[HN Gopher] Skyrim on Mac When?
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Skyrim on Mac When?
Author : charliebwrites
Score : 46 points
Date : 2022-07-17 15:37 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (skyrimonmacwhen.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (skyrimonmacwhen.com)
| bugmen0t wrote:
| It works smoothly with high quality using CrossOver (wine) on my
| M1 MacBook pro from 2021.
| jurmous wrote:
| In the past most Macs sold were Macbook Airs or other Macs which
| only had integrated Intel graphics. These made Macs a less
| attractive market to develop games for as the games run poorly on
| them.
|
| Now with the way more powerful graphics by default on the M1
| chips, I expect way more games to come out in the future
| supporting Macs. Like how No Man's Sky is coming out for Mac in
| the fall. Also the unified memory on Apple Silicon will help a
| lot in game performance when the games are optimised to use it.
| assbuttbuttass wrote:
| Skyrim runs fine on Proton
|
| EDIT: my bad I guess Proton is Linux-only
| gpderetta wrote:
| It would work on MacOS too if apple hadn't made supporting 32
| bits binaries so hard.
| jsheard wrote:
| Crossover fills a similar role for macOS:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRwkvrp2rBw
|
| It's actually using DXVK here, the same D3D11-to-Vulkan wrapper
| used by Proton, so they must be stacking it on top of MoltenVK
| to go D3D11-to-Vulkan-to-Metal. Two levels of translation isn't
| ideal but it seems to get the job done.
| kcb wrote:
| Apple needs first party Vulkan support. It would be a huge
| first step to making many modern games very functional on Mac.
| charliebwrites wrote:
| Hey HN! And welcome to a hill I'm willing to die on.
|
| I've been teaching myself basic HTML/JS/CSS to begin my webdev
| journey and this is the first project I've put together.
|
| It was recommended to me to make a project I'm passionate about
| so that I'm motivated to keep learning and get something real out
| there.
|
| Well here it is: SkyrimOnMacWhen.com!
|
| Its been far too long since Skyrim came out for there to be no
| release for the Mac. We've had ports for everything! PS3/4/5
| Xbox360/One/XS, hell even Alexa got a port...
|
| As a Mac user who has to carry around a laptop for work anyway,
| it would be great to have a port to macOS, as their target base
| is at least as big as some of the other ports that got attention.
|
| --------
|
| Quick FAQ:
|
| * Why did you choose Potential User Base as a metric, why not
| <X>?
|
| I thought about it for exactly 30 seconds and made a choice. This
| is more effort than Bethesda Softworks put in to making Skyrim on
| the Mac
|
| * Why did you use <Y> as a data source, or choose <Z> timeframe?
| I think <A>, <B>, or <C> would be better
|
| It turns out its _really_ hard to find true sales data for
| various consoles, PCs, etc. At least for free, via Google. If you
| have a good source, please lmk.
|
| * Why does your CSS look so bad?
|
| I'm so bad at design thinking I could screw up a stick figure
|
| * Why didnt you use <X> technology to make your site?
|
| I started learning web dev like two weeks ago, between a full
| time job and a sub par social life I'm trying to keep going. I
| havent had time to learn anything else.
|
| * Who hurt you..?
|
| A lot of people, but Bethesda Softworks mostly
| lfkdev wrote:
| Use a framework like Bootstrap or Bulma, your website will look
| ten times better with no effort. But cool project!
| surfer7837 wrote:
| Nah this page load instantly for me, I like it. All Bootstrap
| websites look the same to me.
| lfkdev wrote:
| Bootstrap sites are also loading instantly. If you prefer a
| basic html from 1990, you are not the average user.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Nice website! Programming is the most fun when you're applying
| it to something you personally care about, so you're in a great
| position already.
| smegsicle wrote:
| if you wanted something fun to do server-side, you could
| calculate #skyrimCounter and bake it into the html rather than
| displaying a noscript error
| fmorel wrote:
| But either way, thank you for using noscript _only_ for the
| counter and not to blank out the entire page! So many
| websites these days don 't load at all without JavaScript.
| dchnshA wrote:
| MacOS will never be a gaming platform. Apple has never shown any
| interest in making it one and compatibility has only gotten worse
| over time.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Apple is working with several games developers to get more
| games on Mac, although that could just be a way for them to
| boast how powerful their mobile-GPU-turned-desktop-GPU is.
