Yahoo Finance Apple wants a bigger slice of the $183 billion gaming market
Apple (AAPL) has been a force in the gaming industry for years. But it has largely kept the effort centered around its iPhone and iPad. Now the company is making a play for a larger slice of the $183 billion video game market with the launch of its latest MacBook Pro and iMac laptops and desktop.
Sure, Apple has touted its Mac gaming credentials in the past, but it’s always been more of an aside, an ancillary feature rather than its raison d'etre. And yes, Microsoft’s Windows still dominates the computer gaming market. But Apple, it seems, is making a concerted effort to push into the space, even dedicating a portion of its latest live product unveiling to highlight the Macs’ gaming chops.
Part of Apple’s marketing campaign for the MacBook Pro and iMac, which hit the market Tuesday, focuses on their ability to handle games like “Baldur’s Gate 3” and “Lies of P” thanks to their new, more powerful M3 chips. And it’s further burnishing its gaming bonafides via ongoing relationships with Capcom, the company behind the “Resident Evil” series, as well as legendary game developer Hideo Kojima, the person behind the “Metal Gear” franchise and “Death Stranding.”
But Apple has an uphill battle ahead if it expects to steal a chunk of the computer gaming market from Microsoft. And that includes convincing both gamers and developers that it’s fully dedicated to becoming a major player in the space.
Apple is pushing its gaming know-how
Apple’s latest MacBook Pro, which starts at $1,599, comes outfitted with a base M3 chip and 8GB of memory. It’s a decent gaming setup if you’re hoping to run titles like “Baldur’s Gate 3,” but you’ll need to step up to the M3 Pro or M3 Max, which start at $1,999 and $3,199, respectively, if you want to get the best graphics capabilities possible out of the game.
To put that into perspective, a kitted out 14-inch Alienware x14 R2 gaming laptop will cost you $2,449. Go with an 18-inch Alienware m18 gaming rig with a massive Intel Core i9 chip, 64GB of RAM, Nvidia RTX 4090 chip, and 8TB of storage, and you’ll spend $4,554.
A MacBook Pro 14-inch equipped with an M3 Max chip, 64GB of unified memory, and 2TB of storage, similar to the one I recently reviewed, will cost $4,299. That’s a massive chunk of change. But not entirely out of the realm of possibility for gamers looking for high-end performance machines.
Hardcore gamers, those who opt for very specific configurations for their systems, will likely stick with Windows systems. But Apple could try to lure consumers below that segment who want a powerful system but aren’t wedded to specific setups.
“Slightly below the hardest-core gamers is a very attractive market,” explained BofA global research analyst Wamsi Mohan. “It would move the overall [average selling prices] up and, by the way … [Apple doesn’t] need to pay Intel any sort of tax for the CPU. So your margin structure overall starts to benefit and the more … units you can sell, the greater the leverage.”
And gaming on a Mac, Mohan said, is getting more popular.
“It's interesting, actually, if you look at Reddit threads and stuff like that, they're actually growing a fair amount in terms of the sheer number of people who are participating and looking at Mac gaming and things like that,” Mohan explained. “So it's definitely something that is starting to pick up.”
But PC gamers, in particular, tend to opt for high-powered desktops because they offer better performance capabilities than laptops, explained Wedbush Securities’ SVP of research Matt Bryson. And the current-generation iMac only comes with an M3 chip, rather than the more powerful M3 Pro or M3 Max, making it less attractive for desktop gamers.
“Also, PC towers are upgradable, so gamers can often get two or three generations of upgrades without having to buy completely new systems,” he said. “Apple very much likes to control its environment, making upgrades difficult if not impossible.”
Unless Apple manages to somehow change the high-end gaming business through some new kind of product, like its upcoming Vision Pro headset, Bryson explained, the segment isn’t going to be much of a driving factor for the company.
Apple needs developers to buy in
If Apple is truly dedicated to making gaming a part of its broader Mac business, or even just a means of moving high-end Macs, it’s going to need to get more developers on board. While Larian Studios offers a version of “Baldur’s Gate 3” for the Mac, giving Apple owners access to one of the most talked-about games of 2023, the vast majority of computer games never come to Mac.
Sure, you can play Apple Arcade games on the Mac, but big-budget titles like the latest “Call of Duty” are unlikely to land on the company’s Macs anytime soon. Computer game developers and publishers want to target the largest number of gamers, and, unfortunately for Apple, that means gearing their titles toward PC owners.
This became especially clear when Valve, the head of the popular Steam online gaming platform, dropped support for its “Counter-Strike 2” for the Mac. The company said it decided to ditch the platform because there simply weren’t enough Mac gamers playing the popular title.
But if Apple continues to push gaming on the Mac and reaches out to more developers in the coming years, it could eventually serve as a viable alternative to Windows PCs. Getting there, however, will take time.
Daniel Howley is the tech editor at Yahoo Finance. He's been covering the tech industry since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @DanielHowley.
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