Assassin’s Creed Shadows releases on Mac with disappointing performance, M4 benchmarks show
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After a couple of delays and some early backlash due to Ubisoft’s recent track record with Assassin's Creed games, Assassin's Creed Shadows has finally launched, and first impressions say it’s one of the best-looking games of the year so far. The game is demanding on hardware, as it is one of the newest titles to require mandatory ray tracing, though it's not as reliant on expensive illumination effects as titles like Star Wars Outlaws or Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
We tested the game on the Steam Deck, as this game is also the first in the series to earn Valve’s Steam Deck Verified badge, and the results were surprisingly decent. With FSR enabled, the game managed to hold around 35-40 FPS without any major stuttering. However, while Valve’s $549 handheld can give you a decent gaming experience, Apple’s $999 MacBook Air M4 struggles to reach that level of performance.
23 FPS on an M4 MacBook Air
Over on X, user Quinn Nelson shared their disappointing experience trying to play Assassin's Creed Shadows on a MacBook Air M4 as the game averaged just 23 FPS, with 1% lows dropping to 11 FPS while using MetalFX upscaling to 900p from an approximately 500p render target on the “Low” graphics preset. This means that after paying $69.99 for the game, you are not even looking at a stable 30 FPS experience.
And it’s not just the MacBook Air M4 struggling. Even the high-end MacBook M3 Max, which costs around $3,500, only manages an average of 43 FPS with overall settings set to Medium at 1440p upscaled. While the performance here is at least playable, the M3 Max's price is significantly higher, making it a tough sell for gaming.
MacBook isn't exactly built for gaming
As much as Apple tries to convince users that MacBooks are good for gaming, these machines still don't offer a proper gaming experience. A big reason for this is that they lack a dedicated graphics card, relying solely on their integrated GPU, which isn't the most powerful option. Some of the blame also falls on Ubisoft, as the game likely wasn't optimized for Mac, given that gaming on macOS remains a rarity.
That said, Apple is pushing to make gaming more viable on Apple Silicon, with another example being the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition launching on Macs with Apple Silicon support. However, judging by these results, it's hard to say if there's still reason to be excited. Perhaps Cyberpunk 2077 will benefit from better optimization and hardware efficiency, but for now, Assassin's Creed Shadows is a hard pass for MacBook users.
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