|
| See: https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/06/apple-gaming-updates/
| TheTon wrote:
| I love this and I hope someone at Bethesda sees it.
| Unfortunately, I think the odds of Bethesda releasing anything
| for non Microsoft platforms in the future is approaching zero.
|
| It is an interesting development that AAA gaming is becoming
| nearly an all first party affair with the acquisitions and
| consolidation that have happened over the past couple of years.
| We are already at the point where for the most part only indie
| games will be available cross platform.
|
| As a gamer and an Apple fan, I'm vexed and puzzled that Apple
| isn't doing more in games than Apple Arcade and milking iOS in
| app purchase. They finally have capable hardware with the
| transition to Apple Silicon (and this includes iOS devices), and
| their software stack is pretty good, but it's tragically
| underutilized. Simply building a good platform and hoping the
| games will come isn't enough in a world where your competitors
| buy up all of the game studios.
| mbg721 wrote:
| I'm a little surprised that Skyrim runs on Windows PCs and
| consoles as well as it does. Bethesda has such a reputation for
| releasing ambitious-but-buggy games, I half-expect the headline
| "after 11 years, Skyrim bug-fix patch released".
| [deleted]
| finiteseries wrote:
| Today, if you can stand 1080p, a ridiculously small bitrate, and
| using a gamepad: https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass/cloud-
| gaming
|
| Later this year, or whenever Microsoft upgrades xcloud if you'd
| like to actually enjoy playing it!
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Nvidia GeForce Now is also an option if you already own the
| game on Steam
| finiteseries wrote:
| Sadly not, GFN is incredible but Microsoft/Bethesda removed
| it from that service 2 years ago or so.
| solardev wrote:
| GeForce Now is incredible, but some publishers like Bethesda
| removed all their games from it. I dunno why. It's really
| sad, because the catalog started out huge and gets smaller
| every year.
| solardev wrote:
| There's also https://shadow.tech/ that lets you run Steam in
| the cloud (any game you own, not limited to a subset). It's a
| lot more of a PITA to use and keep updated than xCloud or
| GeForce Now, though.
| mukundmr wrote:
| The whole OpenGL versus Metal situation doesn't help in putting
| games to macOS. Also, Crossover ports no longer work.
| [deleted]
| mukundmr wrote:
| The whole OpenGL versus Metal situation doesn't help in porting
| games to macOS. Also, Crossover ports no longer work. Getting a
| nice console has been my solution for gaming.
| imbnwa wrote:
| That's what I do, got a PS5 direct from Sony and am playing
| Skyrim on there now with a M1 Mini for compute.
| [deleted]
| ravel-bar-foo wrote:
| 'Skyrim VR' potential user base links to an article on smart
| speakers. I also think it is very unlikely that there are 200M VR
| devices out there, but only 90M macs.
| charliebwrites wrote:
| Good catch, fixed
| paraph1n wrote:
| Haha, genuinely curious, how did you end up linking to smart
| speakers instead of VR equipment?
| SahAssar wrote:
| Probably because of researching numbers for the skyrim
| alexa edition.
| solardev wrote:
| FYI, not a native port, but you can already stream Skyrim in a
| browser: https://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/store/the-elder-
| scrolls-v-s...
| duxup wrote:
| I just play it on my Switch.
| satysin wrote:
| I picked up Skyrim for my Switch when it was on sale a month or
| two back and was very happy at how good a job they did with the
| port. Yes it is a 10 year old game but the Switch is 5 year old
| mobile hardware and weak harder at that so it wasn't a given it
| would be as good a port as it is.
|
| Sure you don't get mods, etc. so it is just vanilla Skyrim but
| it is still a wonderful experience.
|
| Of course I kinda want to try it on the Steam Deck now, I
| wonder how well it plays there with a bunch of QoL mods?
| duxup wrote:
| When it was released on PC I felt mods were essential.
| Largely because man that PC release version was a mess.
|
| Now the Switch version is very bit of DLC or add on they've
| added and I can't think of anything I would want.
| falcolas wrote:
| Their engine barely runs on windows, expecting it to run at all
| on mac is a reach.
