Why the New Mac on Arm Cpu is Great News for Gamers
Running iOS apps on your mac can be easily underestimated
If you are a MAC owner and you like games you know that your OSX-based machine doesn’t play well the role of a gaming station. Given the limited MAC install base across gamers and the high costs of doing ports to this system, there are very few AAA titles that can be played on your Apple machine.
This might be changing today.
On June 22th, Apple confirmed during its WWDC2020 virtual event that the new MAC-based machines will abandon the Intel CPU (that made them a market success) and will transition to ARM-based processors, the same they have on their mobile platforms (iPhone and iPad). This is no surprise, everyone was waiting for this announcement, it is something that has been breeding for a long time and many leaks confirmed this was going to really happen.
So yes, the new MAC will have ARM CPU… and everyone expects it to be less power-hungry, more thermally efficient, and hopefully, cheaper. I can’t see a world where Apple translates a cheaper manufacturing cost in a cheaper MSRP, but I digress. What I was not expecting from this update is that you will be able to run iOS applications as native applications on your MacBook. On hindsight this is quite obvious, it is going to be the same platform so it makes sense that the new mobile applications will be able to run on the desktop version of the hardware.
When I was listening to the keynote I was thinking about the office 365 suite or the adobe creative suite, the fact that both of them will need to provide new porting of their app, exactly as it happened when Apple transitioned from PowerPC to Intel: during the first year there were a lot of applications that were available just on emulation and they were PAINFULLY slow. I fear this will happen again. What I did not think right away is that the iOS ecosystem has a huge catalog of games and not just “farmville like” games.
Given the reach of iOS platforms, many game developers that are not investing in OSX versions of their games, are investing in iOS ones. Think about the latest Riot’s card game Legends of Runeterra.
Or you could can tap into the awesome Softcell catalog, especially Brawl Stars, an action game that would be an awesome addition to the OSX gaming catalog, to spend few minutes once in a while on a fast-paced action strategy game.
The line that separates a MacBook, an iPhone and an iPad is almost invisible now and this makes the Apple platform a very interesting platform for both casual gamers and serious gamers. It also means that software houses can design a port to iOS and reach a platform that has almost the same marketshare as windows-based PCs (src: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share).
Apple platforms might turn the Nintendo Switch’s dream to reality: you will be able to run your game on your Tv (AppleTV), on your Office (MacBook), and while you are away from home, on your phone/tablet.
I think this is going to be VERY exciting! I can’t wait to see how game publishers will react to this.
