It’s time for Apple to make a game console

The gaming world needs a new competitor, and Apple is almost there already

Apple

The console gaming market is in a weird space right now. Everybody’s kind of doing their own thing — Sony is the only company going all-in on high-end gaming, Microsoft is focused almost exclusively on growing services like Game Pass, and Nintendo is out there doing what Nintendo does best in the handheld console space. There’s a distinct lack of competition in the market, with all three companies growing somewhat complacent in their own ruts. We need a competitor, and there’s a pretty clear answer: Apple. 

I know, it sounds ridiculous on its face. Apple has historically been a bit of a joke in the gaming space, and it’s not hard to see why. The market share of MacOS is so small that developers haven’t really bothered to develop games for it. I don’t blame them, I wouldn’t develop a game for a platform that’s almost certainly not going to make a return. But there’s a good case for Apple to make a big splash with a game console. 

Apple has been tinkering away on its hardware platform for years now with Apple silicon, and seeing some pretty impressive results. Its M-series SOCs, kicked off with the M1 in 2020, have been game-changers, showing the world that ARM-based computing is not only alive and well, but potentially a great path forward. Those M-series chips have been featured in both desktop PCs like the Mac Mini and mobile devices like the iPad Pro. 

They’re not too bad for gaming, either. That’s in part because of Apple’s investment in software features for their hardware, with its own graphics API that has functions similar to both OpenGL and OpenCL, AI-based upscaling similar to DLSS, and – with the recent M4 chip – dedicated hardware ray-tracing cores. This, combined with highly performant hardware, all points to something that could, with a few tweaks, lead to a fascinating piece of gaming hardware. 

Right now, Apple is all-in on CPU performance on its Apple silicon, with GPU performance falling behind a little bit, but that’s an easy problem to solve with some reconfiguration. Apple also aims for tiny, minimalist hardware, limiting the thermal ceiling somewhat, but that’s also a solvable problem with larger, actively-cooled case designs for both a stationary console and a potential gaming handheld. 

So we’ve got the home console to compete with the PS5, and the gaming handheld to compete with the Nintendo Switch, but what about Microsoft? Well, Apple’s made some headway there, too. Apple Arcade is essentially just Game Pass for Apple’s existing products, available on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. There’s a huge library of some of the best mobile games available, and for the most part they’re playable and transferable between different Apple platforms. The service has plenty of subscribers already, and the App Store infrastructure is both widespread and well-entrenched. 

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Imagine, if you will, the future that I’m envisioning here. You buy a game on the App Store, and you can play it on your iPhone, your iPad, your Mac Mini, your Apple console, and your Apple handheld. Your save data automatically transfers wherever you go thanks to iCloud, and if you’ve got an Apple Arcade subscription, you’ve got a bunch of games on every platform you like. It would be an extension of the existing, robust Apple ecosystem, rather than a whole new platform that has to be built from the ground up. 

You’re probably worried about the price of such a console, but even that isn’t too big of a concern. The M4-based Apple Mac Mini costs $599 in its base configuration, and while it’s not exactly gaming-ready as is, a reconfigured version focused on gaming, cutting the general computing aspects for a more powerful GPU, could probably hit a similar price point. That’s cheaper than a PS5 Pro, and within reaching distance of the base PS5 and Xbox Series X. A handheld would probably be more expensive than a Switch or even a Switch 2, but it could feasibly be released at a similar price point to the Steam Deck OLED. 

With developers already making games for Apple platforms – and the number of invested developers increasing every year – a future with an Apple game console isn’t too far fetched. Would Apple do it? Probably not. Should Apple do it? I think so. It’s time.