|
| For reference, they've been patching up the same homebrew game
| engine for decades.
| setgree wrote:
| Careful what you wish for. I find that StarCraft Anthology -- the
| original which was released for free, not the remastered version
| -- is the app most likely to crash my 2020 MacBook. When devs put
| this stuff on many years after the fact as a sop to diehard fans,
| they don't really have an incentive to do a good job on the
| implementation side. There is no reason that a 1998 game should
| crash a 2020 computer.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Just because there are 89 million macs out there doesn't mean
| there are 89 million mac gamers out there. If you've got the
| money to buy a mac, you've probably got the money to buy a games
| console for your gaming needs.
|
| Macs just aren't a popular gaming platform. I'm sure there's a
| vicious cycle there about how the lack of games cause a lack of
| gamers, but still.
|
| Steam publishes their hardware survey. About 2.45% of Steam
| installs are on Mac. 58% of those users are still on Intel. With
| 5-10% of OS market share that means that mac users are twice to
| four times less likely to want to game compared to Windows users,
| and most PCs in the world definitely don't run Steam.
|
| There's also the performance problem: Macs come with high
| resolution displays and comparatively bad GPUs. The Intel Iris
| GPUs aren't bad, but they're no gamer powerhouse. The ARM chips
| are a lot better, but they're still crushed by any dedicated GPU
| in most similarly priced computers, especially in laptops. Their
| excellent AI+transcoding support blowing PC out of the water
| doesn't help when you want to render a game.
|
| My expectation would be that a port of modern Skyrim (the re-
| release with signiciant bumps to the graphics) would result in a
| stuttery mess on most Apple users with an interest in gaming. I'm
| sure the original release would play fine, but giving Mac users
| the inferior version probably wouldn't go down well. Yes, the new
| Macs have been demoed to show some very graphically intense
| games, but if their Tomb Raider demo was anything to go by, the
| graphical fidelity of the new models still leaves much to be
| desired, especially for such an expensive device.
|
| Lastly, there's the fact that Microsoft bought Bethesda. They've
| been working hard at making Xbox Game Pass a thing, unifying
| Windows and Xbox where they can. With the absolute defeat in
| performance per watt that Apple brought to the desktop space, I
| think it would only hurt Microsoft to invest time into making Mac
| a more viable gaming ecosystem. They can't ignore the gaming
| market when it comes to the PS5 or Switch, but why invest in
| bringing a new competitor to the market?
|
| I know Skyrim has been ported to pretty much any device, but with
| the small amounts of Mac gamers, the relatively slow GPU in most
| Macs, and the whole OpenGL/Metal situation, I don't see how it
| would make sense for Bethesda to ship Skyrim to Mac.
| vehemenz wrote:
| The percentage of macOS users who want to play Skyrim and haven't
| already on a PC or console is probably pretty low. None of these
| demographics are mutually exclusive.
|
| Besides, iOS pulls in more revenue for Apple than does Steam for
| Valve. Apple doesn't gain much by targeting gamers on macOS.
| robby_w_g wrote:
| The potential user base for skyrim on macOS is much lower because
| there simply isn't a large user base of gamers on Mac platforms.
|
| Mac users of Steam represent 2.45% of the total user base in the
| following survey: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-
| Hardware-Softw...
| chadlavi wrote:
| That's a circular argument. No content or support is the reason
| there are very few Mac gamers.
|
| There are an awful lot of people out there who have a Mac and
| play games on other platforms and devices. Probably even people
| who bought a pc just to be able to play games on it.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| It's the main reason why Windows failed to catch on in the
| mobile market space. And yes, their constant changes to APIs
| didn't help, but that's the reason their lack of content
| started in the first place.
|
| It's a vicious cycle that can only be broken by huge
| investments and trade deals from Apple. They're trying to get
| games back on the platform:
| https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/06/apple-gaming-updates/
|
| However, they're doing so relying on their upscaling tech
| from the get go. They're also marketing this exclusively for
| ARM Macs, which are still the minority out there. Perhaps in
| another couple of years the cycle will be broken, but Apple
| has historically been quite dismissive of gaming on Mac for
| anything but "casual" games.
