With the majority of AAA games starting life on Windows on Intel-powered X86-based PCs, games developers, or publisher such as Feral or Aspyr, now need to write their games for the new ARM-based chip as well as Intel. However, with the arrival of the M1 chip this all changed.

Just check out our roundup of theīest Mac games for some of the highlights. The strong sales of Macs in recent years also helped encourage developers to make more A-List games available on the Mac than ever before. In a previous version of this article, pre-M1, we talked about how the Mac gaming scene had picked up since Macs started to use the same Intel processors as Windows PCs (back in 2007). It doesn’t matter how good a Mac might be as a gaming machine if it won’t run the games you want to play. The problem with Mac gaming is that there aren’t a lot of games that are actually available for Macs, let alone M-series Macs. With the arrival of the M2 Pro in the MacBook Pro and Mac mini, and the M2 Max in the MacBook Pro, Apple has finally produced a chip that is capable of handling graphics-intensive AAA games. While M-series Macs don’t feature discrete graphics, their graphics capabilities are far beyond the integrated options in Intel Macs and they even beat the best of the discrete graphics cards that were previously included in Intel-powered Macs. In the past only the most expensive Macs offered the discrete graphics necessary for gaming. Also the fact that upgrading a Mac to meet the requirements of a graphically-demanding modern game is pretty much a no-no makes Macs the least future proof option for gamers (who often like to be able to tinkle with their computers to build the ideal machine for their purpose).īut Macs have become a much better choice for gaming enthusiasts with the advent of Apple’s first M1 Macs in 2020, the subsequent M1 Pro, M1 Max and M1 Ultra, and now the M2, M2 Pro and M2 Max. There are Macs that can play games well, but they are generally much more expensive than the equivalent PC.

Traditionally the Mac hasn’t been considered a great choice for gaming. It’s something of a running joke among Windows users that Macs are rubbish for gaming.

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