While most of Microsoft’s apps and services are ubiquitous today, Mac users may sometimes feel that the company is leaving them behind. OneDrive and Office 2016 are pretty good on the Mac, but today Windows 10 Mobile users can’t use the outdated Windows Phone Mac sync app to sync content between their Mac and Windows 10 Mobile phone, as an example. There is also no Groove Music or Xbox app on the Mac as of now, though things could change for the second service: according to tweet from Xbox head Phil Spencer today, an Xbox app on Mac OS X would be “totally fine”:
Totally fine with that. Really just about development priorities, nothing against Mac.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) July 14, 2016
Many PC gamers may be scratching their heads right now. Indeed, Macs are not really a popular option for playing games: according to Steam’s monthly hardware survey, only 3.60% of Steam gamers are currently using Macs while Windows claims a 95.5% market share.
However, Apple is starting to take gaming on the Mac seriously. Last year, the company announced at WWDC that Mac OS X would support Metal, its new low-level, low-overhead hardware-accelerated graphics and compute API that it introduced on iOS 8 a year before. And actually, there is already a decent collection of games on both Steam and Apple’s own Mac App Store.
Even Sony is taking the Mac seriously, as the company made PS4 Remote Play available on both PC and Mac earlier in April. Additionally, the Playstation 3 gamepad, which supports bluetooth, has also been a popular option for Mac gamers over the years as Microsoft never released official Mac drivers for the Xbox gamepads (though that will soon change as Microsoft recently announced a new Xbox One gamepad which supports the wireless standard).
So, does Microsoft need to embrace the Mac as a gaming platform and release and Xbox Mac for Mac OS X? If this app could support Game DVR features as well as game streaming from the Xbox One, it could probably help the company stay relevant in the market. But as Spencer said, this is all about “development priorities”, and the company may well want to first ship a better Xbox app on iOS and Android. Let us know in the comments if you think it makes sense for the Xbox team to support the Mac platform.