| chaostheory wrote:
| With Apple's switch to Intel, there was much more support for
| porting games to Mac. Unfortunately, since Apple overpriced
| commodity Intel hardware, Macs were noticeably underpowered
| especially when compared to PC desktops, which was made even
| slower due to the lack of video card options. It made no
| sense to play games on a slower system. And that is how the
| idea of playing non-iOS games on a Mac died.
|
| I am happy to use PCs for games, while using Macs for
| everything else.
| goosedragons wrote:
| To make matters worse the Mac ports were often not as
| optimized as the PC versions often leading to worse
| performance than the PC version on the same hardware. And
| before Steam started selling Mac versions they were often
| more expensive and several months old. I distinctly
| remember seeing SimCity 4 as a "new" release for Mac in the
| local Mac shop for over twice the price of what I had paid
| for it on PC a few months prior WITH the expansion pack.
| Jcowell wrote:
| Maybe there's a market for a company that specializes in
| porting, maintaining, and updating PC ports. Maybe even a
| Marketing that markets Mac Studio performance if it's
| good enough. If the company is successful enough perhaps
| a deal can be made with Apple.
| chaostheory wrote:
| That company has existed for well over a decade now. It's
| Aspyr. While they're still at it, even they know that
| it's not going to lead to anything big.
| ksec wrote:
| >That's a circular argument
|
| It is not. Many developers have tried and stats have shown
| the cost of porting Games to Mac, as well as maintaining it
| with each macOS changes were not sustainable with its revenue
| generation. That is at least for Games coming from console or
| PC.
|
| This may change if those Games come from Mobile Platform.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| It's a vicious cycle, not a circular argument.
| zydex wrote:
| I think the metric is only supposed to represent the absolute
| maximum possible users. Otherwise one could also say that many
| people only use their PlayStations to play FPS's or that a
| large portion of Switch users are children that wouldn't
| purchase Skyrim etc etc.
| TheTon wrote:
| I think it's safe to say that Steam stats undercount the
| potential size of the Mac gaming market. There are a few
| reasons for this:
|
| - The trailing effect of Apple's underpowered Intel Macs. For
| many years the average Mac was an Intel MacBook Air, which
| never had a hope of running many contemporary games.
|
| - As a result, few developers tried to target Macs, which meant
| Steam felt like a bit of a ghost town for Mac users.
|
| - Store fragmentation with the App Store and Apple Arcade.
|
| I think given the switch to Apple Silicon, and the fact that
| Apple platform users are typically willing to pay money for
| things, that the potential revenue share from Mac users could
| be a lot higher than 2.45% of the PC gaming market if the games
| were there.
|
| EDIT: I do think that unless Apple does something more to jump
| start gaming on their platforms that it will never reach its
| potential. I think they should acquire some studios and pay for
| exclusives like their competitors do.
| david_allison wrote:
| Apple's removal of 32-bit support has significantly reduced
| the number of games which are natively available for newer
| Macs.
|
| Many users aren't going to go through the effort/expense of
| working around this.
| TheTon wrote:
| That's a good point. A poor commitment to backwards
| compatibility on Apple's part hasn't helped. However, I
| assume they did it to smooth the transition to Apple
| Silicon. On the long view Apple Silicon is going to be a
| bigger benefit than the ability to run old games.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy though, isn't it? If there
| aren't enough games, there won't be enough gamers. I would like
| to be able to use my mac as a gaming platform but the games I
| want to play there simply don't work on it, so I mostly use a
| console and have no incentive to build up a game library on it.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I wonder if that went down after macOS Catalina, where Apple
| removed 32-bit x86 app support and nearly every game in the
| Steam catalog available for the Mac became unplayable
| overnight. That's when I decided to give up and build a gaming
| PC. Maybe others came to the same conclusion.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Yeah I had a Mac at the time and had to chose between
| updating to Catalina to play the newest Tomb Raider or lose
| access to a huge swath of my Steam games. Not a great choice.
| worble wrote:
| Obviously no-one games on mac, because Skyrim isn't on it!
| reaperducer wrote:
| A chicken is an egg's way of making more eggs.
| mikl wrote:
| Considering that the game is 11 years old now, I doubt a macOS
| port would be worthwhile. Mac users who wanted to play Skyrim has
| likely already played it on PC or console.
|
| I really liked the game, but I'm certainly not paying to play it
| again on my Mac when I already own on other platforms.
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