During Apple’s WWDC 2023 (worldwide developer conference), two big things were announced for Mac OS, that being “game mode” and the announcement of Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding Director’s Cut. Gaming on Apple’s technology has always seemed to take a backseat in that productivity and user connections have always had the spotlight shown on them. This has resulted in Mac being a fundamentally inferior platform to play demanding games, and even somewhat less taxing games, due to the optimization simply not being present. But this year, it seems Apple is acknowledging the power of the new Mac and MacBook Pros. It only makes sense that with these new extraordinarily powerful computing devices, we see some talk of gaming- the most power-hungry consumer of the hardware and software.
A Closer Look Into Apple’s Game Mode
Let’s start with the introduction of game mode. Since the introduction of Metal 3, the ability for the Mac to upscale graphics has allowed games like Capcoms’ Resident Evil to see greater performance enhancements. Apple claims that with game mode, games will be prioritized on the systems’ GPU and CPU, and all background tasks and apps will now use a significantly less amount of both GPU and CPU. This in turn Apple claims will improve the framerate of more demanding games, and users will see more fluid experiences when gaming on Mac OS. Users are also going to benefit from less latency when connecting Apple’s Airpods to the Mac while gaming. Latency for controllers such as Playstations’ DualSense 5 and Xbox Series Controllers will be reduced by doubling the Bluetooth sampling rate. Game mode will work with any current and upcoming game being released to Mac OS.
Apple Announces Popular Game Coming To Mac OS
One other interesting piece of news was that Death Stranding Director’s Cut would see a Mac OS release. Apple’s surprise guest this year was probably not someone any of us expected. When Kojima-san took the stage at the WWDC, he explained how he had been working with Mac for most of his life and was intrigued and excited about the prospect of more power-hungry games coming to the platform with the help of game mode. Kojima-san claimed that the power of Apple Silicon coupled with Metal 3 blew him away and that the graphical fidelity increase has allowed him to feel confident that Death Stranding Director’s Cut will play and feel awesome on Mac OS.
The future of Mac OS as a serious game platform has always seemed like a pipedream. But this year, Apple has made it more clear that an emphasis on gaming, or at least the power of Mac OS and the newest Mac models, will bring about a gaming future in the Apple Ecosystem. Check out the full WWDC 2023 here.
