Now that the Mac mini is available with an M2 Pro , Apple is making the casing that it ’s a majuscule play computer . As the Mac mini website states , you’re able to “ climb up into nontextual matter - intensive AAA games likeNo Man ’s SkyandResident Evil Villagewith unstable frame rates and mellow fidelity — all enable by the unbelievable GPU performance of M2 or M2 Pro . ”
And with really skillful native supporting for Xbox and PlayStation controller in the latest variation of macOS , yes , you may certainly have a near timegaming on a Macthat costs less than $ 2,000 . But after kicking the tires for a while and compare them against PC offering , it ’s clean that Apple has a very long way to go .
In arecent interviewwith TechCrunch , Apple executive admitted that getting the Mac up to amphetamine “ will take some time . ” Apple Silicon is terrific , but the holistic gaming experience on a Mac is as frustrating as ever . If Apple is going to court gamers , it has a circle of work before of it .
Performance is decent, but the price is not
Firing upResident Evil Villageon ourMac mini — our $ 1,800 configuration has the full M2 Pro chip with 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD — and it ’s empty the chip can handle mod AAA game . With the game’sPrioritize Graphicspreset at a 1080p resolution , public presentation motley from around 70fps to over 120fps , depending on the location and activeness . Turn on the novel MetalFX Upscaling feature in Quality way and performance jumps about 30 per centum or so with no real evident departure in timber . you may even crank it up to 4 K resolution and play at 40 - 60fps in Prioritize Graphics manner .
That ’s utterly respectable execution , peculiarly for a estimator as tiny and silent as a Mac mini . But it getscrushedby a comparably - price Windows gaming personal computer . A prebuilt gaming personal computer like the one I frequently play on , with a Ryzen 9 5900X and GeForce 3070 Ti , presently retail forabout $ 1,850 a Best Buy . And it perfectly destroys the Mac miniskirt in biz performance .
Resident Evil Villageat the same preferences runs atthree timesthe framerate . The same arduous out-of-door court that hovers in the mid-70s on the Mac mini run over 220fps on the microcomputer . At 4 honey oil solution with upscaling enabled , I got well over 120fps , not 40 - 60fps . Hell , the personal computer runs at 1440p resolution with ray tracing enabled at 160fps here . Ray tracing is n’t even usable on the Mac .
It ’s hard to determine modern secret plan to benchmark because the taking are so slender for the Mac . For fun , I ran our Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark on the Windows PC . At 1920×1200 with theHighpreset , the Mac time in at 118fps . The PC doubled it at 234fps !
Of course , these computers are only comparable in their price . The Mac mini is a fraction of the size of it and basically silent , while the play personal computer is big and full of sports fan . But performance is an farthermost headache for gamers . game have to seem not bad and run swimmingly , now and in the future tense . And the fact is , when it comes to play games , you’re able to get at least twice the operation out of a PC for the same price , or equal the Mac mini ’s carrying into action at a fraction of the price . Sure , the PC will be bigger and more power - hungry , but also upgradeable ( another primary worry of gamers ) .
Put roundly : the M2 Pro ’s gaming carrying into action isfinebut it ’s nothing to shoot a line about .
Where are the games?
Even if the Mac miniskirt did n’t deliver half ( or less ) of the gaming functioning at this cost , it would be a poor choice because the games just are n’t there .
The vainglorious “ AAA game experiences for the Mac ” section that Apple advance on its Mac mini page proudly featuresNo Man ’s Sky , a PC and console game bring out more than six years ago … and it’sstill not out yet on the Mac!Apple ’s got it on their Mac mini plug page and it ’s still “ coming in 2023 . ”
Apple
Mac gamers used to be able to count on the latest Blizzard titles , butOverwatchnever ship on the Mac , Overwatch 2has no Mac release in the works , and neither doesDiablo IV . A feeling at the Steam top sellers Thomas Nelson Page is grim indeed . Only two of the top 15 games have Mac versions , and they ’re both over 10 years old .
Foundry
The fact of the matter is that the Mac is in no good place with the biggest game releases than it has been for the last decade : One or two new large games make it to the Mac ( where they search and run worse than their Windows opposite number ) , a few other big releases make it to the Mac a year by and by , and 90 per centum of the game you require to recreate never get to the Mac at all .
A roadmap for Mac gaming
If Apple in reality wants to make the Mac a play chopine worth paying tending to , it ’s going to have to take some drastic steps . Trying to establish a trivial hype once a twelvemonth around a new chip and “ that one big - name game we have ” is n’t going to switch off it .
It ’s probably too much to ask for Apple to grow a Mac with good gaming functioning that does n’t cost a fortune . Windows PCs are kick the bucket to enjoy a huge terms - to - operation advantage for a farseeing meter . But Apple could at least do something about the software package site .
The company has shown its willingness to cover outside gambling equipment by plump for Xbox and Playstation controller natively in macOS ( and iOS , iPadOS , and tvOS ) , leaving behind year of awfulMFi programcontrollers . Imagine what the same willingness to get along could think in the software package earth .
Valve’sSteam Deckis a smasher with gamers even though it runs a Linux - based OS , and Linux is just as far behind in secret plan support as macOS . How is it successful ? Because Valve and its partner made a software compatibility layer calledProton . It takes Windows games and transform everything to run on Linux .
It ’s even undetermined seed — just conceive of what the Apple mastermind responsible for Rosetta could do if they set up their wad on making Proton work on a Mac ! Malus pumila shoulddefinitelydo this , and sour with Valve to offer the same sorting of compatibility list in Steam . This is likely a six - month software system labor that could like a shot make hundred of top PC plot useable , now and in the futurity .
But that ’s not enough . Apple ca n’t keep forcing everyone who makes native Mac apps to use their Metal graphic API . Nobody desire to do that for a platform as small ( for gaming ) as the Mac . support the more widely - utilized ( by game developers ) Vulkan API for Apple silicon would go a long way toward showing game developers that Apple is uncoerced to meet them midway .
Finally , there ’s the point-blank instrument that always works : cash . Apple is sitting on a massive deal of Au like a Draco , with over $ 150B in cash and immediate payment combining weight . It would have an enormous encroachment to spend just one percent of that idle cash on payment to publishers to make Mac - native versions of their grownup game , available twenty-four hour period - and - appointment with the Windows versions .
That ’s $ 1.5 billion in “ make a Mac rendering too ” bribe , enough to fully fund rafts of Mac version of top approaching secret plan per year . secret plan development is a yr - long operation , so this method would n’t have an immediate wallop . The Proton for Mac first step could make a monumental departure in the short term , with pay - to - play reading taking over after a pair of geezerhood .
Whatever Apple decides to do , it ’s clear that its current route has not delivered . TheMac as a gaming platformis in just as bad of a place now as it has been for the last ten .
