Apple just released their new Macbooks with new custom SoCs, and they look really powerful (on paper).
Blizzard already has WoW and most of its IPs on Mac.
They also made Overwatch on the very weak Switch… so why not Overwatch 2 on Mac?
The number of Mac users is not that low across the world (hundreds of millions).
I bet Overwatch can run nicely on the standard M1 (non pro) Macs, let alone the new chips.
I can‘t imagine how Blizzard‘s optimization would fit these new beasts.
We are finally in a world of (hopefully) 200+ fps (ultra settings) on Laptops with integrated low energy GPUs.
I think it’s more a question of how much return on investment they would get. WoW makes sense, it’s a lot more casual and appealing to MAC users. FPS though has never been popular on macs and that’s considering that games in general are already niche on that platform.
I bet Overwatch can run nicely on the standard M1 (non pro) Macs, let alone the new chips.
I think it would run little better than on the switch.
As of older models with pre gen-8 Intel i7 CPU’s, here I believe it would run terribly bad (Know performance limits of those from my work)
I’m not a game developer, but coding the game for Mac from what I am aware requires massive overhauls to the systems. Especially if the architecture it’s going on is radically different to what they are developing for now. This was seen in the 7th generation where the ps3 decided to do some weird cell processor thing that made developing for it a massive pain and as a result, most crossplatform games from that era ran terrible on PS3 compared to xbox.
Because there are much more users on the switch that are actually gaming. Everyone who owns a switch is going to game on it whereas the amount of people gaming on a mac is very low. Not to mention, every switch is the same so developing for it doesn’t require you to take into account multiple different variations of switch hardware. Mac on the otherhand has a bunch of different hardware setups. It is just too big of a risk for them to bother.
Not to mention they have already tried making mac ports of stuff (Acti not Blizzard). COD used to get a dedicated MAC port and it sold very, very poorly so Acti wouldn’t release stuff on mac anymore.
around 2008 - 2012 everyone everywhere in college had a macbook. Now I dont see them really. WIndows Vista forced a lot of people to Macbook but now I never see macbooks.
Vista had terrible memory management but it wasn’t bad half-way through it’s life-cycle. The problem with XP is that it lacked self-repair and always seemed to accumulate registry issues over time. I remember I had to re-install XP every 2 years or so. Windows 7 is better at that and windows 10 is extremely good in that regard. I have not had to re-install windows 10 once, even though motherboard + CPU + RAM changes (although I do make sure to uninstall motherboard drivers first).
The problem is there are people who would play WoW on MAC but there are far fewer that want to play shooters on MAC. This means you have to attract new people over to the platform (which is very pricey).
I’m going to be honest, the M1 is a great chip from apple but they are charging more than 2x what the equivalent windows laptop would cost. It’s $1,299 for 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. Even during this pandemic, you can get that at $450 with a low end dedicated graphics card on windows and that’s going to perform a bit better in games then the M1 MAC.
I recently bought a used MacBook Pro 13 inches M1 for £680 and it was in practically new condition. The build quality is unrivaled and it runs totally silently most of the time and the battery life is incredible. I can’t see a Windows machine being able to match it with those things
Used prices are irrelevant when comparing products. It’s apple to oranges (if you’ll excuse the pun). MSRP is what you base comparisons on as that’s the price most people will actually pay. 1 off sales aren’t something you can make a broad recommendation with.
Noise wise, there are hundreds of fanless windows laptops (like the surface for example). AMD’s recent Zen 3 laptop chips are able to fit 12 cores in a fanless design due to their low power draw and that’s going to give you far more power CPU wise then the M1.
Battery wise the M1 does very good but it is not the best. It clocks in at about 16 hours of web surfing at 150 nits screen brightness. There are multiple windows laptops above that mark, with the Latitude 9510 getting 18 hours and 17 minutes at the same screen brightness and performing the same tasks while surfing the web. The Latitude 9510 is also a business laptop so it’s built to last.
By build quality I’ll assume you mean “looks nice”, which is does look nice but to me “build quality” means meant to last. Apple laptops are not easy to repair and they are not the most rugged. You are talking $$$ to fix them. In regards to build quality by my definition I’d definitely say there are more and better options for windows machines. In regards to build quality, as in looks and feel, I’d also say windows again. There are plenty of windows laptops that mimic Apple’s style and again there are plenty that don’t that may objectively look better to other people. Apple’s laptop keys are also pretty subpar compared to windows laptops of the same price and that’s excluding older MacBook models that Apple had to run a repair program due to how prone they were to damage. Now they are just using scissor switches, which are budget tier for most windows laptops. They should have sprung for low profile mechanical or Optical switches. Really these are the things you do not expect to be cheaped out on for a $1,300 laptop.
8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD at $1,300 USD is completely unacceptable as well. It’s $28 USD difference between an 8GB RAM kit and a 16GB RAM kit. It’s $15 more for a 512GB SSD over a 256GB SSD. Those are retail prices to boot, Apple gets a big discount. There’s really no excuse for not having those on a $1,300 product. The last time I had 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD was over 11 years ago with my g skill phoenix.
Not exactly. It’s different this time around because Apple makes the chips themselves which means they can sell them to retailers at a lot lower price because they make so much savings themselves from not having to pay Intel for the chips.
That discount gets passed on to the consumers.
You could see how the M1 models got a significant reduction in price and frequently went on sale very shortly after release on retailers like Amazon.
I guarantee that they don’t run as well as the M1.
Either that or they thermal throttle which significantly reduces their sustained performance.
I highly doubt that they do this while maintaining the same small weight and slim form factor.
Apple machines also sell very well for years later and you can recoup a lot of the price. Windows machines on the other hand? No one wants them.
The amount of RAM doesn’t really matter because it’s using unified memory and it’s extremely high speed. You rarely need more than 8GB unless you’re using very specific memory intensive applications.
People don’t play FPS on Macs because there is simply no good competitive FPS games there. It’s not because Mac users are a different kind of humans. Mac users are normal users like you and me
This is actually another good reason for why Blizzard should port OW to Mac. Mac users are willing to spend more in comparison to an average Windows user ( that’s at least the case in the iOS vs Android world).
well it’s simply because there are still not enough good games on Mac. The average Apple customer tends to spend more on apps and games.
well how do you explain that the vast majority of Blizzard games are still on Mac and that WoW was one of the first games to get optimized to the new M1 ARM architecture?
