The critically acclaimed Cyberpunk 2077 from developer CD Projekt Red (CDPR) is making its way to Apple Silicon Macs next year – and I’m starting to wonder if Apple’s newly announced M4 Mac mini ($599 / £599 / AU$999) could compete with next-gen consoles like Sony’s PS5 Pro with more triple-A title additions like this.
The first-person action-RPG proved to be a monumental success on console and Windows PCs, despite a rocky launch that sent the developer back to the drawing board. With the game now stable in terms of bugs and performance and boasting a kick-ass major expansion in the form of Phantom Liberty, it appears that now is the perfect time for it to be ported to Macs.
Apple’s list of triple-A games is continuously expanding, as we’ve seen with the Resident Evil 4 remake, Death Stranding Director’s Cut, and Baldur’s Gate 3. Among this lineup, CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077 is possibly the most demanding of all in terms of hardware requirements – but it seems like even the base M4 version of the new Mac mini will be able to handle all those virtual car chases and Braindances, based on its specifications.
Sony could be in big trouble if the cheaper M4 Mac mini outperforms the PS5 Pro
A big part of this is the fact that Apple has finally moved away from 8GB of unified memory as the baseline for Mac devices – a nightmare for the gaming performance on the cheaper configurations of previous M-series Macs, since that RAM was shared between the CPU and integrated GPU. Now with the base M4 Mac mini rocking 16GB, high performance while gaming looks like a stronger possibility (though it’s still clear that Apple’s primary focus isn’t gaming right now).
Now, there is still a long way for Apple to go with gaming on Macs – specifically with games landing on the platform far later than on Windows PCs and consoles, and many gamers simply not recognizing it as a legitimate gaming brand. Despite this, Cyberpunk 2077’s addition is a huge indication of how great the new M4 chips could be for gaming.
The entry-level configuration of the M4 Mac mini is not only far more compact and also a bit cheaper than Sony’s PS5 Pro (which starts at $699 / £699 / AU$1,119.95), but on paper, it looks like it could potentially outperform the enhanced console. Of course, this might not translate into real-world superiority; optimizing a game for the PS5 is easier for developers, and the console’s bulky chassis means it has far better cooling than the tiny Mac mini. Still, Apple’s Macs are well within reach of providing strong competition in the gaming hardware scene, especially if game devs continue to port big titles to the platform.
We’ve already seen the level of backlash that came from the announcement of its price – there are a plethora of Windows gaming PC builds, that can perform closely to the PS5 Pro within a similar price bracket, so Apple’s Mac mini may leave many reconsidering the Pro console’s value and contemplating this tiny computer as their new living-room gaming machine…