I would probably give it a try if I ever resubbed, but it wouldn’t induce me to do that.

Maybe depth isn’t a great term. What I’m trying to convey is I quickly hit a “this is it?” moment with many of the games I tried on Apple Arcade. I let my sub go for a few months without playing anything just in case there was something that would pique my interest, but I ultimately ended up canceling. I do have a small list of games I’d like to play, and some of them are ones people have cited here already, but it’s still not enough to get me to resub.

Edit: Sense of progression maybe?

I think of Apple Arcade as being less about “find that one game you want to keep playing” and more like a buffet of short games. I’m fine hitting that “this is it?” point if there’s another game waiting in the wings. I kinda. Thought that was the whole point of a bundled subscription of multiple games - to allow for lots of quality small games...

The problem with that approach is new games come at a trickle. It probably also doesn’t create a good first impression when people try a few games and find that there’s not much to them. Apple needs a reason for people to stay subscribed.

I wonder if one solution would be to offer premium games for free like PS+ and Xbox Game Pass does. The same if they offered free/discounted IAPs for subscribers. I would totally resub for that. However, I’m not sure how financing that would work without impacting the existing games, and it would clash with their messaging to date.

thunderous_funker said:

But Apple throwing money at a promising developer to adopt Metal for a new franchise would certainly be feasible (and arguably smart if they want it). Getting an already popular franchise to switch has a lot less ROI, IMO.

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The galaxy brain play is to throw money and support at the engine developers. Work on getting Unity/Unreal/etc to a point where it's only a minor lift to get it ported to Apple*OS.

Aleamapper said:

Potentially idiotic ridicule-worthy question - is there any chance a future ARM AppleTV/Mac mini would have such beastly GPU/CPU performance that it actually beat out whatever the current gen consoles of the time where? As in, is there any chance Apple would stealth their way into having the most powerful living-room friendly games machine, purely as a happy side effect?

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Not idiotic at all! You might be surprised as to how little grunt game consoles offer, especially by the end of their life cycles. There's a ton of engineering effort in squeezing every last flop of performance out of them, and they're a stable development target for long stretches of time. The current 4k Apple TV already offers around 40% of the FLOPS of the base XBox One / PS4 generation, and that chipset is multiple generations old at this point. Honestly, on-board storage space is probably a bigger hurdle than raw compute performance.

kenada said:

ant1pathy said:

kenada said:

As far as my criticisms of Apple Arcade games go, they’re not shallow because they are mobile. They are shallow because they lack depth.

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Can you clarify what you mean by this? What kind of games, for you, have depth? Any platform from any era, just looking to understand where your thoughts are.

Click to expand...

Take a game like SimCity or even The Sims. You can play those games for years, continuing to refine and build new cities or have new experiences (in the case of The Sims). Right now, I’m playing Epic Seven, which is one of those gacha games people here don’t seem to like. It has multiple layers at which you can optimize your group (gear, team composition, tactics) and several different types of content. There are plenty of different kinds of games across different genres that make you keep want to play them (e.g., Kerbil Space Program, Stellaris, OpenRA, openTTD, etc). Oh, Threes is another good one.

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I suspected that, thank you for the clarification. I think there needs to be a difference drawn between "replayability" and "depth", and I'd throw "grindy" in there too.

I would suggest that a game like Monument Valley scores high on a "depth" scale by being engaging and beautiful and a delight to play, but is low on the "replayability" score as once you figure out the trick for the room it's not as much fun on the second pass. I bought 1 and 2 and was more than satisfied with my investment, even if all I got was a single playthrough.

A game like Tiny Wings offers almost no "depth" but has replayability that has stretched to years as a quick time waster for me. There are dozens of these on the App Store, and I have gotten hundreds and hundreds of hours for a handful of dollars invested. I think these kinds of games are a shining example of what is good about mobile gaming, and Arcade should be trying to capture them.

