Apple’s Mac Gaming Strategy Looks a Lot Like Google Stadia
As Apple inches toward transforming the Mac into a tried and true PC gaming platform, some very clear comparisons are forming between Apple’s gaming strategy and one of the industry’s biggest letdowns of the decade. In fact, in many ways, the two mirror one another almost perfectly. Let’s take a closer look at how Mac’s gaming endeavors are on a parallel path with the defunct Google Stadia.
A Lively Community
Every gaming platform is driven by its community. You see them fight the console wars on social media. You watch them flock to event stages at major award shows. Wherever you look, you’ll find a sea of blue, green, and red as players champion their favorite platform of choice, sometimes even declaring that theirs is better than the rest.
Mac is no different. Just as Stadia had a small but avid group of fans (here’s looking at you, # TeamStadia), Mac gamers also like to rally around each other. Just one look at the Mac Gaming Subredditpaints of picture of devoted Mac gamers practically begging for their platform of choice to be unleashed.
It’s this group that pushes Mac gaming forward. They celebrate developer wins, weigh in on upcoming games, and call out problems with the platform as it grows. The community is who the games are for, and just like Stadia, these vocal few are the frontline that want Mac gaming to succeed the most.
Content is King
That can’t happen, though, until developers decide to port their games to the platform. Though we’ve heard whispers of some developers working to bring over huge titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Control Ultimate Edition, and Dead Island 2, most of the promised games are older and not as popular as they were at launch.
Stadia had this problem, too. It would often receive ports of old games, even as new titles dropped weekly on the big three consoles. That’s not to say Stadia never saw any new releases, but it certainly didn’t get the new developer support it needed to keep the platform afloat.
Now Mac’s in the same boat. While it’s great to fill out its back catalogue with old content, the only way to push Mac forward as a gaming platform is to grab big day and date titles, like Crimson Desert and Cronos: The New Dawn. Mac desperately needs more of these now.
So far, the only AAA developers who have supported Mac consistently are Capcom with multiple Resident Evil titles available across Apple’s ecosystem and Ubisoft with several Assassin’s Creed games now online to buy. These are a good start, but it’s not enough for healthy long-term growth.
Game Store Walled Garden
One of the bigger critiques against Stadia was that games had to be ported directly to Stadia’s online games store and purchased separately instead of letting players bring their libraries over from Steam, a la GeForce NOW and Boosteroid.
Again, Mac is in a similar situation.
Officially, Apple has said that they don’t care where developers port their games. The Mac App Store is an obvious choice. Steam also has a Mac app, as does the Epic Games Store. But while Steam and Epic boast higher player counts across the board, a dubiously big number of Mac game ports are only available on the App Store, including Death Stranding and Assassin’s Creed: Shadows.
Why developers would skip the most popular PC gaming platform on the planet – Steam – for the Mac App Store (which is historically filled with mobile ports from iPhone and iPad) is beyond me. Maybe it has something to do with plans to support the entire Apple ecosystem of devices in the future, or maybe Apple’s offering financial incentives under the table? Who really knows?
But given how things shook out with Stadia’s locked online store, this feels like a mistake on Apple’s part. It would make a lot more sense to encourage broad Steam support where players who already own games on Windows can easily play their existing purchases on their Mac, as well, all without having to rebuy games on the App Store.
Exclusives
Even as big platform holders like Xbox abandon first-party exclusives for the sake of appealing to the broader market, PlayStation, Nintendo, and even Stadia know/knew that exclusives give players a reason to invest specifically in a single platform. Not only that, but exclusives also empower platform owners to push the limits of their hardware and software by designing games tailored to unleash the full power of their PCs and consoles.
Typically, Apple loves this strategy. They’re constantly touting how their custom hardware and finely tuned software are designed to work with one another for a smoother user experience. Why not extend this same philosophy to games? It only makes sense!
If Apple really wants to grab some gaming attention for Mac, they need their own game studio. Apple’s not far off from the same idea, either. They recently purchased RAC7, the makers of the mobile hit, Sneaky Sasquatch — emphasis on mobile.
