Some friends at work started up a patient-gamer-style Pokémon book club. It's been four months and we're almost done Pokémon Black/White (which may sound impressive except that we started with Pokémon Black/White)
My point is: there's basically an unlimited number of good games that run on old hardware. Not that retro Nintendo hardware is cheap these days, but if you've got some lying around...

Cloud gaming is financially contributing to the end goal of turning hardware ownership into a rental service, so I'm staying away from that. Even if it can't be stopped I don't want to add to the funds endorsing it.

I think the way forward is to just be fine with older hardware and getting less demanding newer titles. There's those who only game on a Steam Deck, and been happy with it. Emulating old games is an option too.

Not sure what to tell you, but a Mac is the last platform to go to for gaming. Apple has zero interest in gaming and have made the platform virtually hostile to gaming development.

Steam regularly has sales (really good sales, like under $5) for fairly modern games (within the last 10 years).

Wait for a sale on something like an AMD Beelink and use that.

Here's an idea that won't cost anything: Browser games! There are tons of great Incremental games playable for free on a browser, and plenty of other games too.

I don't know you, but I have more games in my library than gaming hours in a month. I haven't touched anything released in the past three years, and mostly replay older games and emulators. The entire PS1 and PS2 library, as well as Nintendo 64, GBA, DS, etc... can be played on your fridge, and you can pirate those games for free, or buy their remasters (if they's any) for cheap.

I don't know what I can tell you.

I'm one of those patient gamers, where I'm just happy I finally have a machine that can play about 89% of the games I have to throw at it. Moreso happier that it can confidently run PS2 emulation, something I've been chasing for years to have a machine that can do, to own anyways.

I think you just need to sit down and contemplate to yourself what you want out of a machine. It's not a good healthy mindset to be fretting about upgrading all of the time. I mean, you made a huge leap already going from 15 years to what you have now.

Also consider that, there will still be games released that look graphically demanding and everything, but will require maybe a 1060 GPU, just as an example. Probably 8GB of RAM. It's only the AAA stuff that wants everything to be tip-top shape. Don't chase those.

Steam Deck is the answer for now. You may still be able to get one of the discontinued LCD models on the cheap, but GamePass is now as expensive as buying a game every month, so it’s better to buy than subscribe. They also make excellent PCs and homelab devices. We bought several LCD versions for the lab instead of Pi 5s, because they are such a good deal.

Switching to Bazzite (a Linux Distro, made for gaming). No Ragrets so far

you are seriously limited on the selection of games you can play with Apple silicon

I turned 360 degrees around and installed bazzite

As you already have a Mac, have you looked into Crossover?

So far as I understand, the work that CodeWeavers do with it is the basis for what Valve have done with Proton, so it's the closest you'll get to Proton on macOS. I've seen people running RDR2 on Macs with it. It's a reasonable outlay, but it could be a useful tool for running a whole bunch of Windows-only titles via Steam.

There is also Whisky, which is to all intents and purposes, a free version of Crossover, albeit (intentionally) a couple of Wine versions behind so as to not detract from what Crossover does. I've used Whisky a bunch to play Windows games on my M2 Macbook, and while it's not been perfect, and will likely struggle with brand new, AAA games, older titles should work nicely.

Never paid a subscription in the first place.

Maybe look into a BC-250 build. Basically a binned PS5 chip but you can overclock it to make back some of the performance.

https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/

That or i got a fairly recent office PC that had an AMD 8700G and 32 GB of DDR5 on ebay for 400 bucks. Slapped in a 9060xt and its a sub 800 dollar build. Didn't do enough research though and found out the 8700 only has 8 PCIE lanes even though bios and specs list x16. Oh well, it performs well enough for now.

Probably a steam deck as they are yet to be hit by the mega price hikes.

Once they are, abandon any thoughts of gaming for a while I guess.

This is only going one way until the ai bubble bursts.

What's my best option going forward for gaming?

Probably the same as always: look for a good deal on a used PC. Or buy all the used components and slot them together. The former is usually a better value.

Take a break. Go outside. Enjoy nature.

Older and or used hardware is gonna be a place to start for CPU and GPU. Used dell optiplex can get you most of the way there, then buy a decent GPU when you can. Just make sure it fits in the case and the PSU that comes with the optiplex can handle the power draw. I'd recommend a new PSU though. Dont buy used for PSU or storage is the best advice I can give.

Optiplex are not gonna get you top of the line performance or anything but it'll be a lot better than nothing and you can always use it for something else later like a nas, a server, home theater PC, etc.

Wasn't Game Pass like $6/mo on PC not too long ago? Who's paying $20 for this crap? The game selection isn't even that good.

Play old games, I guess? Arc Raiders is one of the only new games I’ve played in a long time. Recently got an Xbox one to play the golden age cod games.

Check craig's list and FB market place for used parts and hardware. Did you save your old PC? You could still play older titles with it as well as some newer indie games that don't need lots of processing power. If a new PC is a must, purchase the parts as you can afford them then assemble the machine once you have what you need.

Maybe try find some games that work on the mac?

There's also this project trying to get linux in a vm to run games on a mac(and also trying to install Linux on a mac, but I assume it might break macOS since bootcamp isn't a thing anymore, so the vm route is probably the better option):

https://github.com/AsahiLinux/muvm

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BbJMPfXTbbE

(I haven't tried it since I don't own a mac, just happened to find it when another friend who does have a mac was asking for similar advice to you previously, but he didn't end up trying it either)

Mac is great for emulators, so you have that.

Also mac native games, like ones you can buy on the App Store (cyberpunk etc.) run great on most M chip macs.

Also, Crossover might be a solution for some games. It works for most games fine, some work great, and some don’t work at all.

There’s also other cloud gaming services, where you can emulate a whole computer and just download steam games. Most are cheaper than gamepass 🤷‍♂️

You don't NEED new stuff to play games. My computer is pushing 8 years old, I just upgrade the nvme or graphics card when needed. I got a refurb 3070 last year for $450 with warranty, can get one on Amazon now for under $300 without warranty. You don't need 64gb to play games, 16 is plenty and you can get motherboards that use ddr4 fairly cheap.

Look around, second hand market is fine, just very the parts. This 3070 will last me a few years minimum.

_

Maybe wait for the Steam Machine

Best advice I can give is to look at online auctions, estate sales, and check out to see if there are any Goodwill's near you that specialize in electronics. You can run a lot of modern games on 10 to 5 year old hardware, probably won't be the prettiest build but hey if it works. Also remember you can always tear open a modern laptop for that sweet sweet storage.

It might be an option that doesn’t come up much, but older/lower-spec consoles are an option: The Playstation 4 and Xbox Series S. They’re not available for recent big AAA games, but that’s less and less of the big trends. There have still been many games coming out this year for the PS4.

That’s, of course, if you’re really on a low budget for hardware. Otherwise, a PC is a great investment for games on Steam sales.