Kyle Nazario

Five years ago, longtime Apple blogger John Gruber said on a podcast that his son wanted a gaming PC and, after some discussion, he decided to buy him a Windows PC.

On an episode from a month ago, Gruber offered a fascinating piece of follow-up. ¹

My son, who’s a sophomore in college, I got a gaming PC when he was… I don’t know, 13, 14. It’s what he really wanted. I mentioned it here on the show…

Somebody at Apple, like at an engineering level, reached out to me. People within Apple had noticed that my son bought a gaming PC. [They asked] what’s going on and just asked me questions about which games he plays, and why he didn’t want to do it on a Mac. And basically a typical Apple person, but maybe said, “We’re doubling back on this whole aspect and taking a look at why the Mac isn’t considered a top-tier platform for games.”

It surprised me someone at Apple was surprised. I did not realize it was even a question Windows PCs are better than Macs for gaming. Obviously they are. I say this as a happy Mac user of 10 years.

I’ve also built two gaming PCs, the latter of which is sitting under my TV. I love my MacBooks, but for gaming, it’s not even close.

Reason 1: There are more games on Windows

Not every game comes to PC, but every PC game is on Windows. Using a Windows PC means I never have to watch other people play some exciting new indie or some neat gem on Game Pass.

Consider the Resident Evil franchise. I love these games. They’re goofy, scary, campy and over-the-top.

At WWDC 2022, Apple made a big deal of getting iOS and macOS ports of Resident Evil: Village and the RE4 remake. Those are both great games, and Apple is right to be proud to snag them.

But what about the rest of the franchise? Here are the mainline Resident Evils available on Windows. I’ve marked the ones on Mac too.

• Resident Evil
• Resident Evil Remake
• Resident Evil 2
• Resident Evil 2 Remake
• Resident Evil 3
• Resident Evil 3 Remake
• Resident Evil Zero
• Resident Evil 4
• Resident Evil 4 Remake (also on macOS)
• Resident Evil 5
• Resident Evil 6
• Resident Evil: Revelations 2
• Resident Evil 7
• Resident Evil: Village (also on macOS)

It’s not just Resident Evil, either. Last year, we got Elden Ring, an instant game of the year and maybe one of the best video games ever made. Still not on Mac!

Mac gaming actually used to have more games in the Intel era, because most modern games are built on engines that made supporting macOS on Intel easier if you already targeted Windows. We got a fair few Mac ports of indie games throughout the 2010s - I played The Return of the Obra Dinn, Hotline Miami and Undertale on a 2013 MacBook Air. We’re losing almost all those Intel-only games when Rosetta goes away. Which reminds me…

Reason 2: Games on Windows work for a long time

If you buy a Windows game, you can reasonably expect it to work for the next 10+ years (as long as it doesn’t rely on some multiplayer server being online).

Just recently, I booted up my Windows copy of the original Dead Space, which released in 2008. Worked perfectly.

This is because Microsoft views backwards compatibility as a religion. Their customers are big businesses with internal apps that only run on 2005 Internet Explorer. They don’t like breaking changes. Windows apps, including games, tend to work longer. If they don’t, there’s usually a fix on PCGamingWiki.

Apple, conversely, loves breaking changes. If you’re a third-party developer on an Apple platform, you just kinda expect to have to update your apps to keep them working. Maybe the whole API for shortcuts changes one year. Maybe there’s a big new feature, like widgets, and your users expect you to support it. Maybe your app is 32-bit and is just going to vanish if you don’t recompile it for 64-bit chips.

This approach has advantages. For example, when the M-series chips released, Apple third parties released Apple Silicon-native versions relatively quickly. It is disadvantageous, however, for apps will never be updated. That’s most games that are not live services.

Reason 3: Games come out first on Windows

If a hot new game comes out, I want to play it sooner rather than later. I want to participate in the conversation around it. I don’t want to wait a year or longer for it to be ported to my Mac.

To go back to Resident Evil, the Village Mac port released a full year and a half after the Windows version. No thank you!

Reason 4: Community patches are on Windows

Last year, I played and enjoyed Persona 4 Golden. It is one of the best role-playing games ever made ². It also has some rough edges the community smoothed over with a mod pack. The mod fixes bugs, adds fast travel, and tweaks the UI. Nothing crazy, but enough quality of life improvements that I wouldn’t play the game without it.

That mod pack is installed by a Windows-only program. Even if Persona 4 Golden came to macOS, I don’t think the community would port the mod tools. They didn’t do it for Steam Deck.

Community mods and patches are lost on Mac. Not every game requires them, but many of them do. Ask any Skyrim fan how good the game is without mods.

Reason 5: Windows is cheaper for gaming

When you buy a Mac, you’re not just buying performance. Sure, the M-series of chips are fast, but there’s other things. My 2021 MacBook Pro 16, for example, is portable, performant, cool and gets amazing battery life. I don’t even take a charger when I work all day in a coffee shop. The screen is gorgeous. The aluminum frame feels good in the hand. The touchpad is super responsive.

Those qualities are not valuable in a desktop gaming PC. Gaming desktops need to be fast. They need to crunch frames so you can play games at high resolution with as many frames per second as possible.

My gaming PC a big, ugly black box that sits under the TV and works beautifully. It has tons of space inside the case and a big fan right on top of the CPU. The GPU, an NVIDIA GeForce 3070, has fans attached to it as well. My gaming PC is not power efficient, or small, but it plays Resident Evil games at 60 frames per second and 1440p resolution with high textures.

When you buy a Windows PC, you can buy just performance. You can get a big, power-hungry GPU from NVIDIA (who Apple hates) and crank out frames. It’s just an advantage of an ecosystem with so many different OEMs and parts that can be combined into a PC.

Buy a PC

I acknowledge this is a ridiculous, privileged perspective to have. Most people don’t have one high-end computer, let alone two. It’s true, though.

If you care about gaming, buy Windows.