Apple Needs a Controller
Their gaming exploits always stutter, this is one reason why.
ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 6, 2024 ON WORLD.HEY.COM, PLEASE FORGIVE ANY OUTDATED REFERENCES AS IT WAS A BETTER TIME
Off and on throughout its history, Apple has claimed to be taking steps to court one demographic of computer users - gamers. There’s been lots of starts and stops, and ultimately very little has come of it - and that’s despite the rise of mobile gaming ushered in by devices like the iPhone. In the modern era, however, it seems Apple might actually be truly ready to take things seriously. Apple Arcade was an initial step - a subscription to ad-free mobile games, many of which are natively playable on a Mac as well. The bigger deal, though, was the introduction of the M-class processors beginning in 2020. With the M architecture, things could be streamlined for basic compatibility, and we have seen the fruits of that labor with a large increase of interesting games being ported to Mac, like Resident Evil 4, 7, 8, and coming soon, the remake of Resident Evil 2. We’ve also seen games like Death Stranding, Stray, GRID Legends, and soon Control being ported over. Yes, these are older games, but for Mac gamers who do not also keep a PC, Steam Deck, or game console around, this is probably their first real crack at playing them.
Today I was poking through the Mac’s app store on my MacBook Air and saw Prince of Persia: Lost Crown for $20 - a great value! A couple clicks later it was mine. While it was downloading I took my iMac dedicated Dual Sense PS5 controller and paired it to the Air to get it ready to go. It gave me a little pause in that I’m used to, for instance, popping my AirPods in and having them connect to whatever Apple device I was currently using, without having time to pair then de-pair them all the time. It just worked. The PS5 controller works fine, it carried over the correct overlay in the game so it doesn’t create a situation where it shows Xbox buttons or whatever. Later on I downloaded and started playing Resident Evil 7. Works great with the Dual Sense and runs awesome on my 2020 M1 Mac, but it does not show PS5 buttons, but instead the Xbox layout. For someone who is very familiar with both layouts this is not a big deal, but for others it might cause confusion.
The answer to all of this is simple.
Apple needs to absolutely, positively create and market their own game controller.
This should be a no-brainer! A dedicated Apple-branded controller - the Magic Controller, if you want it to keep the same family as its keyboard and mouse - could be a catalyst for gaming on a Mac. Have it use the same tech as the AirPods, letting it be used on any Apple device, even iPhones and iPads, meaning you only need one per person. Even the Apple TV would be great for the arcade games playable on it. Make sure any games on the App Store are compatible and can use the Apple controller schemes so there is no disconnect like mentioned before. They can even release it In colors that match the iMac, since this is probably where most people will want to play games on. While their instinct will be to charge $80+ dollars for such a thing, selling it for $10-$20 less would really let them cut into the market, which is pretty much just Xbox and PlayStation controllers. Given their penchant for great battery life, they could easily craft something that can get at least 25 hours of use before needing to be charged.
If Apple can create something that has such a narrow market as the Vision Pro, they can do something like this for a market they clearly want to break into, but just haven’t put their, ahem, vision together yet. I find this to be such a maddening blind spot they have left to others, rather than put something together that has that “it just works” philosophy Apple is known for. Given the off-and-on rumors about a dedicated game console, it could be a trojan horse into that difficult market. Maybe I’m wrong, but if Apple really wants to dive into gaming head-first, this is where it really needs to begin.
