MacStadium is at GDC this week!

MacStadium News
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Are you at GDC this week? Stop by MacStadium booth P1820 to learn how our Mac clouds are built to support the unique needs of game developers.

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Do you please give us a link about it ?

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Hello! Here is a link to the GDC website: https://gdconf.com/ and here is a link to the MacStadium Community category where we and other attendees will be posting topics about the event:GDC 2024 - MacStadium Community

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i am curious about how MacStadium’s Mac clouds are designed to meet the distinctive demands of game developers? If so, what specific features or capabilities are interested in learning more about.

Best Regard
Danish Hafeez | QA Assistant
ICTInnovations

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@danishhafeez Great question. Generally speaking, we offer the latest and greatest hosted Mac compute, along with a virtualization platform to manage those compute resources most effectively.
Here’s a breakdown of the issues that game developers face with Apple platforms, and how MacStadium helps to solve them.

  • A Mac is required to build apps for any Apple platform, including iOS, macOS, visionOS, and so on. iOS is the most revenue generating mobile platform, and mobile gaming is the largest segment of the gaming industry by revenue as well.

  • Modern development practices demand hosted compute for continuous build and test jobs. Running builds on developer laptops is not scalable, nor is it efficient. Additionally, automated tests should run continuously on all builds, which requires persistently running machines. Furthermore, game projects tend to be substantially larger than other applications, which increases build time and required compute resources for successful builds.

  • However, Mac compute is not easy to self-host. The machines themselves are an odd form factor, they aren’t space-efficient when compared to rackmount servers. macOS is also built around desktop/workstation use first and foremost, with complications for remote hosting, such as a need for physical power button access.

  • Furthermore, outside of the mobile game development space, it is most common that game development is done exclusively on PCs, as there are many important SDKs and toolkits that simply aren’t available on macOS.

  • By leveraging MacStadium’s hosted compute options, game development studios can target Apple device users without needing to take on the burden of self-hosting Mac compute, or managing fleets of expensive developer laptops. Additionally, they can access the latest and most powerful Mac hardware (such as the Mac Studio with M2 Ultra) with lower upfront costs, enabling increased developer productivity by speeding build and test jobs up by nearly 2x when compared to other Apple Silicon options.

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