Mastodawn

At WWDC last year, Apple began promoting Macs to developers as a premium videogame platform, showing off 3 titles, only one of which has shipped.

In the meantime, streaming games has become an increasingly viable way to enjoy AAA titles on the Mac.

In fact, NVIDIA's GeForce NOW Ultimate tier, that streams games running on the RTX 4080 GPU is currently the best way to enjoy the most demanding games on any Mac.

My story on @macstories: https://www.macstories.net/stories/the-best-mac-gaming-experience-is-a-pc-sitting-in-a-dallas-data-center/

The Best Mac Gaming Experience Is a PC Sitting in a Dallas Data Center

I’ve seen the future of Mac gaming, and it’s not Metal 3 or Apple silicon. It’s a PC sitting in a Dallas data center with an NVIDIA 4080 GPU. That’s the data center my Mac connects to when I log into GeForce NOW Ultimate, the top tier of NVIDIA’s videogame streaming service. NVIDIA has data

Paul Stockton Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories not finished your article yet but if I play mainly first-person shooters where your reaction time and latency has to be as fast as possibly in order to kill the enemy before they kill you, how does this work playing it "remotely"?
Wonder if anyone has done any comprehensive tests frame-by-frame to show what each player sees and reacts to compared to a gaming PC

John Voorhees Feb 22, 2023

@pauls I'm probably not the best person to answer this since I don't play a lot of FPS games, but here's what NVIDIA said at CES:

“With the addition of NVIDIA Reflex, GeForce NOW achieves click-to-pixel latency below 40 milliseconds — another first in cloud gaming.”

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-brings-rtx-4080-to-geforce-now

NVIDIA Brings RTX 4080 to GeForce NOW

NVIDIA today announced GeForce NOW™ is going beyond fast, delivering GeForce RTX™ 4080-class gaming to billions of devices — available exclusively in the new, high-performance Ultimate membership tier.

NVIDIA Newsroom

Paul Stockton Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees thanks for that - I may need to try this for a month in the interests of science to compare to my 2080Ti gaming PC

Matt Birchler Feb 22, 2023

@pauls @johnvoorhees I would also check out Digital Foundry's looks into this over the past year or two. The short version, I believe is that in optimum conditions the latency can be shockingly close, but it's not as consistent as running things locally.

John Voorhees Feb 22, 2023

@matt @pauls Very true. I haven’t see, any latency issues, but I’ve been playing more forgiving games when it comes to that. The biggest factor I’ve seen so far is the consistency of your Internet connection. A slower wired connection is much better than a fast WiFi connection that dips in and out.

Paul Stockton Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees @matt thanks guys - very interesting, I'm going to keep a close eye on it, plus the list of games. A 4080 graphics card is way out of my budget for a long time so if ever I have a game that my 2080Ti can't handle at 1440p then this seems the way to go

ohhaivinny Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees @pauls Thank you! I mostly just play rocket league, so might be worth the trial.

Paul Stockton Feb 23, 2023

@ohhaivinny @johnvoorhees what are you playing Rocket League on at present? Just asking as that game runs very well even on low spec gaming PC’s so playing a game that needs split second reflexes is likely to put you at a disadvantage if streaming it instead.

ohhaivinny Feb 23, 2023

@pauls @johnvoorhees Yeah I have it running on 10th Gen i5 with 3070. The other game I play is Cities Skyline, which I am sure the remote setup would easily work. But the gaming PC still exists under my desk

Paul Stockton Feb 23, 2023

@ohhaivinny @johnvoorhees interested to hear how Rocket League plays, you’ve got a better gen gfx card than my PC and I can play in 4K 100+ fps easily.

ohhaivinny Feb 23, 2023

@pauls @johnvoorhees I have no issues now, but if I don’t have to have physical hardware might be interesting

ohhaivinny Mar 5, 2023

@pauls @johnvoorhees I got some surprising findings!! Rocket league is very much playable, but I couldn’t get any of the mods in Cities Skylines to work which is weird.
I have symmetric gigabit and live in SF if that helps

Paul Stockton Mar 5, 2023

@ohhaivinny did you enjoy Rocket League as much like this?

ohhaivinny Mar 5, 2023

@pauls yeah no noticeable difference really, between local and GeForce Now

alans Feb 22, 2023

@pauls @johnvoorhees @macstories My experience playing Destiny on a MacBook via GeForce Now is that it's probably not quite responsive enough for *competetive* PVP, but fine for casual PVP game modes; and easily good enough for harder, high-level PVE things like GM nightfalls and raids.

Paul Stockton Feb 22, 2023

@alans that's fair enough and what I'd expect. While I'm not a pro or competitive player I need my gaming PC to ensure I've got the best latency possible otherwise I'd be getting killed first every time!

Simon B. Støvring Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees Only skimmed this story so far but I'm excited to dive into it! This seems very interesting!

Bud Gibson Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories Sounds like the metaverse without the personal hardware requirement. My sons want to play pc games, but the hardware cost is significant even if you’re on that platform.

xac white Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories man I couldn’t agree with you guys more. I think google made a big mistake getting rid of stadia.

Ian Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees I second this, I've been trying it out with Assassin's Creed Odyssey this past month, and the Xbox Cloud Gaming experience is really fantastic. Plus you can carry your Mac around the house with you, unlike a real xbox. (I've got a gigabit line, mind.)

Alex Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories I spent a few months playing games on my mac with both GeForce Now Ultimate and Shadow.tech. Streaming was a lot cheaper than buying a good graphics card. GeForce Now probably had better performance, but since Shadow.tech is essentially just a virtual gaming PC, it didn't limit what games I could install.

Jakob Sohn Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories Your article is really saying streaming is the future of gaming, which happily eliminates a historical weakness of MacOS. That may yet happen but we're pretty far away from it now.

First, selection is very poor. GFN has 1500 titles, Steam has 50k. GFN could run all of them, but Nvidia is playing it safe. Alternatives like MS game pass don't even attempt to be your sole gaming platform. Selection is great for ~$4/month (the real price of MS game pass) but compared to buying off Steam, not remotely comparable.

Second, it requires a rock-solid online connection. Generally unplayable on hotel or starbucks wifi, or tethered to your phone. And it uses a lot of data on that connection, if you're cursed with a data cap.

The alternative? Build a mid/low-end gaming PC for around $1000 or buy a console for $500. Then you can play everything other than exclusives, which are pretty rare these days particularly for PC gamers.

John Voorhees Feb 22, 2023

@jakobsohn I don't disagree with any of this. I think I covered the limitations of streaming pretty well in the story, but despite those, I think for some people, streaming is still a good alternative. I expect GeForce NOW to grow, too, especially given Microsoft's announcement yesterday that it’s PC games are coming to the service.

Jakob Sohn Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees I hope it does too-- streaming lowers the cost of entry to nearly zero. It's exciting stuff!

My view is it can replace a gaming PC or console only if you fit a specific niche and confirm the games you want to play are available.

Conor Feb 22, 2023

@johnvoorhees @macstories controller support is a non-issue? I saw the XBOX controller on your desk. Also does it generate any more load on the Mac than visiting a website?

John Voorhees Feb 22, 2023

@conorporter Yes, you can use any Microsoft, Sony, or even Nintendo controller. The load was minimal. Just as playable on my M1 Air as my Mac Studio.