- Microsoft: Gaming has been a first class citizen at Microsoft for a while and I'm not sure if we can say the same about Apple. They just put tons of money into it because they have this competitive advantage. It's not only the games they bought/publish (Minecraft, Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, etc), but the platform itself (Xbox, DirectX, etc). Windows 10 also has a "Gaming Mode" as part of the OS for performance improvement which some games might have it turned on automatically.
- Hardware: PC Gamers usually customize hardware to have pretty decent power (GPU, CPU, Memory, etc) for relatively cheap when compared to Mac. In PC market, there's hardware competition for literally every single part of the hardware. For games that require extra power, you would need a powerful machine and, while they do exist in newer generations of iMacs, it's just damn expensive. Which brings me to my next point: market.
- Market: Although Mac users grew significantly, I'd say it's still pretty small when compared to PC. If you are a game developer, especially an indie game dev, you may find how depressing it can be to publish a cross platform game. It's not super hard given the popularity of game engines such as Unity and UE4. But the issue, in my opinion, is if your game has multiplayer, for example, you're probably going to have a bad time dealing with platform differences. Aside from that, you're going to have to deal with other platform differences in a lot of different levels. At some point, you're going to ask the question: is it really worth the extra investment? You are going to delay publishing your game for probably little gain. Developing for the larger market first might make more sense. Not only for indie devs but for AAA games too.
Valve was skeptical about Microsoft turning Windows into a walled garden when they announced DX12 only for Windows Store exclusive games, that is when they started pushing their efforts into SteamOS, moreover a stable runtime (based on Ubuntu LTS) for Linux games, which has helped _a lot_ for linux gaming.
You don't have to use UWP to use DX12, and you don't have to use DX12 in Windows Store games. DX12 does require WDDM 2, but that's a different bucket of worms.
Xbox Game DVR predates Game Mode; you can enable/disable them independently.
Also, you don't even have to use the Windows Store to install UWP games. Windows 10 allows sideloading by default (since the November Update two years ago, though shortly after Valve made their stink) and since the Anniversary Update (1611) last year this time, there is a nice little installer that pops up if you double click a (signed) UWP APPX package.
So even if DX12 was restricted to UWP apps (which, reminder, it isn't) UWP apps are not restricted to the Store either, and Steam could install UWP apps, too.
> I hope that in about two years the whole eGPU situation is sorted out so that I can have a MacBook Pro with a good CPU as my only computer.
The primary issue for gaming on OSX is and has always been drivers. You can generally get 80~100% better framerates by running the same game on Windows (via Bootcamp).
I reckon it has something to do with the graphics stack. Have you tried running anything graphic intensive on the Mac? Every same program no matter how well-written runs faster on Windows. To be fair I haven't tried any Metal games (if they even exist?), but I guess it is somehow harder to write games that are performant on the Mac?
One HUGE Issue Hardware. While the build quality is awesome the muscle power of most Macs graphically is just abysmal. Also the lack of a native Right Click!
There are plenty of Mac OS games and people don't play them.
> right-click out of the box. You can configure it from the System Settings -> Mouse / Trackpad
That's not out of the box :) But an Apple Mouse can not have right click added it physically has one button but it does it in software and it doesn't work or it button bounces whenever I have tried.
95% of all Mac I have ever seen or used have Official Mice.
- Hardware: PC Gamers usually customize hardware to have pretty decent power (GPU, CPU, Memory, etc) for relatively cheap when compared to Mac. In PC market, there's hardware competition for literally every single part of the hardware. For games that require extra power, you would need a powerful machine and, while they do exist in newer generations of iMacs, it's just damn expensive. Which brings me to my next point: market.
- Market: Although Mac users grew significantly, I'd say it's still pretty small when compared to PC. If you are a game developer, especially an indie game dev, you may find how depressing it can be to publish a cross platform game. It's not super hard given the popularity of game engines such as Unity and UE4. But the issue, in my opinion, is if your game has multiplayer, for example, you're probably going to have a bad time dealing with platform differences. Aside from that, you're going to have to deal with other platform differences in a lot of different levels. At some point, you're going to ask the question: is it really worth the extra investment? You are going to delay publishing your game for probably little gain. Developing for the larger market first might make more sense. Not only for indie devs but for AAA games too.