I'm hoping the rumored revision of the Apple TV can slot in as a game console. Apple has been pushing AAA games on iOS/iPadOS over the past few years, but there's no good user story if I want to have that traditional experience beyond playing Apple Arcade games on the existing (and outdated) Apple TV pucks.
There's some irony in that the one thing they haven't figured out (the living room) is the one thing their competitors in the space (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo) _have_ figured out.
Apple's in the tough spot (re [1]) that mobile games have already surpassed conventional PC and console games in terms of revenue. I don't know what fraction of that is the block crusher games that I see on everybody's phones and what fraction is the otaku who is serious about Umamusume, FGO, Arknights or Genshin Impact. Either way why would they want to jump onto what seems to be a sinking ship?
My take on the living room is that streaming boxes and most Blu-Ray players really suck these days (crappy little Sonys take 45 seconds to boot!) and if you want something to sit next to your TV to be a Plex client it should be a PS or XBOX.
But arguably that’s part of the problem. Not so much performance but for a long time you had improvement in the price/performance ratio and now you don’t… except for Apple Silicon! The PS5 costs more, not less, than it cost at launch years ago. Studios are in deep trouble because several years ago they assumed the average gamer was going to have a better machine (be it PC or console) than they do so now everyone is complaining new games suck.
X86 is going the way of the VAX and 68k but ARM ex. Apple is always underpowered at any price. If the rest of the industry was keeping up with Apple Silicon we would not be locked into what Apple thinks is fashionable we’d be seeing a lot of innovation.
Beelink's AMD mini-PCs are great console replacements. AMD $/perf and perf/watt is keeping up with Apple in the midrange (laptops, mini-pc's), and is winning at high-end (workstations + up).
I've been having a terrible time with Kerbal Space Program on my M4 based MBP. At the very least you could call it immersive when you're re-entering Kerbin and your knees are on fire.
Still manages to stay cool with games like CP2077 though.
I used to play that on an Intel i5 MacBook Pro (~2014 model?) with only embedded Intel graphics. It gave it a workout and the frame rate wasn’t amazing, but it was playable. I’m surprised it strains an M4 at all.
