The main blind spot with Macs for years has been gaming, but with the launch of the M1 computers a couple of years ago, Apple finally had the power to take some strides towards AAA titles. Even the iPhone chips have proven themselves to be above-average gaming machines, but a couple of generations later, we’re still only getting a few major titles per year, and even then, things don’t always go as smoothly as I’d want them.
I’ve been trying to game more on Apple hardware for a few years now, and while 2025 was the best year for Apple gaming ever, there are still some hurdles that I think could give the company a leg up moving forward.
Casual gamers have lots of options
The first thing I think a lot of Apple gaming coverage misses is that Apple is in a decent spot for the casual gaming crowd. There are a handful of decent AAA titles. If you’ve already played Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Cyberpunk 2077, and Baldur’s Gate 3, then this section isn’t for you, but if you haven’t played through all three, it will probably take you all year or more. In the indie zone, there are even more titles, many of which are super highly rated.
I feel like you can cover a lot of the gaming itch with the Mac alone, but if you assume each Mac owner also has an iPhone, those two devices alone cover a ton of titles. Especially now that there are emulators on iOS. That said, this is also one of the areas that I find a little annoying. For some games like Assassin’s Creed and Hitman, there are no cross-saves with Mac, and with Assassin’s Creed Mirage, there isn’t even a Mac Version, so you’d have to buy it once on iPhone and once on a console if you wanted to take advantage of the game’s cross-save potential. However, for full price, I don’t think that’s something a lot of people will do.
Some Resident Evil games or Death Stranding let you buy them once on one Apple platform and play them across all, but not all games allow this, which makes everything just a little bit weirder. I don’t know if they can do this, but if Apple could somehow persuade developers to consider their platform as one Apple gaming platform, not iPhone and Mac, that would be great. If I buy the Mac version of a game and it’s available on iPhone, I should have access to it.
Gaming on the same level as Windows?
This is where the Apple gaming dream starts to falter a bit. While CrossOvers can help Macs play many Windows games, it’s not a perfect solution; we’ll get more into that later.
Native Apple games themselves can be hit or miss. The latest Assassin’s Creed: Shadows release on Mac was playable and came out at the same time as its release on Windows, but felt a little sub-optimal compared to how well the game was running on PC and the consoles. It’s a little better months later, but you still need a pretty beefy M-Max chip at the very least to really make the game look as good as it does on PS5. Not that the M4 Pro looks bad, it’s just a step below, and frankly, the fans need to ramp up to full blast, making headphones a necessity when gaming on a MacBook Pro or Mac mini.
Obviously, the MacBook Air lacks fans, which presents another set of problems. It’s not bad, but it’s not something I’d pick as my primary gaming machine. However for slower paced titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 the M3 and M4 models work pretty well.
More recently we’ve seen some impressive mobile ports with the Hitman World of Asssinations pack on iOS/iPadOS with a macOS launch coming later this year. That said, we still don’t know if buying the game on iOS will translate over to Mac. Since the game is unlocked via an in-app purchase, you also can’t share it with people in your family plan. That’s admittedly a small thing, but with all other gaming platforms sharing is possible.
To really reach the same level as Windows gaming, you need to buy a program called CrossOvers that allows you to play Windows games on a Mac. Over the past year or two, it’s gotten support for more games and has been designed to be easier to use, but it’s still not something I’d recommend to most since it’s not perfect. Gaming via CrossOvers on a MacBook also drains battery life super fast.
Where do we go from here
Sadly, the biggest problem with Mac gaming is that it’s not easy to overcome. It’s the classic chicken or the egg conundrum. Developers need to put more games on Apple hardware so people will see Apple as a gaming platform, but developers don’t want to put their games on that hardware since not enough people will buy them.
The only way through it seems is for Apple to convince developers to move their games over, but it seems likely that, for now, that’s going to cost a lot of money and take a lot of time.
Ideally, I’d love for Apple to buy CrossOvers and really build out Windows gaming translation/emulation on Mac in a way that’s easy to use for everyone instead of just nerds.
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