Possibly some of the 220 million people who buy an iPhone every year, or maybe one of the 50-60 million/year who buys an iPad, or one of the 15-20 million that buys a Mac per year. Or even barring that, Apple apparently is doing very, very well with Apple Arcade, apparently beyond their expectations, so Apple could grow that service to also offer AAA games as well.

The games have to be the real deal version of the PC/consoles though, people right now are not used to having the actual console versions of these games available to them in a phone or even a non-gaming laptop or "normal tablet". It doesn't have to be the best looking version, just a playable decent version, no one is expecting an iPhone or iPad to match a 3090 desktop GPU. 

I think it will be a little slow on that end because people will have to get used to this idea that these games are possible even on their iPhone and probably it's actually better if they focus I think on games that are 1-3 years old and can be sold at a discounted price. For $20-$25 on sale would I try maybe RE4 Remake or FF7 Remake on my M-series iPad which I can also use on my iPhone? Yeah ... for that price, potentially sure. 

And then once you get people used to this idea, then you can scale up from there. 

$1000+ to play old games in 720p, 30 fps on low setting. Can't wait.

lol 1500$ if you want to hold a few games.

Oh yeah...  and no way to expand storage.  

I think Apple gaming will do well enough as niche.  But the idea it will be some sort of norm the masses sign up for is a bit absurd.  Most phone owners aren't core gamers.  Storage space is an issue.  And games like RE8 on a tiny screen is tough...  oh and most phone users are not going to carry a controller around.  The list goes on and on.  This isn't a plug and play home console replacement.

On the other hand graphic designers tend to love Apple.  Apple could position these chips for graphic design and light video editing.  

Confidence sounds different.

Is the Steam Deck selling well? is it a big market for Apple to want to steal? I genuinely have no idea

The iPad Air is 60% of the iPhone Pro price and already has the M1, nothing changed! As far as I can tell, I can't even play Sea of Stars on my Apple kit... 

You are right about some things, something does seem different this time, Apple does seem more serious about their efforts to attract the classical gamer this time, but I am not falling for it for several reasons. If you think Apple hasn't tried to get serious about gaming, think again. They spent 500 million dollars on Apple Arcade before it launched, I don't know how much they spent after it launched, but Apple Arcade is still a joke and will not appeal to any gamer that isn't already gaming on the iPhone. 

If you're arguing that that Apple has the resources 

1. To consistently convince/pay/help third parties to port their games for the next decades 

2. AND start their own studios 

3. AND consumers' behaviour will change so that people will only play games through subscription services like Apple Arcade (most of the iPhone userbase aren't going to pay 70$ to play a game)

4. Apple One (the bundle of services like Music, TV, Arcade) introduces more iOS users to those gaming subscription service 

... then yeah, I can get behind you and I can see a future in which people play games may buy Apple devices to play games, but the above steps will take time, and before we see them happening, it's really hard to imagine the future you're referring to, because going by history, Apple doesn't get classical gaming, based on the state of Apple Arcade at the present, Apple still doesn't get classical gaming, new hardware doesn't change this. 

I feel like the gaming business is full of idiots anyway and it's a largely mismanaged mess with too many misconceptions with questionable decisions that sometimes can only be explained by the fact that fanboys run high-level board meetings like WTF For Apple to succeed, they need to find someone who can show them how it's done first, and giving the fact that this guy keeps finding jobs and convinced Google he was fit to run Stadia, I am not sure there are many for Apple out there to hire

I think it's wrong to say iPhones and iPads power not being harnessed by anything but AAA games, have a look at the iPhone 15 Pro reviews, the zero shutter lag while taking photos and the camera app are examples of the power being put to good use. Also, you may want to check on gen z, it's only natural for them to get all their computing work including video editing, photo editing and document editing on their phones, they're uncomfortable using PCs for what we old farts use them for, the market has shifted drastically.

