Comment by latexr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by latexr | Hacker News Reader

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Open the App Store on a iPhone. Of the four tabs, two are game-centric (“Games” and “Arcade”). Another (“Today”) has been consistently using more than half of its features for games.

In their most recent operating systems, they have released a separate app specifically for games (look at that domain, even).

https://games.apple.com

They created the Game Porting Toolkit.

https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/

When they discontinue Rosetta next year, they’ll continue limited support specifically for old games.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/abou...

Plus, whenever they announce new chips they feature games and gaming personalities in the keynote.

Those are clear signs they are interested in gaming happening on their platforms. Whether they’re succeeding at it is another story.

And how about all the games no longer on the App Store?

Say, Flight Control (one of the first games to hit a million unit sales), or the Infinity Blade series (which wiki says was removed due to incompatibility with newer Apple platform changes)?

Both of those examples are old and precede current efforts. Plus, for the third time:

> Whether they’re succeeding at it is another story.

I’m not arguing Apple excels or is even decent at video games, I’m simply pointing out that it’s clear they are interested in having them on their platforms.

Of course they also took the route of inventing a new 3d api Metal which is at odds with Vulkan. There is HoneyKrisp of course, but if one want's decent gaming on an M1 or M2 laptop, Asahi Linux is actually the superior choice.

I don't think one can call it even close to success when the best way to run AAA games on your hardware is to literally replace the entire operating system which uses cobbled together components like FEX and wine/proton, etc... the fact that that works with more games is insane.

Again:

> Whether they’re succeeding at it is another story.

You may disagree with their strategy all you like. You may even think they are doing everything wrong, that’s perfectly legitimate. But they are clearly interested in having gaming happen on their platforms. The claim that they aren’t is the only thing I disputed.

Metal predates Vulkan.

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