I feel like if they pushed Win32/Gaming on Apple Mx hardware it'd give at least a single reason for people to adopt or upgrade their devices to new models. I know for sure I'd be on board if everything that ran on my steam deck ran on a mac game wise, since that's holding me back from dropping the cash. I still think I'll get a mini though.
Valve is trying to obsolete Windows, so they can prevent Microsoft from interfering with Steam. Apple could team up with them, and help obsolete Windows for a very large percentage of game-hours.
There will always be a long tail of niche Windows games (retro + indie especially). But you can capture the Fortnite (evergreen) / Dragon Age (new AAA) audience.
My only explanations for the lack of gaming support (see historical lack of proper OpenGL support) while still supporting high end graphics use cases (film editing, CAD, visual effects) are:
1) Either Apple wants to maintain the image of the Macbook as a "serious device", and not associate itself with the likes of "WoW players in their mom's basement".
2) Microsoft worked something out with Apple, where Apple would not step significantly on the gaming market (Windows, Xbox). I can't think of another reason why gaming on iOS would be just fine, but abysmal on MacOS. Developers release games on MacOS _despite_ the platform.
Steve Jobs was historically against gaming on apple devices and, I believe, went so far as to try to remove them from the Apple Store. Apple is only recently starting to introduce gaming seriously back into the platform.
Would be incredibly fascinating to consider what if Bungie was never bought by Microsoft and Halo ended up a Mac title first. It would've severely capped the influence of the game (and maybe its quality), even after it would have been ported to PC. Would Halo have even been imported to Xbox? On the flip side, if it somehow managed to capture considerable success- would it have forced Jobs and Apple to recognize the importance of the gaming market? Either way, the entire history of video games would be altered.
Yeah, for quite some time I played a lot of WoW because it was one of the very few games I liked / had for MacOS, and what I had was a mac. That and a really old version of heroes of might and magic N. (Maybe 3?)
