So, you want to play the hottest new titles like Nova Drift on a gaming machine that packs a punch? Surely you'll automatically opt for a PC. After all, everyone knows that Macs just aren't designed to support high-quality gaming experiences... right?

Well, here in 2025, that's no longer the case. Putting Apple's turbulent history with gaming to one side, over the past couple of years, the tech giant's desktops and laptops have become surprisingly adept at running video games. We'd even go so far as to say that Mac devices are now well and truly legitimate gaming platforms.

Not convinced? Keep reading for more.

The Story So Far
Now, before we can talk about modern-day Macs, we'll need to recap Apple's previous encounters with the gaming industry. As we mentioned above, it's pretty turbulent.

Back in 1984, Apple launched the original Macintosh computer. This was a machine that, while primarily marketed for business users and creative pros, was packed with features that made it a natural fit for home gaming. We're talking high-res displays (for the time!) at 512 x 342 pixels, mouse-based input, and an intuitive graphical user interface. This was all seriously cutting-edge stuff!

Naturally, developers who were looking to stretch the limits of gaming beyond the text-based adventures of the PC made a beeline for these new machines. The '80s ended up being one of the most productive decades in terms of Apple-friendly game development, with hits like Dark Castle and Shadowgate playing beautifully on the Mac's GUI.

Even the iconic SimCity franchise started out on the Mac, hitting the platform in 1989--two years before its notable SNES release.

Despite this strong start, as the decades progressed, Apple's relationship with gaming began to weaken. With the exception of its misguided attempt to crack the console market with the Pippin in the mid-90s, gaming became an afterthought for the company--especially in the wake of Microsoft's complete domination of the PC gaming space.

The 21st Century Turnaround
The Year 2000 began a period of massive change for the gaming industry as a whole, with advanced tech and digital innovation making all manner of things possible for hardware manufacturers and game developers alike.

It may have been a niche pursuit, but gaming on Macs and Macbooks was still going in the early noughties. There were even a few blockbuster games released in Mac-compatible versions... Doom and Quake spring to mind.

Sure, most major development studios continued to prioritize Windows, but widespread internet access meant that Mac users could even get their hands on diverse browser games. All that was needed to crack a strategy game like RuneScape or play for real money prizes in an online casino was a compatible browser.

In fact, ever since the initial iGaming boom of the early 2000s, you'd be hard-pressed to find an operator that didn't ensure their online casino was Mac-compatible. Valve's Steam may have been PC-only until 2010, but Apple devotees could enjoy immersive slots, and card and table games with ease, provided they had a machine with enough juice to sustain the gaming session. Most of them would have done, given Apple's propensity for high-end specs, so there's little doubt that Macs have a long history with the casino segment of the gaming world. And that's by no means a small sector, even if some people view it as niche! Even back in the 2000s, new casino games were constantly being released, while there was a major focus on creating immersive, seamless, high-end experiences that would succeed in luring people to the digital scene.

And that has unquestionably continued: casinos pride themselves on ensuring that new games are accessible to pretty much everyone. When new casino games are released in today's world, they are usually compatible with pretty much every device you could name - and that certainly includes most of Apple's options. This remains a super popular section of gaming... but what about the rest of the video game world?

Apple's Gaming Era
In today's world, console-grade gaming performance on Mac devices is finally a reality. And it's all thanks to a series of major shifts in Apple's approach, beginning with the introduction of the M-series chips in 2020. Even today, machines with an M1 chip can deliver high-quality experiences, making the newly-released M4 an absolute game changer.

Then there's macOS Sonoma. Released in late 2023, this update introduced a dedicated Game Mode. For the first time ever, you could optimize the CPU and GPU of your Apple machine for gaming-specific performance.

The meatiest update, however, came with the arrival of Apple's Game Porting Toolkit (2023). This nifty tool meant that developers could easily port Windows games to macOS, taking out one of the biggest historical roadblocks to gaming on the platform in the process. Blockbuster titles like Resident Evil Village and Death Stranding have already been successfully ported.

What makes us fully convinced that we are indeed now in Apple's gaming era, however, is how seriously AAA development studios are taking the platform. In the past few months alone, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Shadows, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and Capcom's Resident Evil 7: Biohazard have all dropped. And there's more to come!

While we don't have an exact release date yet, Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition will be coming to Mac this year.

Industry insiders got a sneak peek of the game and how it runs on an M3-powered Mac Studio and the results were seriously impressive. The word on the street is that "visually, the game is on par with anything a powerful gaming rig can deliver," and that's just on an M3 chip. When the game does launch, it will be on M4-powered devices, like the ultra-sleek MacBook Air M4.

Exciting stuff, no?