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.
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Game Pass sounds great, but the average game play time is ~2 weeks. You’re paying $240–480/year to skim the surface of multiple games.
That’s a lot for what is essentially a demo experience. There are better ways to approach gaming.
You could play full games, start to finish. I think it’s kinda unfair to compare them to demos. It was a pretty good deal at $10 a month.
I think money is better spent on Humble Choice since you can buy months that interest you and skip those that don’t, and the games stay in your library. I prefer to spend money to be able to keep games than pay to rent newer ones.
Hence me mentioning the price. When does it stop being worth it? You were clearly happy with $120/year, but everyone has their own threshold.
10$ a year is (was) the price of 2 full price titles. And that’s about the price I pay for games in a year. How much do you pay for games in a year?
Maybe $100/year? I prefer games without a “box price”, though I do make exceptions.
Most are free-to-play that specifically aren’t pay-to-win, and play them for years. I’ll also consider paying for DLC and/or “battle pass” systems in them if the content and bang-for-buck is worth it to me.
The moment Game Pass wouldn’t let me cheese the system and get it for like $1-2 a month, I quit bothering with it. I knew they were trying to get people hooked and raise prices. It was only like a year later and then even my friends canceled theirs.
I buy games heavily on sale, or sail the seas.
Luckily my gaming PC is more than good enough to ride out the next 5 years. knocks on wood. 5800X3D + 6800 XT.
For anyone else cross your fingers the GabeCube isn’t too expensive $$$.
I’ve consistently refused to buy in to Game Pass. I still buy physical games where available. If it’s only digital, I’ll get the Steam version for my Steam Deck.
Not sure what to tell you, but a Mac is the last platform to go to for gaming. Apple has zero interest in gaming and have made the platform virtually hostile to gaming development.
Steam regularly has sales (really good sales, like under $5) for fairly modern games (within the last 10 years).
Wait for a sale on something like an AMD Beelink and use that.
Like I replied to another comment, the Mac was necessary for work (art and music) and was light years ahead of anything else that can be obtained at its price point ($575).
Thanks for the Beelink rec, though.
I also switched my tower out for an M4 mini last year. It surprised me how much I fell in love with it and Mac OS. Retro game corps has a great emulation on Mac video, though I also ended up with a Beelink SER9 that I use exclusively for game streaming. I’m sure there is a substantial cost, but I wish more developers would release for Apple silicon. They’re truly excellent machines.
Check Craigslist, FB Marketplace, Letgo–just general classifieds. Can generally find decent deals on 1 to 2 generation old PCs, especially if you’re near a US Military installation or college.
Edit: just checked Boulder’s CL–10700k, 3080, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and 850w PSU and a 27in, 1440p, IPS Monitor for $1000
Steam Deck is the answer for now. You may still be able to get one of the discontinued LCD models on the cheap, but GamePass is now as expensive as buying a game every month, so it’s better to buy than subscribe. They also make excellent PCs and homelab devices. We bought several LCD versions for the lab instead of Pi 5s, because they are such a good deal.
Really interesting take, especially on the home lab front. I had honestly never considered a steam deck over a pi5, and I’m looking at also building a MESHnet system and stuff that I would need a Pi for.
I love Pi, but the price of the 5 is unreasonable. Since RPF spun hardware into publicly traded a for-profit business, I expect it will only continue to get worse.
Humble bundles and GOG also things to keep an eye on.
you are seriously limited on the selection of games you can play with Apple silicon
Does Proton even work on Macs? It seems pretty clear at this point Linux is a far better gaming OS.
no, it does not.
and a lot of mac games that came out before apple silicon simply will not run. and ive had mostly poor results trying to run games with crossover and whisky.
your best bet is to stick with the limited selection of games that have native apple silicon releases. and with native releases on my m2 mac mini im still experiencing some pretty bad input lag.
some strategy games like rimworld and stellaris are good options.
Cloud gaming is financially contributing to the end goal of turning hardware ownership into a rental service, so I’m staying away from that. Even if it can’t be stopped I don’t want to add to the funds endorsing it.
I think the way forward is to just be fine with older hardware and getting less demanding newer titles. There’s those who only game on a Steam Deck, and been happy with it. Emulating old games is an option too.
That’s the old price. GamePass Ultimate went up briefly from $14.99 to $19.99 then doubled (from its original price) to $29.99 per month.
I got locked in at the original price. Better yet, I got the GamePass All Access deal right before it went away. That gets you the $500 Xbox Series X and 2 years of GamePass Ultimate for about 35 bucks a month. If you consider GPU to be $15 a month, that pushes the Xbox down to $480. Not a bad deal at all! You get the Xbox and a 24-month code straight up and make payments (it’s a credit card with 0% interest for that purchase, so you have to qualify for it). That’s why I have an XSX and not a PS5 like I would have liked. I couldn’t come up with $500 straight up for a PS5, but I could make $35 a month for 2 years plus I got GamePass.
I still game on my Xbox (I’m a Mac user on computers — we got Cyberpunk and Blue Prince last year, and I own both on Steam, but they play better on my Xbox). I just buy games on sale. I got the Mass Effect Legendary Edition (remaster of the Shepard trilogy) for $6. That sale is still on. They also have Mass Effect 4 for $3 (or $4 for Deluxe) and the first one (OG 360 version) for $5. Bought all of it. Love those games. I got Hogwarts Legacy for $10. That nasty trans-hating Harry Potter author didn’t have any input in the game and in fact it has a bunch of gay couples and a trans character to spite her. I really don’t like her views and avoided the game for a couple years, but I’m hooked. I love flying around and exploring the castle. I also play Switch games. Those tend to last longer than PC/Xbox games. My wife got Animal Crossing last year and burned out after a couple weeks. I still check in on my island a few times a week. It’s honestly a lovely game.
Have a look at the Heroic Launcher. I remember reading it included a feature to play some Windows games in compatibility mode or something?
Apart from that I guess it’s Geforce Now, Amazon Luna etc…
Some friends at work started up a patient-gamer-style Pokémon book club. It’s been four months and we’re almost done Pokémon Black/White (which may sound impressive except that we started with Pokémon Black/White)
My point is: there’s basically an unlimited number of good games that run on old hardware. Not that retro Nintendo hardware is cheap these days, but if you’ve got some lying around…Probably a steam deck as they are yet to be hit by the mega price hikes.
Once they are, abandon any thoughts of gaming for a while I guess.
This is only going one way until the ai bubble bursts.
I don’t know you, but I have more games in my library than gaming hours in a month. I haven’t touched anything released in the past three years, and mostly replay older games and emulators. The entire PS1 and PS2 library, as well as Nintendo 64, GBA, DS, etc… can be played on your fridge, and you can pirate those games for free, or buy their remasters (if they’s any) for cheap.
Older and or used hardware is gonna be a place to start for CPU and GPU. Used dell optiplex can get you most of the way there, then buy a decent GPU when you can. Just make sure it fits in the case and the PSU that comes with the optiplex can handle the power draw. I’d recommend a new PSU though. Dont buy used for PSU or storage is the best advice I can give.
Optiplex are not gonna get you top of the line performance or anything but it’ll be a lot better than nothing and you can always use it for something else later like a nas, a server, home theater PC, etc.
Check craig’s list and FB market place for used parts and hardware. Did you save your old PC? You could still play older titles with it as well as some newer indie games that don’t need lots of processing power. If a new PC is a must, purchase the parts as you can afford them then assemble the machine once you have what you need.