Then you have the "grind" games. This umbrella could even be extended to cover such things like WoW or even my (current time sink) Destiny 2; they reward long stretches of play time with incremental improvements or acquisition of resources. They generally have some kind of subscription model, or in the bad versions, IAP to trade money instead of time for advancement. I don't have hard-line ethical issues with IAP. When I was a broke college kid, I was happy to trade 12 hours on Saturday for new loot/mats. As a working adult in a lucrative job, I can choose to spend an hours worth of income instead of 20 hours of gameplay. I understand that tradeoff and happily make it on occasion. I do also recognize that many IAP style games are predaceous, and aren't looking to offer a simple "spend a little cash instead of a lot of hours" and instead look to exploit those dopamine hits endlessly. I played the Clash Of Clans battle royale card game for a while, and spend $10 twice on card packs. It was well worth it for how much enjoyment I derived from that game (I was still in retail gulag, and a bunch of us at my store played so we'd have little tournament brackets for who got to be cut and go home first)... but I know there were whales that threw outlandish numbers of dollars at it also. Any kind of legislation should strike a balance between "I am an adult and would like to trade some money, which I now have, instead of time, which I no longer have" and "I spent the rent money on Candy Crush boosters".

kenada said:

The problem with that approach is new games come at a trickle. It probably also doesn’t create a good first impression when people try a few games and find that there’s not much to them. Apple needs a reason for people to stay subscribed.

I wonder if one solution would be to offer premium games for free like PS+ and Xbox Game Pass does. The same if they offered free/discounted IAPs for subscribers. I would totally resub for that. However, I’m not sure how financing that would work without impacting the existing games, and it would clash with their messaging to date.

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I agree that the cadence has been a bit slow, but I guess it really depends how much gaming you do. I'm probably in the 2 hours a week of every week and up to maybe 5 hours a week if there's a particularly engrossing game. Arcade fills that amount of time out nicely. Sneaky Sasquatch kept me entertained for a month or so, Oceanhorn 2 was another month. Grindstone was about a month worth of play. It seems like good value for money to me.

The direction looks pretty clear now.

With Apple moving beyond encouraging porting Mobile software to Macs, to outright dumping the iPhone/iPad store detritus on the Mac, Apple gaming will all be driven by the iPad/iPhone, even for the Mac.

As before "serious" gamers have little to look forward to on Macs, though casual Mac gamers might find a bit better experience, the new ARM SoC GPU will almost certainly have better integrated GPU, than Intels, so this raises the lowest common denominator in future machines, and there will likely be some good casual games from all the encouraged iPad/iPhone developers.

I don't see Apple really shaping the kinds of games in a significant way. They built the platform, but the developers (predominantly Mobile) shape the games they will sell.

ant1pathy said:

orionquest said:

kenada said:

Apple needs to put gamers in charge of their gaming initiatives—or at least have a group like they do their pro users group. I don’t think wanting engaging games is unreasonable, but the way the story gets told feels too much like decision-making is being driven by bean-counters.

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Yeah I think this is correct, the last part here. Apple last year pushed services, it felt like a late to the party idea, lets jump on the bandwagon, with games rolled into it. If they really valued games they should have one up'd it to get people on board instead of what they did. Sure there is some good here. But long run I never will see Apple as a gaming platform in the tradition gamer sense, they never have been that interested. Sure they will sell ton's of games and whatnot because of massive user base, but it will never be a gaming platform. But who knows maybe Apple will prove us(me) wrong.

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Mobile gaming is already the largest gaming platform by any metric you care to name, and it's not even close. The "ugh, but they're not real games" attitude is incredibly patronizing and anachronistic.

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Mobile photography is also the biggest photography platform by a long shot and it’s not even close, but it’s worth recognizing there’s a market for unifunction cameras, and people who use them have very different needs. I’m presuming the OP wants to talk about gamers using Apple products, not people who happen to play games on Apple products.

Sure, iOS devices make up a super successful gaming platform, the biggest ever—no question. But with a startling lack of depth or variety.

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Definitely agreed. There are some genres (thinking space sims like Elite here) where even a controller, let alone a touchscreen is not good enough. You NEED a mouse/keyboard or even better HOTAS.

wrylachlan said:

In a world in which you could just one click recompile between Windows and Mac, the Mac would have a thriving gaming scene because there would be no reason for devs not to port their games. In our world, porting is significantly burdensome and it's not a sure thing that a port will recoup investment. So that suggests another strategy that Apple could pursue - try to make it easier on devs to port games.

