Comment by derefr

3 months ago

Couldn't Apple spend their resources on that? Proton is open-source, and Apple's the one with the incentive to have more "prestige" AAA game devs to parade around during keynotes.

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derefr

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jsheard  3 months ago

Apple could but they're not interested in non-native games, they want native ports or nothing. As I discussed a few posts over, Apple went to the trouble of developing a DirectX compatibility layer, but then told game developers they're not allowed to use it for anything besides evaluating whether their game would run well enough on Mac hardware. If they go ahead with a port then Apple still expects them to do it all the hard way.

It's textbook "perfect is the enemy of good" because yeah, compatibility layers have overhead, native is better, but if you insist on native everything but can't get devs on board then you just end up with no games.

  • Andrex  3 months ago

    Exactly.

    Compare Steam Machine (2014) to Steam Machine (2026). The difference this time around is Proton support, and you can pretty easily see the hype on the internet for the new version, even after the original version was mocked relentlessly in some circles for having "no games."

  • Cloudef  3 months ago

    Target apple and in 5 years your binary wont work anymore anyways

    • nasretdinov  3 months ago

      Well, some games like Civ V still manage to work! But they actually had to port it to 64-bit, otherwise it'd have the fate of all other 32-bit macOS games unfortunately...

  • happymellon  3 months ago

    > compatibility layers have overhead

    Also, how could Apple kill the old software that is better than the new, if it doesn't control the emulation? This way they don't have to even have 10% of the features to force you to buy again.

    cough /final cut/ cough

tick_tock_tick  3 months ago

Apple could but Apple would rather die they allow something to work cross platform.

  • davely  3 months ago

    I think they are also absolutely addicted to cruddy pay to win mobile games and they don’t want to give up that sweet drip feed of IAP that they get a 30% cut of… which is substantial.

    For funsies, try searching App Store apps and find a way to filter out results for apps with IAP. Nope!

    (Source: me, who spent time at a mobile gaming company as we figured out how to continuously optimize our funnels so that some rich dudes in Qatar could continue to spend $40K a month on useless cosmetics.)

mikkupikku  3 months ago

Apple thinks PC games are for gross nerds and would rather not sully their fashion image by associating with gamer any more than is absolutely necessary. So no, Apple won't be doing that.

  • hbn  3 months ago

    Every few years at WWDC they'll make some mention of some upcoming new gaming features. A couple years ago they showcased that their new iPhones could run the latest Resident Evil game. Hell, they brought out Kojima one year to announce a Death Stranding port for Mac.

    The efforts are usually short-lived and mostly fruitless, but I wouldn't say they're "grossed out" by gaming nerds.

jakogut  3 months ago

It would make sense, but Apple has large amounts of disdain for people having fun with their products. This evidenced by the large amounts of engineering they've put into very large, capable, and efficient GPUs, only to squander them on rendering web pages and liquid glass.

They released Apple Vision Pro with no ability to play popular PC games on it.

A VR headset. That doesn't play games.

thefz  3 months ago

Nope because they could not gouge developes with pricy tools, steep registration fees and cutthroat slice of their sales on Apple's app market.

pjmlp  3 months ago

Apple already has their own way, and they rather have studios rewrite the games.

https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/

  • swiftcoder  3 months ago

    The porting toolkit is more or less Apple's version of Proton:

    "evaluate your unmodified Windows executable on Apple silicon using the evaluation environment for Windows games"

    A bunch of games just ship the Windows executable and some version of that translation layer in their MacOS App bundle