Man if Apple somehow could have their own Windows emulation layer similar to Valve's Steamdeck developments - I could see myself returning to the Mac. It would be so amazing. The Mac would become truly a gaming platform, regardless if it costs twice the price of an equivalent PC - since people who appreciate Apple's hardware and software will see its value.
Having said that there's still the issue of upgrades. But again, I have to replace pretty much my entire PC every 5 years (new CPU needs a new mobo, needs new RAMs etc). So hmm.
edit: as an aside an interesting question.. I wonder if Valve's efforts, having incentivized developers to make their games more Steamdeck compatible - and hence more "predictable" in terms of how they access Windows APIs - would also make it easier for Apple to translate the games - even if the target is different.
I mean, this is a Windows emulation layer. It's just designed for game developers to be able to quickly see what a rough version of their macOS port would look like. Like, does translating your game automatically yield you 40 FPS, or 4 FPS? Valve's emulation layer on the other hand is designed for end users to be able to run games without a native port.
Right but it's open source apparenty, and there's already efforts to create GUI etc to make this easier for end users.
Even if it doesn't run Cyberpunk at full speed, you'll have a huge catalog of indie games on Steam and older games that will run at full framerate without requiring any ports.
True, the main gotcha here I suppose is that Rosetta is also on top - since we're looking at Apple's ARM CPUs. Rosetta can translate and store the code so it doesn't have to do it every run.
Yeah, Apple could build their own nvk-like for Metal driver at this point if they cared about any GPU other than their own. Nvk/mesa itself might enable Linux gaming on Mac pros with 3rd party cards.. one day.
Having said that there's still the issue of upgrades. But again, I have to replace pretty much my entire PC every 5 years (new CPU needs a new mobo, needs new RAMs etc). So hmm.
edit: as an aside an interesting question.. I wonder if Valve's efforts, having incentivized developers to make their games more Steamdeck compatible - and hence more "predictable" in terms of how they access Windows APIs - would also make it easier for Apple to translate the games - even if the target is different.