Is Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on Mac?

Apple devices don’t usually receive the same treatment as other pieces of hardware, though with M3 silicon now boasting extraordinary power you’d be forgiven for wondering if Avatar: Frontier of Pandora is on Mac.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a game based on James Cameron’s film franchise. You’ve probably seen them, especially if you’re interested in playing the latest game adaptation. As one of the highest grossing movie series of all time – there’s sure to be plenty of people interested in playing the game that won’t have typical gaming PCs. If you own a Mac and you’re interested in giving it a go, you may be slightly disappointed.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora won’t run on Mac, at least not for now

You’d expect a game adaptation of a film that completely revolutionised CGI and cinema to be equally as impressive. Our Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora review of the game praises its “impossible vistas” and engaging graphics, so you can fully expect it to take quite a hit on your PC. It’s for this reason that you can’t play Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on a Mac, especially without a dedicated graphics card to rely on for rendering complex environments.

The system requirements for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora demand an AMD Radeon RX 5700 or Nvidia GTX 1070 at the very least to run at 1080p and 30fps, far from ideal. It also asks for an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel i7-8700K too. While the latest Apple M-series silicon chips might surpass those processors in terms of speed, cores and threading potential, the integrated graphics couldn’t hope to live up to the demands of the game at all. If you would like to play the game, check out the best GPU for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and build yourself a gaming PC.

Many games aren’t even considered for development on Apple devices due to this limitation, however, the recent release of M3 silicon certainly suggests that Apple is keen to change the perception of gaming on their products. In recent years, we’ve seen gaming on Linux taking off exponentially . Much of this can be attributed to the Steam Deck which runs SteamOS, which has made Linux the second biggest OS for gaming on Steam. The versatile handheld is a sign that people will be content playing games on devices where you’re not going to be able to crank out maxed out graphics, and Apple would be incredibly wise to tap into this too.

Their recent iPhone 15 release signifies that it’s really on their radar, too – Resident Evil Village and Assassin’s Creed Mirage will both be incredibly groundbreaking games to run on a smartphone, and there’s clearly a lot of interest there, too.

We’ve seen certain games being playable on Mac, though these generally tend to be games where gameplay is the focus, rather than the visuals. From what it looks like, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a visual spectacle before anything else. If we ever see Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora natively playable on Mac, it won’t be for many, many moons.

However, you can stream Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora to your Mac instead

While it’s not the same as running it natively from your system, you are going to be able to play the game on your Mac if you use cloud streaming. Amazon Luna and GeForce Now both let you take advantage of fast internet connections and games running on huge server rigs, though you’re going to have to accept a few compromises.

✓ Amaar’s Advice

Use 5GHz connection bands where possible

Remote streaming is only an enjoyable experience when you can take advantage of a 5GHz connection band. Anything less and you’re going to be hampered by input lag and stuttering.

As is the case with all forms of remote streaming, you’re going to be playing against input delay as much as you are fighting against RDA. Graphics will also be slightly toned down, and you won’t be gaming at the same resolution as your Mac’s display either.

It’s a much cheaper solution than building your own gaming PC though, and it’s way more likely to provide you with an enjoyable experience than if you attempted to dual-boot Windows through Parallels or Bootcamp.

We’re going to be keeping an eye out for the latest on whether or not your Mac can run Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, though we don’t expect any major changes for quite a while. The hardware at the moment isn’t ready for a game as visually impressive as this – but there’s hope for the future. If you do end up playing the game on a variety of the other platforms it’s available on – check out out Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora beginner’s guide to get you started.

Does Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora require a GPU?

Running a game as visually impressive as this does require a GPU. You won’t be able to run it on integrated graphics alone.

Can you play Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on any streaming services?

You’re only going to be able to stream Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora on Amazon Luna and Nvidia GeForce Now.