Saying that Mac gaming has had its ups and downs over the decades is an understatement, but these days you might be surprised by how good Mac gaming can be. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that Macs are on their way to being a legit modern gaming platform.
A bold statement, I know! However, if you look at everything Apple and game developers have done in the past few years, there’s less and less reason to doubt that in the near future Apple’s personal computers might be just as valid for gamers to choose than a Windows PC system or even a console. In many ways, it’s already there today!
All the Pieces for macOS Gaming Are Falling Into Place
For quite some time, macOS wasn’t the most inviting place for game developers. During the PowerPC days, things weren’t too bad, and you could expect fairly high-profile games (such as Diablo II) to receive native Mac versions.
When Apple switched over to Intel CPUs, there were still native Intel macOS versions of games, but I think the existence of bootcamp made developers less likely to invest time and money into a macOS port of their games.
After all, if a Mac user can simply boot into Windows and play the Windows version with almost no effort, why bother making a Mac port? Besides, it’s not like the Intel era was great for Mac GPU power. Especially when it came to MacBooks and lower-end desktop Macs stuck with Intel iGPUs, which could barely render a desktop, much less a video game.
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Today, things are very different. Even the lowliest Apple M1 chip can offer console-grade gaming performance in modern titles. By which I mean 1080p at 30fps is definitely on the cards for most games that will run on Mac. Even if they have to work through Rosetta II. The latest Apple Silicon chips, which is the M4 family as of this writing, can handily keep up with mid-range gaming PCs and current-generation consoles. So Apple’s hardware is certainly ready for mainstream gaming.
On top of this, Apple has worked to make game porting to macOS as easy as possible with its game porting toolkit, and macOS has its own graphics API called “Metal”, which has all the modern bells and whistles AAA games need to do their thing.
Also, while the macOS install base is fairly small, the combined iPhone and iPad install base is absolutely massive. This matters because macOS with Apple Silicon can pretty much run any iPad or iOS game with little to no modification. Which means that if a developer ports their game to Apple’s mobile platforms, there’s only a relatively small amount of work left to make it run on Mac. Not an insignificant amount of work, mind you, just the vast bulk of it.
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I think Apple’s done a decent job of making Mac as attractive to developers as possible, and their market share of laptop and desktop systems is growing thanks to excellent products like the MacBook Air and Mac Mini, which are unbeatable value when you look at the base models.
Apple MacBook Air 13 (M4, 2025)
$949 $999 Save
$50
That’s not to say the company hasn’t made some bone-headed movies either. Dropping 32-bit app support, deprecating OpenGL, and cutting out Vulkan in favor of Metal don’t seem like the smartest moves. However, for the most part, I think Mac is a growing platform for gaming and that more developers will start considering it to increase their potential customer base.
If you haven’t been keeping score, there are a surprising number of modern games that are getting native Apple Silicon Mac versions at or near launch, and quite a lot of older AAA or popular Indie titles that have found a home as native Mac apps.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a major AAA title that was released just before I wrote this, and it got a simultaneous release on macOS. Cyberpunk 2077 is still considered a graphical benchmark title over on Windows PCs and has been updated with the latest technology. That game is set to get a native macOS release in “early” 2025. Likewise, Control is slated for a 2025 release as well.
Games like Resident Evil Village, Death Stranding, Borderlands 3, Baldur’s Gate 3, and indie titles like Hades and its sequel are all on Mac.
Compatibility Layers Are Eating Into Windows’ Gaming Share
Thanks to Valve’s Steam Deck console and the SteamOS software it runs that enables it to play thousands of Windows games, I think gamers have become much more comfortable with the idea of buying into a gaming platform that doesn’t run video games natively.
Not to undersell the amount of work that Valve and the Linux community put into making games meant for Windows to work on Linux. It took years and thousands of laborious hours to get where we are today. Now, some games paradoxically run better on SteamOS than on Windows!
Likewise, compatibility layers have advanced on macOS as well, thanks to free software like Whiskey or paid solutions like Crossover, which now also incorporate Apple’s own porting kit software to expand how many games work even more. So, with compatibility layers and emulation becoming more seamless and with relatively little performance loss, macOS has a solid path to being a legit gaming platform. After all, if you consider a Steam Deck “legit” then why not macOS running the same type of software solution?
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Almost All Digital Stores Work on macOS Now
You may be surprised to know that you can buy games for a Mac outside the Mac App Store. It’s true that some games are sadly exclusive to the Mac store, but for the most part you can buy games from the same places you would on a Windows or Linux PC. There are native clients for Steam, Epic Game Store, GOG Galaxy, and Battle.net. Also, of course, you can install any software you like from any source on a Mac, it’s as open as any operating system in that regard.
Except for some games that are exclusive to Apple’s store on Mac, most of the time when you buy a game that has a Mac version on storefronts like Steam, you get both versions. This works out great for me because it allows me to seamlessly play games either on my Mac or my handheld PC.
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The Golden Era of macOS Gaming Could Be Upon Us
The Mac’s market share has been growing rapidly and although people may not be buying an M4 MacBook Air or Mac Mini specifically for gaming, it is a fact that these are now capable mainstream gaming devices. The more people who buy into macOS, the more incentive there is to make games for the operating system, and Apple is going its darnest to make that as fast and cost-effective for developers as possible. So here’s hoping it pays off!
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