Unfortunately, while the title offers delightful gameplay on the go, RAC7 is not a AAA developer, and it’s unlikely that they’ll suddenly become one anytime soon. So for now, Apple’s first foray into game development looks more like a play for iPhone and iPad instead of a real attempt at pushing the gaming boundaries of Mac. But maybe this will come with time.
Fool me once...
The last similarity between Mac gaming and Stadia is the list of broken promises. Just as Stadia execs swore up and down that their platform was in it for the long haul, Apple execs have proclaimed for years that now, Mac is finally serious about bringing games to their users.
No, really. They mean it this time.
But then nothing really happens. Sure, we got some developer tools, and there’s even a way to port Windows games to Mac with the Game Porting Toolkit. But other than that, there hasn’t been a ton of movement. No matter how you slice it, there still just aren’t that many AA and AAA games for Mac. Even worse, the trickle of titles revealed every year at WWDC has been slow and lackluster in terms of both quality and quantity.
There just aren’t enough good games to go around inside Apple’s walled garden, proving that the old adage, “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t always pan out, even for the biggest tech giant on the planet.
All in all, the state of Mac gaming isn’t great, even years after Apple declared Mac a viable gaming platform. You want to know the saddest punchline of all? Even Stadia supported more AA and AAA games in three years than Apple’s Mac platform has earned in five, and yet, Stadia couldn’t survive in the end.
Every Mac is a Gaming Mac
Not all hope is lost, though. There are actually two big reasons why developers should reconsider Mac as the next destination for their new games:
I’ll say the same thing I said in the early days of Stadia. Mac players are hungry for AA and AAA experiences. There are so few of them in the App Store and on Steam that players will practically buy anything that’s halfway decent, just to have something to play. So developers, port your game to the platform now, and watch the sales roll in.
Every Mac with an M-series Apple Silicon chip is capable of ridiculous power, battery life, and longevity. Sure, there are variations between what a fanless MacBook Air can do beside a fully-specced MacBook Pro, but every new Mac sold today is at least capable of some level of AA-AAA graphical performance. The potential to turn any Mac user into a gamer is high, as long as developers are willing to participate.
Apple’s Biggest Advantages Over Google Stadia
Taking all of this into account, it’s pretty easy to see that Mac gaming is at least turning down the same road as Stadia, picking up speed on the path to destruction. Whether or not they’ll continue along the same precarious route is a mystery, and if they do, they’re doomed. Right? Well, not exactly.
One of Apple’s biggest strengths is in the way it invests in its products and services. Although there are some minor blips here and there, generally speaking, Apple isn’t as quick to axe a product like those killed by Google.
Apple has proven that they don’t mind the slow and steady approach to developing their ecosystem. Look at Apple Intelligence! Even after a spectacular public fail last year, Apple has taken a year off to regroup and try again sometime next year with a whole gap year in between. Then there’s Siri, which has been a mass disappointment for well over a decade, yet they keep chugging along. I’m sure there are more examples, as well. Feel free to plug them in as you see fit.
Apple has also taken great steps over the years to defend their brand image, often painting themselves as trustworthy, reliable, and cool — all the things that inspire users to stick with their Apple products, even as competitors nip at their heals with sharper generative AI solutions, cleaner software designs, and more innovative features. It’s this strong brand loyalty that makes Apple the ideal candidate to launch a gaming platform that both developers and players will trust without fears of having it all stripped away in just a few short years.
If you need one more benefit, Apple also doesn’t have to keep an entire server farm up and running to support their gaming endeavors. They just need to keep making powerful Macs and provide a path for developers to port more games to the platform. It truly is that simple.
What Happens Next?
Apple’s playing the long game as it angles to capture the gaming crowd that it neglected for so long. Just as Apple Silicon took half a decade to replace Intel in every new Mac computer on the shelf, their gaming strategy is one designed to be played out over generations of hardware and software. In this way, Apple can afford to take it slow.
The only question now is whether or not players and developers are willing to wait on each other as Mac finds its footing in a crowded gaming arena, especially as mobile handsets like Steam Deck and the ASUS ROG Ally aim to revolutionize the hardware market again. Is Mac already too late to make an impact? Or is Apple silently positioning themselves to become the new king of the PC master race? Only time will tell.