Is the M4 Mac mini Apple’s first true gaming PC?

The M4 Mac mini made its big splash last week. Among the normal Apple marketing content, however, I noticed something I’d never seen before. It’s the image above that I’m talking about — and by now, you’ve probably noticed the same thing that caught my eye. The PS5 controller.

Sure, you’ve always been able to connect up a game controller and use it for Mac gaming, but never have I seen it promoted by Apple itself. By putting this so forward in the marketing materials, Apple is not-so-subtly implying that these are PCs that are at least to some degree built for gaming. Is this Apple’s first true attempt at taking a real step into the world of PC gaming? There’s more evidence than you might think.

Building momentum

Caleb Denison / Digital Trends

If you’re a gamer, chances are you don’t play your favorite titles on a Mac. Apple’s computers just haven’t been seen as a gaming destination, despite impressive additions like the latest suite of M4 chips.

It’s not for lack of trying. For several years now, Apple has been attempting to crack the gaming market through a succession of different ideas. We’ve seen powerful Apple silicon chips, games on the Apple TV, the launch of Apple Arcade, the Game Porting Toolkit, and even the introduction of the Vision Pro headset. Yet none of these efforts have enabled Apple to knock companies like Sony and Microsoft off their lofty perches.

That could all change soon, though — at least according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman. Writing in his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman believes that the M4 Mac mini could be the device to finally help Apple master the living room and offer its own games console to take on the PlayStation and the Xbox.

And I have to say, Gurman makes a very good point. Unlike previous efforts on Apple’s part, the Mac mini offers a lot of compelling reasons for becoming your next games console of choice.

Caleb Denison / Digital Trends

For example, consider its new, shrunken-down design. Apple has halved the size of the Mac mini while drastically increasing its power output. Its footprint measures just 5 inches by 5 inches and it’s a mere 2 inches tall, making it far smaller than both Sony and Microsoft’s consoles. It’s compact, unobtrusive, and the perfect size for living room gaming, plus it connects to your TV and controllers without a hitch.

On the inside is the powerful M4 chip that offers Dynamic Caching, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and mesh shading, plus 16GB of memory as standard. In fact, Apple says the M4 is twice as good at ray tracing as the M3, which is huge. With all the talk of ray tracing support on the PlayStation Pro, that’s an important point for Apple to make.

And if you want more, of course, there’s the M4 Pro chip that can go toe-to-toe with the M2 Ultra in the Mac Pro and the Mac Studio. And the Mac mini offers all that for a very reasonable $599 starting price.

It’s all these qualities that make the Mac mini the ideal machine for console-style gaming. Instead of bringing out an all-new device like the Vision Pro or developing a platform like Apple Arcade, maybe Apple’s best option for conquering the gaming world was sitting here all along in the form of its tiniest desktop computer.

A moving target

Caleb Denison / Digital Trends

There’s still one key area that Apple needs to improve: the games themselves. Because right now, the macOS games library is a long, long way behind what its rivals can offer.

Sure, the recent news that Control and Cyberpunk 2077 will be coming to the Mac are both big wins for Apple, and they’ll join other outstanding Mac games like Baldur’s Gate 3, Death Stranding, and Disco Elysium. But even a cursory glance at the dearth of AAA titles on the Mac will tell you that developers don’t see macOS in the same light as Windows, the PlayStation, or the Xbox.

If Apple can fix that, though, it might finally find a way to entice console gamers onto a new platform. It’s already laid the groundwork with the Game Porting Toolkit, and seeing other popular games make the jump could help convince more developers to bring their games to the Mac.

The M4 Mac mini could play a big role in that. Apple isn’t positioning it as a games console per se, but perhaps it should remind gamers about everything this little machine has going for it. After all, if it takes off, Apple will have the perfect console rival in the form of the Mac mini.