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Death Stranding Director's Cut Now Available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac

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Post-apocalyptic open world action game Death Stranding is today officially available on iPhones, iPads, and Macs powered by Apple silicon.

Death Stranding
Previously released on PlayStation 5 (2021) and PC (2022), the Director's Cut version for Mac was announced by legendary game creator Hideo Kojima at WWDC 2023 to showcase the potential gaming performance of Apple silicon. Apple subsequently teased an iPhone 15 Pro version at its "Wonderlust" iPhone event in September.

Gamers take on the role of Sam Bridges (played by Norman Reedus of The Walking Dead fame) as a courier tasked with delivering supplies to isolated colonies and reconnecting them via wireless network following a cataclysmic event known as the Death Stranding. Unfortunately for everyone, the event opens a doorway between the living and the dead, leading to grotesque creatures from the afterlife roaming a ravaged and desolate world.

MacRumors sister site TouchArcade has an updating review of the game, which supports iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max devices, as well as Macs running one of Apple's M-series chips.


Death Stranding Director's Cut is currently listed in the App Store at the promotional price of $19.99 (normal price $39.99). Note that this is a universal purchase giving players the iPhone 15 Pro, iPadOS, and macOS versions in a single purchase as well as support for cross-device progress syncing.

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Top Rated Comments

S
Successful Sorcerer
28 months ago

Great game. Obviously it won’t run that great, because even the GPU of a maxed out M3 Max is far from being as fast as a PS5-GPU (and you can get a PS5 with 825 GB of SSD for less than apple charges for 1 TB of a slighly faster SSD alone). Still, it’s the game that counts, not the graphics. If it runs smoothly on a Macbook Air, it’s a win for Mac gaming.
Is that really true? When I look up some benchmarks on CPU monkey ('https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m3_max_16_cpu_40_gpu-vs-sony_playstation_5') for example I see M3 Max beating the PS5 in every aspect, not all benchmarks are available on both platforms so only compare the ones with data available.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Unami Avatar
Unami
28 months ago
Great game. Obviously it won’t run that great, because even the GPU of a maxed out M3 Max is far from being as fast as a PS5-GPU (and you can get a PS5 with 825 GB of SSD for less than apple charges for 1 TB of a slighly faster SSD alone). Still, it’s the game that counts, not the graphics. If it runs smoothly on a Macbook Air, it’s a win for Mac gaming.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ilikewhey Avatar
ilikewhey
28 months ago

This game as seemed interesting to me but I'm just not sure. The mechanics seem kinda boring. I think I'll still pick it up but it's probably worth the sale on my PS5 instead of the full price for macOS.

Anyone really enjoy this game and want to offer some insight?
storyline was mysterious enough for me to push through, but after beating it, you are stuck with maintaining your highway network and wrapping up side quests, by that I mean you basically become a glorified fedex driver deliverying goods between each locations. if you like logistic games this might be your cut of tea.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bradman83 Avatar
bradman83
28 months ago
There's a lot of comments on this site about how Apple should partner with Steam if they really want to boost Mac gaming, but it's pretty clear that this is an example of the strategy Apple would rather pursue - putting the games in their own app store and enabling universal purchases across their platforms rather than partnering with a third party service like Steam. (And given Apple's track record this should not be surprising).
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
waynema Avatar
waynema
28 months ago
49.4GB download for iPhone.. I can finally use my backbone usb-C
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bradman83 Avatar
bradman83
28 months ago

Why in the world is this not available also for Intel Macs?
The technical reason is that the game relies on Metal 3, and Metal 3 in turn relies on certain features of Apple Silicon GPUs, not the least of which is tile-based deferred rendering for acceptable performance. The GPUs in the overwhelming majority of Intel-based Macs use immediate-mode frame rendering; Intel only started supporting TBDR in 11th generation chip GPUs (which are not found in any Macs) and AMD only supports it in Vega GPUs, which are found in a very small subset of upgraded iMacs and Mac Pros.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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