Drawing apps like Procreate are a massive success on the iPad, so much so that Adobe freaked out and was forced to port Photoshop and their other power hungry apps. I have been playing with the new iPadOS17 Stage Manager, another power hungry feature, and I am thoroughly impressed by what my iPad from 2018 can do compared to what it could do when I first bought it. More and more apps are being developed for MacOS and iPad simultaneously, I am sure devs appreciate they can do this with similarly powerful hardware across all devices. All of these are examples of how the powerful hardware is paying dividends. 

And in the future, when Apple makes the iPhone fold, iOS will morph into iPadOS by simply folding it open, and it will give you access to more power hungry aspects of the operating system (like Stage Manager) and iPad Apps, there are many reasons for Apple to continue to push their silicon beyond gaming. 

But Hey, I am wrong often, let's how the next few years will play out, MS has an insatiable appetite wants have their own store on iOS, their leaked plans indicate they're switching to ARM next gen, who knows if this will influence things in the future.  

That's the whole thing with the iPad Pro though ... the M1/M2 chip is way too powerful for anything iOS currently does. You don't need a chip that powerful for doing anything an iPad normally does. 

Unless of course ... you wanted to run a PC/console style AAA game on the thing. 

So there's your use case. Why do you think Apple is suddenly so interested in gaming? That's probably one big reason ... there is no mainstream use case for a phone or tablet having to be that powerful, but Apple can't stop making better A and M series chips because if they do someone else will either move in on their premium marketshare and/or consumers won't be as excited for their new product. So they're basically locked in this cycle of getting the best tech (3nm TSMC this year, no one else has it) but then needing something to showcase it with. 

Even for those Gen Z video editors ... what really is the market size for that market who needs to edit like 8 streams of 8K video simultaneously? It's a small part of the market, like maybe 30,000 folks who do that? That's who the M1/M2 Ultra Mac Pros are for. Even for "Youtube wannabe stars/content creators" a base M2 Mac Air will rip through 4K video editing easily. You might want to bump the RAM to 16GB, but that's about it. 

I am not saying gaming CAN NOT BE part of the userbase habits, all I am saying is that powerful hardware alone is not going to make this shift happen, Apple hasn't done 0.001% of the work they need to do if they want the classical gamer to play on an iPhone. All we've seen is few ports, if these ports don't continue for the next 10 years, among 10 other things Apple needs to be doing in the gaming space for the next 10 years, then these might ports might as well not exist.... 

I'm in the market for a Macbook, I finally decided to give up on Windows. I've been dealing with KB5030211 won't finish installing (0x800f0922) for over a week, every restart it tries to finish updating gets to 96% and undoes the changes again for 5 minutes, it takes forever now to 'boot' up. I always seem to run into trouble with Windows.

But I guess I'll hang on for another 6 months until the M3 ones drop. They're twice as expensive as a gaming laptop, but since I basically have to buy a new one every 3 years, it will be a lot cheaper in the long run. Macs last a lot longer, while my Predator Helios from 2019 is on life support.
The new 4060 cards only have 8GB RAM so not even a good upgrade for FS2020 and tbh I rarely game on PC anymore anyway. Not enough time for it all and PC goes to the back of the queue since it's always the most work to keep things running.
I do like to do video editing, however the software I use on Windows now deems my camara's file format too old (MTS2), is very slow after the last updates and keeps crashing whenever I try to edit more than 2 tracks... Useless. At least Mac should be good for video editing.
Plus Windows 11, ugh, it's on my kid's new PC. It's a mess again. I rather learn how to use a Mac at this point.

So Apple bringing some more games to its eco system is great news, the final push I needed to come to abandon Windows. And just looking maybe a Mac Mini will suit me fine since I really just use a laptop for space saving. Hang the little box under the table and all I need is a keyboard and small monitor. I'll be keeping an eye on what Apple is doing.

Now back to effing (0x800f0922), tons of 'solutions' on the web, none working so far.

I just can't understand people who want to game on a tiny screen like that. No matter how well it runs, it's a pathetic little screen that doesn't exactly suck you in to the experience.
Well, to each their own I guess.