John VoorheesFeb 22, 2023

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

Show threadJakob SohnFeb 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.

Show threadJohn Voorhees
@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.
Feb 22, 2023 at 5:10pmWeb
Show threadJakob SohnFeb 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.