Almost every month, there is one bombshell after another on Apple TV+. Or rather, Apple TV, as the service is now known. It’s home to such acclaimed shows and movies, all of which are Apple exclusives, that it’s hard to imagine that the service launched only a few years ago in 2019. From Severance to the latest sensation Pluribus, Apple TV is definitely ahead of even older services like Netflix and Amazon Prime in terms of quality.

Apple TV is a powerhouse, which is also reflected in the stars that appear in its shows and movies. From Leonardo to Tom Hanks, they’re the biggest and brightest in the constellations. Apple has created all this in just six years. Because Apple can. As the world’s largest consumer technology company, it has weight and appeal. It has the resources and the money to make a great start in an area where no one gave it a chance.

And that makes the state of gaming on the Mac – or rather the sorry state – all the more shocking!

Over the years, at India Today Tech, we have rated Apple MacBooks and Macs very highly. The reason is simple: these are perfect machines, dominating their Windows counterparts in every area, from performance to battery, performance to usability. And with their milled aluminum bodies they look stunning.

Yet, whenever we’ve written about these machines, we’ve also added a qualifier: These aren’t for gamers. And it has nothing to do with their hardware, because the graphics hardware in chips like the M4 Max, which powers the latest MacBook Pro, is certainly capable of running top games like Call of Duty and Battlefield at the same graphics fidelity that we get from the PS5 and Xbox Series

Instead, the reason why Mac is not good for gaming is that there are hardly any AAA games available for it. And even if there are some games, they aren’t as crowd-pleasing or entertaining as the latest Call of Duty. Instead, Mac has something like Baldur’s Gate 3, which has a community of dedicated players, but is by no means a mass-market title.

And the lack of AAA games for Mac in 2025 is extremely troubling. What’s even more puzzling is why Apple isn’t supercharging game development for the Mac.

Before launching Apple TV+ in 2019, the company created an in-house division to manage content creation for the service. This in-house division acquired and financed a number of shows that we now consider classics and some of the best shows ever streamed on any platform.

Apple needs something similar for gaming on the Mac. If game developers like Activision won’t develop for it, the company will have to do it itself. It is also capable enough to throw some resources at the problem. After all, Microsoft and Sony built their Xbox and Playstation on the back of their great first-party games. Example of Microsoft. When it entered the gaming market with Xbox, it did so with Halo Combat Evolved. That game became a cultural phenomenon and made the Xbox possible. Even now, almost 25 years on, it remains one of the defining features of the Xbox.

It’s hard to believe that what Microsoft could do in 2001, Apple can’t do in 2025. The fact that it isn’t doing so, at least so far with no indication that Apple is involved in any significant effort for AAA games on the Mac, is again puzzling.

At least for consumers and people who write about technology like me, this is surprising. Because the way I see it, there is a demand for gaming on the Mac. Yes, the machine is built for professionals. But not all professionals will use all that power to do 3D rendering and video editing inside the MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, and Mac Studio. And even if they do, there’s no harm in letting them have a little fun with some simple AAA games.

More importantly, now that Apple has powerful graphics hardware, it can turn the Apple TV — the box and not the service — into a powerful gaming console. Again, the hardware is there. I mean, the Mac Mini with the M3 Max is just a little bit bigger than the Apple TV. Apple may have a gaming plus entertainment console the size of Apple TV. But then again, the games are missing. And I suspect they will continue to disappear unless Apple decides to get into this area and do it all on its own. Just like its TV team has done for the last six years.