That would look like supporting the underlying technologies. Obviously they're not going to implement DirectX 12 on Apple platforms any time soon. But they can do things like invest engineering effort in liaising with key engine developers like Unity to make those middleware layers run well on Apple platforms. And they do appear to be doing that.

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Unity is mostly popular with indie devs because the licensing was dirt cheap and you can write your game in JavaScript which everyone and their cousin knows. AAA games are usually written with something like Unreal Engine, iD Tech, Frostbite, etc, with subsystems like physics in Havok (for example) and video with RADTools. I don't think any of these work with Metal except for Unreal Engine. I mention Havok because it's accelerated by Nvidia GPUs.

If Apple was serious about AAA gaming, they would support Vulkan in addition to/instead of Metal, because that's what EVERY modern game engine supports (plus DirectX). They're clearly not, as they're happy to stick to mobile games that will run as-is on ARM Macs. That's Apple's game strategy.

btw Unreal Engine is now cheaper than Unity for small developers, so you can expect to see fewer Unity games in the future.

ant1pathy said:

I suspected that, thank you for the clarification. I think there needs to be a difference drawn between "replayability" and "depth", and I'd throw "grindy" in there too.

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Like I said, maybe depth is not a good word. You mentioned Monument Valley, which I also enjoyed until it was over. Bicolor is another good puzzler that I played through and have never played again. I’d also include that as a game with “depth” (or whatever we should call that intangible quality).

A game like Tiny Wings offers almost no "depth" but has replayability that has stretched to years as a quick time waster for me. There are dozens of these on the App Store, and I have gotten hundreds and hundreds of hours for a handful of dollars invested. I think these kinds of games are a shining example of what is good about mobile gaming, and Arcade should be trying to capture them.

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I agree. Apple Arcade ought to be the place where toybox games and unusual games and games that really leverage their platform can thrive. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what I found when I tried it.

kenada said:

A game like Tiny Wings offers almost no "depth" but has replayability that has stretched to years as a quick time waster for me. There are dozens of these on the App Store, and I have gotten hundreds and hundreds of hours for a handful of dollars invested. I think these kinds of games are a shining example of what is good about mobile gaming, and Arcade should be trying to capture them.

Click to expand...

I agree. Apple Arcade ought to be the place where toybox games and unusual games and games that really leverage their platform can thrive. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what I found when I tried it.

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I don't know if that was the goal with Apple Arcade. I think it was created more to deal with the impression that "It asks me to open my wallet every time I launch the icon" that mobile gaming has developed the reputation for.

There’s some neat stuff here. I hate the stupid keynote interruptions with game devs showing off all the games that ‘everybody [but me apparently] loves to play’. Queue Schiller in his mom jeans.

Sorry. Feeling snarky.

Apples got key STR here though. Any future Apple TV box could probably get very competitive power at their current price points. They can use others’ controllers or use existing Apple devices like phones or tablets that are in the room. They’ll have AR/VR, they have potential combo media services (video plus games), they can also gamify fitness. Really stick it to Microsoft’s Kinnect failure, which was an interesting and too-early product. Move the tracking from cameras to your wearables! I see them doing a lot of different things, some may not be traditional gaming but all trying to capture leisure activities including gaming.

AAA gaming may cost $70 a title for next gen, and Apple has the ability to loss lead, they may surprise everybody...not that AAA gaming goes away but there is probably a substantial undertapped leisure market. Folks still read but it’s online and not books, they watch media but not as much TV and more on demand or clips or YouTube or whatever. Mobile games are pervasive and cheap, but maybe these are more like time waiting filler for bored folks during gaps in their time. There may be a hidden opportunity here that a brave, brazen player with deep pockets and huge engineering capability...they could really wow us. But then I think about the keynotes and the mom jeans and I go back to playing Threes while watching Netflix.

This topic always comes up as the type of gaming Apple cares about isn't the same that's on the Steam store. It doesn't help that Epic games, developer of the new hotness engine UE5, is currently trying to topple the App Store in the EU and US. Every WWDC Apple displays something about games, and afterwards the same cries of Apple doesn't understand gaming is echoed.

