Many people want to know whether their Mac computers can play new games, but as a result, they often have to go online to search or fiddle with them. This process is actually quite complicated and troublesome.
The current state of Mac gaming
When playing games on Apple computers, you often encounter compatibility issues. Many mainstream games like "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" have never released native Mac versions. If users want to play these games, they must either use a virtual machine or a translation tool. However, these methods are quite complicated to set up and will cause damage to computer performance, making it difficult for ordinary users to get started easily.
Even if it runs successfully, the game experience is often greatly compromised, and the frame rate may be unstable or the screen may have errors. As a result, the vast majority of Mac users have basically given up the idea of using this device to play large-scale games, unless they are willing to spend a lot of time studying technical issues.
Comparison with mobile ecosystem
The game ecosystem on Apple phones and tablets is particularly rich. There are a large number of mobile games in the App Store, ranging from casual games to massively multiplayer online games. This is due to the high market share of iOS devices and a large user base, and developers have sufficient motivation to adapt.
In comparison, Mac's share of the global personal computer market has been hovering around 10% for a long time. For such a relatively small user group, dedicated to carrying out independent development activities, optimizing and maintaining game versions, the input-output ratio is not ideal for developers, so they lack sufficient motivation.
Historical differences in development environments
In the early days, not all computer hardware standards were the same. The application program interfaces of devices such as graphics cards were different from each other. Game developers had to write different drivers for different hardware. The entire development process was cumbersome and inefficient, which seriously hindered the development of the game industry in a cross-platform direction.
After Microsoft launched the DirectX graphics interface, the situation changed greatly. It unified the development standards of the Windows platform. Hardware manufacturers and game developers all followed this set of specifications, which greatly simplified the development process and ensured that games can run stably.
Mac product design orientation
When Apple designed the Mac, it prioritized professional creation and mobile office needs. For example, its video editing software Final Cut Pro has high operating efficiency, the preview is smooth, and crashes are rare. Optimizations like these allow Mac to excel in content creation.
Mac has a strong battery life. It can last for more than ten hours when working without plugging in or editing pictures. These characteristics all show that the core positioning of Mac is an efficient productivity tool rather than a gaming and entertainment device.
Gaming performance shortcomings
In order to pursue thinness, lightness, battery life, and stable productivity performance, Mac has made trade-offs in terms of hardware. The performance of its integrated graphics card is often weaker than the independent graphics card of the same generation of Windows gaming notebooks, and it is simply unable to meet the graphics computing needs of large-scale 3D games.
In terms of system, the Metal graphics API used by Mac is different from DirectX or Vulkan, which are mainstream in the gaming field. This means that if the game is to be run natively, additional resources will have to be invested in porting and adaptation, thus raising the threshold for the game to log on to the Mac platform.
future possibilities
As the gaming market continues to grow, Apple is aware of this huge market. In recent years, Apple has launched a self-developed chip with significantly improved graphics processing capabilities, and has actively promoted easy tools for porting iOS games to Mac.
Apple has even tried to introduce some large-scale games to the Mac platform. Although the economic benefits of such attempts are not yet clear, it shows that Apple is looking for and seeking changes. If the hardware becomes more powerful in the future and there is closer cooperation with developers, then the Mac gaming experience may be improved and enhanced.
If you own a Mac, which game that you can’t play right now would you most expect to have an official Mac version? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment area, and don’t forget to like and share this article.
