Apple is hosting a ‘Scary Fast’ event on Monday, October 30, where it’s widely expected to show off new iMacs and MacBooks – but a new rumor suggests the event could be much more ambitious and will in fact be a gaming-focused showcase are for the new M3 chip.
This would be a radical departure for Apple, as aside from mobile gaming on its iPhones and iPads, the company hasn’t shown much interest in producing console-rival gaming products.
However, as MacRumors reportsa few clues have been scattered around that could indicate that we could see some pretty exciting gaming-related Mac products on Monday.
With the recent launch of the iPhone 15 Pro, Apple paid a lot of attention to how the chip it uses, the A17, can not only run graphically demanding games like Resident Evil 4 Remake, but it can also handle hardware-accelerated ray tracing. This is an advanced way of producing lighting, reflections and shadows, and many of the best looking games on PCs and game consoles use this technology.
Now that Apple manages to include ray tracing support on the mobile A17 chip, it’s very likely that it will also bring support with the rumored M3 chip for Macs and MacBooks. This could give the M3 chip a big performance and quality boost over the M2 chip – and could potentially turn any Mac or MacBook with an M3 chip into a formidable gaming PC or gaming laptop.
What about the games?
One of the biggest hurdles to gaming on Macs is the relative lack of games available on the platform compared to Windows 11. This has become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy: game developers can’t be bothered to bring their games to the Mac to port because few gamers buy Macs for gaming, and few gamers buy Macs because… there aren’t many games.
This could change, with Apple Vice Chairman Tim Millet tells IGN (according to MacRumors), that “developers will be working with us” to bring the big games shown for the iPhone 15 Pro to Macs with Apple Silicon (the M1, M2, and the rumored M3).
These games were the ones mentioned above Resident Evil 4 Remake, like Death Stranding Director’s Cut And Assassin’s Creed Mirage – all major games for PCs and consoles.
MacRumors also points out that gaming giant Capcom has announced this Resident evil village coming to the iPhone 15 Pro and M1-powered iPads on October 30 – the same date as Apple’s event.
Funnily enough, another big player in gaming – Sony – is planning to do the same also launch cloud streaming for PS5 games on October 30. Now the timing of this is much more likely to be a coincidence – at the moment Sony states that you can only stream PS5 games via the cloud on a PS5 console – but it is certainly intriguing.
MacRumors also points out that the timing of Monday’s Apple event (October 30 at 5:00 PM PT, or 12:00 PM GMT / 11:00 AM AEDT on October 31) is quite strange, as the events are usually held earlier in the day, so that more time zones can coordinate with it. However, holding it at 5pm PT means the event will take place during Japanese business hours – and a major Japanese game maker could make an appearance (both Capcom and Sony are Japanese, as is Kojima Productions, the company run by gaming icon Hideo Kojima, and who created it Death stranding).
Again, I think this is a bit far-fetched on its own, but it’s certainly an exciting proposition when combined with the other gaming-related rumors and hints floating around.
Laying the foundation
If Monday’s Apple event does indeed showcase gaming-related Macs and MacBooks, it won’t be a complete surprise, as Apple has been making more and more overtures to the gaming community in recent months.
The latest operating system for Macs, macOS Sonoma, comes with a gaming mode that improves performance when it detects you’re playing games, and also improves compatibility with various game controllers, including Sony’s Dualsense controller for the PS5.
Apple has also put a lot of effort into its Game Porting Toolkit, which is designed to make the process of making a game compatible with macOS much easier.
So, could we see Apple show off an M3-powered gaming device that could challenge the PS5 and Xbox Series X? Or maybe a MacBook that can be considered one of the best gaming laptops?
I’m still not entirely convinced (and this is from someone who has fond memories of playing Lemmings in Mac OS 7), but MacRumors has done a great job of collecting various hints and rumors. If Apple shows off new M3 chips and hardware, I think there could be some exciting announcements for gamers as well. Who knows, Mac gaming might not be a joke anymore.