Apple could through their billions around and purchase someone lime Epic or Rockstar, but what would that buy them? I doubt they would ever see a positive return on that investment nor would it help move any more hardware. The iOS gaming market has spoken and IAP is where the $$ is at for Apple and that cash cow is sacred.

I don't think Apple would (or should) even try to compete in the same space as Sony and Microsoft. The company most analogous would be Nintendo, which has been going it alone for all intents and purposes for 30 years now. There are lots of AAA games that never touch a Nintendo system, though we have obviously seen that change somewhat with the Switch. But by the same token, Nintendo manages to sell quite a number of systems based on half a dozen exclusives (Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, Smash, and Kirby).

The Switch (which runs on an NVIDIA ARM chipset – Cortex-A57 / 53 to be specific) has had quite a few AAA titles ported to it as well (Witcher, Doom), though obviously running at lower graphics settings, etc. So it's clear that if Apple is running all ARM there are plenty of games that could be ported over just because the chipsets are now unified. I think that is likely to happen just based on what we've seen with the Switch.

I have perpetually advocated that Apple simply buy Nintendo (~$50 billion market cap) and turn their hardware devision into peripheral manufacturing (controllers, docks) while making all of their IP (and massive back catalog) Apple exclusive. They make family friendly games (which seems to be what Apple wants), have an enormous, dedicated fanbase and recognizable memorable characters with broad appeal. If you look at what's happening in the gaming world, things are getting much smaller as Sony and Microsoft have been on an acquisition spree for nearly a decade now. This trend will continue.

Unlike the bold steps they are taking with the Mac, Apple continues to just dip their toes in the water with the Apple TV. It's time to jump in with both feet and be more bold in this space. There is absolutely more than $50 billion in shareholder value that would be added to Apple by this acquisition, and the longer they wait, the bigger the moat their competitors have will be. And it also becomes a virtuous circle because once Apple is seen as a viable gaming system (on whichever device), the more they will attract 3rd parties to target them as well.

This is one of those problems where an incremental approach has clearly failed. Nintendo's talent has never really been hardware anyway (look at issues with Switch bending and controller drift). Their creative culture is superb though, and buying Nintendo but keeping them independent of Apple would work well. They have a fixed hardware platform to develop toward in Apple's devices, and can instead focus on the software side or attachable peripherals that enhance that experience.

Win - win.

kenada said:

ant1pathy said:

kenada said:

As far as my criticisms of Apple Arcade games go, they’re not shallow because they are mobile. They are shallow because they lack depth.

Click to expand...

Can you clarify what you mean by this? What kind of games, for you, have depth? Any platform from any era, just looking to understand where your thoughts are.

Click to expand...

Take a game like SimCity or even The Sims. You can play those games for years, continuing to refine and build new cities or have new experiences (in the case of The Sims). Right now, I’m playing Epic Seven, which is one of those gacha games people here don’t seem to like. It has multiple layers at which you can optimize your group (gear, team composition, tactics) and several different types of content. There are plenty of different kinds of games across different genres that make you keep want to play them (e.g., Kerbil Space Program, Stellaris, OpenRA, openTTD, etc). Oh, Threes is another good one.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a good summary of my thoughts too. That, and it's just way less comfortable to be playing those sorts of games for any length of time on a cramped screen, even on a big iPad, versus a nice big TV in the lounge room or computer monitor at a desk with a good chair.

OT Rant: The one game I wanted to play on my new mac was Bioshock Infinite. As I found out, it doesn't run on Catalina. Great.

ant1pathy said:

I suspected that, thank you for the clarification. I think there needs to be a difference drawn between "replayability" and "depth", and I'd throw "grindy" in there too.

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In general there's just gonna be some issues when reducing game qualities down to single words like that, particularly with different personal expectations and nuances of what they mean. Like you and others had good examples and explanations for what that stuff meant for you.

Personally I lean more towards the arcadey side of things and generally frame things around that. Grindy is kind of antithetical to a good arcade game so that's kind of out by default usually (but still familiar with the fun of the grind for some games). I think replayability comes down to fun and skill progression.

