Apple has gone back and forth on if they care about games but I don't think I'd call it contempt. A bad strategy where they burn bridges with game developers due to talking a big game then not following through? Absolutely but "contempt" is a step too far I think.
When they released an Apple TV with an app store, casual gaming seemed an obvious use.
But they came with a controller that seemed to be designed with the goal of ensuring that it was as useless as possible for gaming (also as useless as possible for entering passwords!)
Apple is the third largest game platform. They don't have contempt for games. They just have no idea what exactly the vision pro will turn into so they aren't backing it down a path they can't return from. Selling it as a gaming device means that if they don't have the gaming market quickly enough, they might not be able to pivot to other markets. It's an open (ish, for apple) platform that the market will decide what it is to become.
You're gatekeeping gaming. Most mainstream games have some type of slot machine mechanic for virtual skins that are cash cows or are even pay to win. Apple also created a apple arcade to specifically curate games that aren't pay to win cesspools.
It might be a better take that apple generally treats games on an equal level to every other category of software. They just don't get much special treatment, historically at least ... ios may have changed that drastically (apple arcade is certainly a step in a direction). Meanwhile MS (even pre xbox) carved out work for them with things such as directx directinput etc.
But Apple used to be pretty great for gaming. I remember playing tons of games like pong or snake clones, dark castle, shufflepuck cafe or airborne on our Mac SE when I was a child.