Apple silicon and the Vision Pro mean that Apple is finally getting serious about playing games

WRITTEN BY CLIFF JOSEPH

IT’S ONLY TAKEN about 40 years, but it’s starting to look as though Apple is finally getting serious about gaming on the Mac. For most of its history, Apple has simply ignored gaming altogether — in fact, there have been times when it actually made life difficult for gaming companies who wanted to develop Mac versions of their top titles. The result is a real dearth of A–list games available on the Mac —titles such as Diablo IV, Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy have sold millions on PC, Xbox and PlayStation in recent years, yet still show no signs of ever appearing on the Mac.

Part of the problem was simply that most Macs just didn’t have the graphics horsepower required to run the latest 3D games. However, the arrival of home–grown Apple silicon processors —the M1, M2 and M3 — really shook things up, delivering a quantum leap in graphics performance for the Mac. Apple has also made more of an effort to court game developers — something it’s not done much of in the past — and we’re slowly starting to see a few more high–profile games appear on the Mac. Over the last couple of years, big–name titles including Baldur’s Gate 3, Resident Evil 4 and Death Stranding have arrived on the Mac.

And, at last year’s WWDC, Apple released the Game Porting Toolkit, which was designed to help developers "port" — or convert —their existing Windows games to run on the Mac. We’re still a long way from gaming paradise, but Apple’s new interest in games and the improved graphics performance of the latest Macs means that Mac gamers can now look forward to a lot more A–list games in the future.

Skate City is one of the many great games you’ll now find available from Apple Arcade.

Games in store

THE MAC APP STORE is the obvious place to look for games —especially casual games that are available on the Apple Arcade subscription service. However, the Mac App Store can be pricey, so it’s not the best place to buy A–list titles. Steam is the biggest online game store (https://store.steampowered.com),although a recent update means that the Steam app now only runs on macOS 10.15 or later. GOG (www.gog.com) has a smaller selection of games on its store, but often has good discounts. Some big game companies also have their own stores, such as Blizzard, which sells World Of Warcraft https://battle.net. through its own