news hardware Video Game: Can the new macOS Ventura keep up with Windows 11?
Apple and video games are far from being a love story. The Mac platform is notorious for not being optimized for gaming, and the vast majority of gamers turn to a Windows computer to quench their thirst. On the other hand, the latest version of macOS offers more game-related improvements. Will Apple finally get down to business and compete with Windows 11?
The game on the Mac currently has a mixed record
Playing on a Mac is possible. Steam, Epic, Origin or even Battle.net are there, but as we know there are many titles that are not available in each of these stores. There are many emulation software to transcribe Windows to Mac, but it’s far from a real solution that lasts. Note that it’s still possible to use cloud gaming with offerings like GeoForce Now if you have a good connection.
With Apple Arcade, the on-demand gaming service available for $5 a month, almost all mobile games are compatible with macOS, with a small port optimized for onions. On the other hand, Apple won’t be able to convince today’s hardcore PC gamers with such titles. But is that really Apple’s goal?
There are many who swear by the PC and they should be handed over their bodies rather than sent to Apple. But Apple is improving. The brand has put itself to the test with the M1 chip and is now stepping it up a gear.
Concretely, Macs are capable of this, and they are already proving it. You can already play loads of titles like CS:GO, all Blizzard games (except Overwatch), LoL, Minecraft… what’s missing are the big greedy AAAs.
It’s a good idea for Apple to get into gaming
Macs sell well, very well. PC sales are on the decline as the M1 series manages to win over a larger and larger audience. Inevitably among these conquered customers are some who want to take advantage of macOS but want to maintain their normal gaming habits.
If viruses and other malware are more common on PCs, it’s not just because Windows is less protected than macOS. This is mainly because there are far more Windows users than Mac. So, as Apple computers become more mainstream, developers will be interested through the parallel development of their works on the Mac.
Apple doesn’t focus its marketing on video game players, but that’s starting to change, and we saw it during the WWDC keynote.
Apple goes one step further with macOS Ventura
When you think about it, it makes you dream: a computer with all the advantages of a Mac, compatible with all the games in the PC world and able to run them like a high-end configuration.
It could be the beginning of a new adventure with the arrival of the new version of macOS called Ventura. Metal 3, the new version of Apple’s graphics acceleration API, is here. It is used, among other things, by developers to program their games to be optimized in the iOS and macOS architecture. Three new features have been added:
- MetalFX upscaling: It was necessary for Macs. Supported natively by Apple and available to developers to speed up the creation and rendering of high-resolution graphics by upscaling frames that were originally much less greedy. It’s a bit like DLSS on Nvidia or FSR on AMD.
- Fast Resource API: a second API to optimize loading times in games
- Improved ray tracing
So we’re entitled to a little more than fine-tuning, and we’re excited.
Apple announced during the WWDC keynote the inclusion of No Man’s Sky and Resident Evil Village in the list of Mac compatible games, with the new tools above. On the one hand, it shows that Apple is ready to offer big games on its platform. On the other hand, the pride of adding two games shows that we still have a long way to go.
The M1 and M2 chips, the foundation for the future of gaming at Apple
The M1 chip has been around for two years: with the optimization of hardware and software by Apple Macs are capable of delivering performance similar to powerful gaming PCs, all in a much smaller form factor, with much less noise and with significantly lower power consumption.
With the announcement of the M2 chip, Apple still follows up with a 35% more efficient CPU and 25% more efficient GPU than the M1 version. We’ve seen the MacBook Pro M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max how Apple masters its theme, with efficient machines that heat up very little and that have to be pushed very far before activating the fans.
The problem with the components persists
Aside from the software, Apple still lacks scalability. Unless you buy a Mac Pro, which starts at $6,000, all Mac computers, laptops, or desktops have their components soldered on, making configuration changes impossible.
Apple wants to keep control of the components that lie dormant in their machines. It has advantages like reliability and optimization, but that sort of argument doesn’t hold up when it comes to gaming. While a Mac M2 is powerful enough to run AAA games, buying one that’s no longer a viable solution isn’t feasible.
Soon a real rival of Windows 11?
We know Apple doesn’t like doing things by halves. However, it’s still likely that the brand will open the field a little more for casual gamers to enjoy real gaming while retaining the Mac’s advantages.
The Cupertino company works hard on two main axes to offer the best gaming expertise: software with compatibility and optimization, and hardware with increasingly powerful graphics processors, even on the cheapest MacBooks.
If you were playing on the Mac a few years ago, you were being laughed at, and for good reason. Water will flow under the bridge before macOS also competes with Windows 11 for gaming. Apple is paddling slowly but surely.
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