I upgraded from my 15 year old PC to one of the new Mac Minis at Xmas last year, thinking that I would be fine for gaming with my Xbox / Game Pass, and I would “skip a generation” on PC hardware. I have a small Steam / Epic library, but everything that didn’t work on MacOS, I had a Game Pass version of.
Fast forward a year. Xbox shit itself, RAM and GPU prices / 2026 outlook are dismal, etc etc
What’s my best option going forward for gaming? The only option I see right now is cloud gaming like GeForceNOW, but it seems like such a ripoff.
Any advice?
Edit- a lot of people are fixating on GamePass. I canceled my GamePass sub when the price went up. I no longer have it.
There’s also this project trying to get linux in a vm to run games on a mac(and also trying to install Linux on a mac, but I assume it might break macOS since bootcamp isn’t a thing anymore, so the vm route is probably the better option):
(I haven’t tried it since I don’t own a mac, just happened to find it when another friend who does have a mac was asking for similar advice to you previously, but he didn’t end up trying it either)
Fairly certain that Asahi doesn’t yet work with M4 chips, such as in the new mini. Or if it does, it’s not officially supported, so will be a generally poor experience. I mean, my M2 Macbook supports Asahi, and while it’s generally incredible what theyve been able to achieve, it’s still kinda stunted given how much software simply won’t run on that architecture.
Oh and another option could be to try to find emulators that run on mac, and maybe play some older games exclusive to a platform you didn’t previously own, or that you missed playing at thier time of release. Or buy an older second hand console that has games you haven’t played before…
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Maybe try find some games that work on the mac?
There’s also this project trying to get linux in a vm to run games on a mac(and also trying to install Linux on a mac, but I assume it might break macOS since bootcamp isn’t a thing anymore, so the vm route is probably the better option):
https://github.com/AsahiLinux/muvm
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BbJMPfXTbbE
(I haven’t tried it since I don’t own a mac, just happened to find it when another friend who does have a mac was asking for similar advice to you previously, but he didn’t end up trying it either)
Fairly certain that Asahi doesn’t yet work with M4 chips, such as in the new mini. Or if it does, it’s not officially supported, so will be a generally poor experience. I mean, my M2 Macbook supports Asahi, and while it’s generally incredible what theyve been able to achieve, it’s still kinda stunted given how much software simply won’t run on that architecture.
Oh and another option could be to try to find emulators that run on mac, and maybe play some older games exclusive to a platform you didn’t previously own, or that you missed playing at thier time of release. Or buy an older second hand console that has games you haven’t played before…