Depth is...a complicated topic. I think the "sense of progression" as someone put it might work, if taken on a personal level. Like I've played a lot games with "depth" in the form of various weapon options and upgrade paths or whatever, but depending on how the game is designed that can turn out to be a grind or just some false sense of depth. A lot of people like that stuff! For arcadey games it generally just feels like an unnecessary distraction that doesn't add much for me. Related to the replayability, the depth for me is in the details of the core gameplay and progression to mastery, which is basically unattainable for me (I generally get to a spot of being better than most people, but I know I'm still so far off from the best players).

Course I feel like the stuff I like would get knocked in reviews for low replayability or too shallow cause the gameplay loop is short, repetitive, and on the surface, pretty simple. But on an arcade game that pulls everything off right, trying to "fix" all that stuff can be detrimental.

(So all that said, in theory I should like Apple Arcade...but like I said in the other thread, if there's something I like I'd rather just buy the game)

meteparozzi0 said:

I don't think Apple would (or should) even try to compete in the same space as Sony and Microsoft. The company most analogous would be Nintendo, which has been going it alone for all intents and purposes for 30 years now. There are lots of AAA games that never touch a Nintendo system, though we have obviously seen that change somewhat with the Switch. But by the same token, Nintendo manages to sell quite a number of systems based on half a dozen exclusives (Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, Smash, and Kirby).

The Switch (which runs on an NVIDIA ARM chipset – Cortex-A57 / 53 to be specific) has had quite a few AAA titles ported to it as well (Witcher, Doom), though obviously running at lower graphics settings, etc. So it's clear that if Apple is running all ARM there are plenty of games that could be ported over just because the chipsets are now unified. I think that is likely to happen just based on what we've seen with the Switch.

I have perpetually advocated that Apple simply buy Nintendo (~$50 billion market cap) and turn their hardware devision into peripheral manufacturing (controllers, docks) while making all of their IP (and massive back catalog) Apple exclusive. They make family friendly games (which seems to be what Apple wants), have an enormous, dedicated fanbase and recognizable memorable characters with broad appeal. If you look at what's happening in the gaming world, things are getting much smaller as Sony and Microsoft have been on an acquisition spree for nearly a decade now. This trend will continue.

Unlike the bold steps they are taking with the Mac, Apple continues to just dip their toes in the water with the Apple TV. It's time to jump in with both feet and be more bold in this space. There is absolutely more than $50 billion in shareholder value that would be added to Apple by this acquisition, and the longer they wait, the bigger the moat their competitors have will be. And it also becomes a virtuous circle because once Apple is seen as a viable gaming system (on whichever device), the more they will attract 3rd parties to target them as well.

This is one of those problems where an incremental approach has clearly failed. Nintendo's talent has never really been hardware anyway (look at issues with Switch bending and controller drift). Their creative culture is superb though, and buying Nintendo but keeping them independent of Apple would work well. They have a fixed hardware platform to develop toward in Apple's devices, and can instead focus on the software side or attachable peripherals that enhance that experience.

Win - win.

Click to expand...

I've had some similar thoughts for ages, I don't think it's an uncommon idea by any stretch. Hell even when Super Mario Run came out they talked about how in discussions they had a kind of cultural common ground in how they treated their craft. So from a simple look at things it could be pretty great, Nintendo's games w/Apple's hardware engineering is pretty appealing, like a Switch with the latest Apple SoC would be a dream machine.

...but if Nintendo were swallowed up by Apple, I don't think stuff like the Switch even exists in the first place. I really don't see wacky (but wildly successful) stuff like Ring Fit happening, or crazier projects like Labo. Keeping them independent is about the only way it'd work, and I'm not sure to what extent that'd arrangement would actually work under Apple. Beats comes to mind but they're not exactly a software developer...except the Music service side, and we know where that went.

I think the previous CEO, Iwata, said something to the extent of Nintendo being dead if they have to go third party. A bit hyperbolic of course (and I think the new guy stepped back a bit from that) but there's some truth to it. Having their own platform, as much as a liability as it can be, is just as much a key strength cause it has allowed them to take crazy chances and do whatever the hell they want. It's hard to see that working under Apple, just like it'd be hard to see Apple working under anyone else.