Tuesday, March 4th 2025

Another Win For Mac Gaming: Assassin's Creed Shadows To Hit Macs on Day One of Release

Gaming on Mac has been in somewhat of a weird situation lately. On one hand, there seems to be a ton of true AAA titles making their debut on macOS, but on the other hand, sales on the platform have been extremely disheartening in many of the cases. Now, it has been revealed that Assassin's Creed: Shadows, which is set to debut on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation on the 20th of March, will also be available for Mac users on the same day. While that may sound like great news for interested folks, there is a catch - like many of the titles, AC Shadows will be available exclusively on the Mac App Store for a cool $70.

And this is exactly where we hit a major roadblock. For whatever reason, Steam will not include binaries for both Mac and Windows platforms, forcing people with both Mac and Windows PCs to buy the expensive game for both the systems - and this, in my opinion, is the major reason why adoption has been poor. There are plenty of folks with both Macs and PCs - but getting them to pull the trigger for the same game two times is a hard sell. According to the App Store, the game will be playable on Macs powered by the M1 and higher SoCs, and needless to say, support for modern ray tracing goodness will be limited to M3 onwards. It is unclear, as of this writing how the performance is going to be, but there is no denying that the GPUs found on the Pro, Max, and Ultra SoCs in recent years are more than capable of handling even the most demanding of titles with playable framerates.
Source: Apple
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33 Comments on Another Win For Mac Gaming: Assassin's Creed Shadows To Hit Macs on Day One of Release

#26
Dragokar
Ubisoft must be desperate to push its “value” up before they get bought out from Tencent/China. I think that are the last pushes from the Guillemot family before they only keep the leftovers when they sell it finally.
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#27
dyonoctis
Vayra86You know you've sunken deep when you announce an AC game as a win for Mac gaming.

Lol. Yeah, in a barren wasteland, an oasis of pee is absolutely drinkable.
Ubisoft has been one of their "partners" for the whole gaming on apple silicon thing. They have to do the lip service. :D What they did with Arcade was nice, you have good mobile games that aren't plagued by microtransaction, but Apple as a whole is really not going to become super deep into the gaming culture and snob a bad AAA release.
Heck, even Playstation and Xbox have to do lip service for the upcoming trash.
AusWolfIt's not because it's from Ubisoft. It's because all of the latest AC games have essentially been the same game in a different skin (literally). Ubisoft has dug their own grave.
No, it's specifically because AC shadows is going to be a controversial release, forget the black Samurai, the gameplay itself had several issues in the various previews that have been going around on YouTube.
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#28
cinemaware
AusWolfIt's because all of the latest AC games have essentially been the same game in a different skin (literally). Ubisoft has dug their own grave.
That’s a very weak argument. Why fix something that's not broken? There are heaps of series that are "essentialy the same game", because the core things work well. And it's not even as much the same as in some games (eg KCD2 is essentially a reskin, even though I'm fine with that).

I'm not saying that these games are perfect but the amount of hate they get in comment sections get is just silly. It's the same bandwagonning like with Bethesda and other popular hate-ons. Meanwhile, in the real world these games sell millions of copies.
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#29
AusWolf
cinemawareThat’s a very weak argument. Why fix something that's not broken? There are heaps of series that are "essentialy the same game", because the core things work well. And it's not even as much the same as in some games (eg KCD2 is essentially a reskin, even though I'm fine with that).

I'm not saying that these games are perfect but the amount of hate they get in comment sections get is just silly. It's the same bandwagonning like with Bethesda and other popular hate-ons. Meanwhile, in the real world these games sell millions of copies.
Except that KCD is a unique experience, and KCD 2 only expands on the story with little improvements in the gameplay. It's not trying to show off what a revolutionary new thing it is while actually offering nothing substantial.

There's a difference between offering an honest, simple experience, and churning out the same game every year while trying to show it off as the next best thing.
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#30
trsttte
cinemawareThat’s a very weak argument. Why fix something that's not broken? There are heaps of series that are "essentialy the same game", because the core things work well. And it's not even as much the same as in some games (eg KCD2 is essentially a reskin, even though I'm fine with that).
Because the number in front of KCD is 2 and not 13. Assassins Creed is not broken per say but it's completely stagnated, there's nothing new to it, even the overarching theme with the ancestors and all that became very convoluted and impossible to follow.
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#31
cinemaware
There's nothing "unique" about KCD, it's just another videogame (albeit a very good one). The charge that AC is "trying to show off what a revolutionary new thing it is while actually offering nothing substantial" is completely off, since which AC has tried to do that? It’s also contradictory, because you can't argue that a series is stagnant and trying to be revolutionary at the same time.

