[Hardware] I tried gaming on the M4 Mac Mini — here's how it went

[Aronus]

The M4 Mac Mini is a surprisingly powerful little machine, and it's kind of own in my heart for how fast and efficient it can be. It has a surprisingly capable GPU that leaves the competition from Intel and Qualcomm in the dust as far as integrated GPUs go, which, in theory, makes it a great option for lightweight gaming.

Of course, there's more to it than raw performance, and the Mac Mini is still a Mac, which means gaming is hindered significantly. But I wanted to know exactly what kind of experience you can expect with gaming on a Mac. I've always heard the horror stories, but this is my first chance to experience it firsthand. So, is gaming on an M4 Mac Mini any closer to the ideal experience? Well, not really. Let's take a closer look.

The first and biggest thing to address is how many games you can actually play on the M4 Mac Mini, and the answer is, unfortunately, not that many. This is only anecdotal evidence but my Steam Family library, shared across four people, includes 549 games. Once I filter for games compatible with Mac, that list cuts down to just 97 titles. And that's not specifying games native to Apple Silicon, because, to my knowledge, there's only one in my library: No Man's Sky.

The big Apple Silicon games you've probably heard about, like Death Stranding Definitive Edition and Resident Evil Village are only available through the Apple App Store. On Steam, they're not even compatible with macOS at all, meaning I couldn't try them. I've mentioned before that this strategy from Apple to lock in people to its own ecosystem is going to hurt it in the long run in terms of its gaming ambitions.

It's also possible that not every game listed as compatible on Steam will actually work. Epic Games notably removed support for macOS in Rocket League a few years ago, but Steam still lets me install it. However, I was completely unable to launch it. It's a pretty major exclusion for me, considering Rocket League is one of my favorite multiplayer games.

Right off the bat, this should tell you to avoid macOS for gaming. But what about the games that do work? Let's take a look.

 

 

I tried gaming on the M4 Mac Mini — here's how it went