The State of Apple Gaming Post WWDC

This weekend I wrote a WWDC Wishlist.  One of the things I listed was DX12 porting tools.  I ended up not publishing the piece because I thought that one was too far-fetched.  I audibly yelled when Apple did just that as part of the Game Porting Toolkit for the Mac.  Let’s take a look at where gaming on Apple Platforms is at Post-WWDC.

Apple Doesn’t Have the Best Gaming Record

Gaming on the Mac has not always been a priority for Apple, but porting houses have kept the Mac, pun intended, somewhat in the game despite a historic lack of interest from Apple.  macOS 10.15 Catalina pulled the rug out from under the majority of Mac games, which were 32-bit, and Feral became the only company actively porting Mac games.  The end of the Intel era and the beginning of Apple Silicon were very lean times.  The Apple Silicon era, however, has a lot of promise.

A Layered Approach to Improved Gaming 

Apple has slowly worked itself towards gaming over the last decade or so.  They started by introducing Metal Apple platforms replacing open standard OpenGL, which, had frequently fallen behind on its implementation.  By Metal 3 last year, with Metal FX, the API had reached, for the most part, feature parity with Vulkan and Direct X 12 allowing AAA Titles to reach the Mac.  We got 2:  Resident Evil Village last fall and No Man’s Sky a week before the keynote.  They were impressive and showed the power of Apple Silicon, but didn’t exactly lead to a flood of AAA games coming to the Mac.

The controller situation also got significantly better, beginning with MFI controllers before now natively supporting Bluetooth controllers for Xbox One/ Series X/S, PS4/5, and Nintendo Switch.  Arcade Sticks and Racing wheels are also natively supported as WWDC 23.  Apple even supports touch on Playstation controllers and there’s a system preference for remapping to your preference.  That kind of gaming accessory had previously required third-party utilities.

macOS Sonoma Has Gamers Popping the Bubbly

macOS Sonoma has a chance to be a turning point.  From an API standpoint, Apple had completed what it needed for high-quality gaming at WWDC 22.  There was just one thing, the games weren’t really being built from the ground up for Mac, they were being ported from Windows.  That’s where Apple focused for WWDC 23 with the Game Porting ToolKit.

For Direct X games, the Game Porting Toolkit makes it really easy to determine if your game is able to be effectively ported, through a compatibility layer based on Wine.  Despite the reporting, this isn’t some kind of free version of Crossover/ Proton.  It’s not that easy to access and requires the terminal.  The idea that everyone will be using this over a port is, quite frankly, absurd.

If a developer decides to move forward with a port, the toolkit makes it a lot easier to convert Direct 3D Shaders, the graphical component of DX12, to their Metal equivalent.  There is no Vulkan support here as there is the MoltenVK toolkit which has already successfully helped port multiple Vulcan games to Metal.  If games use game engines with native support, like Unity and Unreal Engine 5, this makes the porting processor even faster.

There were also quite a few games announced with the headliner being Death Stranding Director’s Cut from famed game director Hideo Kojima.  Several other titles including Fort Solis, the Medium, Stray, Layers of Fear, Humankind, Dragonheir: Silent Gods, Alex II, Firmament, SnowRunner, and Disney Dreamlight Valley made the presentation as well.  

Besides the Game Porting ToolKit, Game Mode also enhanced the experience by prioritizing the game currently running on the CPU and GPU over background tasks enhancing performance.  By how much, it is too soon to tell.  Game Mode also lowers Bluetooth latency for AirPods and doubles the Bluetooth Sampling rate for controllers.  This effectively gives these Bluetooth devices some of the advantages of proprietary wireless standards used on gaming systems and PCs.  Game Mode is also system-level and requires no input from the developer on a full-screen game.  It simply works with any game entering full screen. 

Where This Could Lead

It's hard to tell how successful Apple’s efforts will be.  We’ll know if EA, Ubisoft, or Activision-Blizzard announces multiple AAA Titles for Apple platforms or if Valve announces Counter Strike 2 for the Mac.

While the Game Porting ToolKit and Game Mode were announced for the Mac, they could also affect iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and visionOS as Apple initiatives tend to be across all their platforms. A game ported to the Mac could go to any of the other platforms easily.

This leaves me with one more thing to ponder, if Apple wanted to bring AAA gaming to the TV, they have the APIs, they have the hardware, and they have the development tools.  Also, tvOS became a bit more important this year with a big update to the interface and additional features, like video conferencing, to make it a more important part of the living room.