Saying that they're "out the same game every year" proves you're arguing on autopilot because it's demonstrably false. Besides, when they tried to "go back to the roots" and made Mirage smaller, because of commenting massive saying how allegedly terrible big games are (despite Valhalla selling 20 mil), that was not good either - so, be damned if you do, damned if you don't. It;s the same with Shadows - the game has not been released yet, judging by the previews the gameplay seems vastly changed, and yet it's been already decided it is "staganant". I rest my case :)

It also doesn't matter whether it's KCD is #2 or 13 because it’s an example and the idea is the same. If KCD2 was from Ubi or EA people would apply the same complaints, only because the narrative says so. Nobody whines about GTA being stagnated (even though the actual game mechanics actually go backwards) or how hilariously derivative the gameplay concepts in CP2077 or Avowed are, because the companies behind them are the "good guys" (the hysterical backlash Cyberpunk got was mostly about tech, and that was only half warranted too since on PC the game was just fine).

Sure, the overarching story in AC is a ridiculous dumpster fire, especially the existence of Animus, which always has been one of the more wtf things in modern gaming. But that can be easily ignored because the "local" individual stories are just fine.

In any case my main point is about deciding a game is rubbish months in advance, based on completely irrelevant factors.
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#32
AusWolf
cinemawareThere's nothing "unique" about KCD, it's just another videogame (albeit a very good one). The charge that AC is "trying to show off what a revolutionary new thing it is while actually offering nothing substantial" is completely off, since which AC has tried to do that? It’s also contradictory, because you can't argue that a series is stagnant and trying to be revolutionary at the same time.
Simulating an accurate medieval life with accurate medieval combat in accurate locations is not unique enough? Well, show me which other game has done the same. I want to play them.
cinemawareSaying that they're "out the same game every year" proves you're arguing on autopilot because it's demonstrably false. Besides, when they tried to "go back to the roots" and made Mirage smaller, because of commenting massive saying how allegedly terrible big games are (despite Valhalla selling 20 mil), that was not good either - so, be damned if you do, damned if you don't. It;s the same with Shadows - the game has not been released yet, judging by the previews the gameplay seems vastly changed, and yet it's been already decided it is "staganant". I rest my case :)
I don't want it to go back to its roots. I don't want it to do anything. I want new games, new stories, new experiences. AC offers none of that lately.
cinemawareIn any case my main point is about deciding a game is rubbish months in advance, based on completely irrelevant factors.
Nobody said it's rubbish. The thing is that nobody even cares. If I want AC, I'll play the first one, that was a brilliant game for its time.
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#33
Vayra86
cinemawareThat’s a very weak argument. Why fix something that's not broken? There are heaps of series that are "essentialy the same game", because the core things work well. And it's not even as much the same as in some games (eg KCD2 is essentially a reskin, even though I'm fine with that).

I'm not saying that these games are perfect but the amount of hate they get in comment sections get is just silly. It's the same bandwagonning like with Bethesda and other popular hate-ons. Meanwhile, in the real world these games sell millions of copies.
There's a difference between mainstream and enthusiast sites like TPU. Here, you can indeed find people that are not just following the herd. Lots of people never even touch triple A anymore because of reasons. Good reasons I might add. I'm one of them. I don't touch AC's or CoDs for the same reason I don't go to Spiderman or the umpteenth other Hollywood POS. Its stale as fuck, offers me nothing, utterly braindead entertainment with the depth of a puddle. And on top of that, I'm paying a high price, the game often keeps trying to throw DLC and MTX at me on top of that, and I don't want any of it. For gaming, that applies to a large amount of mainstream content: they deploy mechanics and systems we've already seen ad infinitum and they don't even manage to execute them well either.

Utter junk like Starfield, indeed the next Far Cry or AC... its a bit like watching sitcoms. You already know when the laughing tape is going to sound, and the vast majority of those games are now also loaded with Gen Z dialogue quality that reads like a twitter comment section, and, again... offers me absolutely nothing of substance. I'm also identifying those types of games these days rather easily, and I just really can't bring myself to play them. Its horrible.

To each their own they say. What you call 'bandwagoning' couldn't be a more ironic statement. I see the mainstream herd as the bandwagon I really don't want to be on anymore. The herd is destructive - to art, good taste, and ultimately, good gaming. Those same millions also go to pop artists and tell each other how great it is, because others said so. 'Why fix something that is not broken?' suddenly got a whole new meaning...
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