You are correct that single-core performance is king for games. I think you are misjudging the audience if you believe “most gamers” are running the fastest possible chips and buying new rigs every year, though. That is not a cheap way for anyone but enthusasts to go.
18 months ago(!), benchmarks popped up showing that the ipad pro’s ARM chip performed very close to the current MBP of the time:
And that’s taking into account the very different thermal requirements of an ipad, versus say a MBP, Mac Mini or iMac ARM-based mac.
The idea that “ARM is slow in single-core performance” is flawed based on evidence, but more importantly, if these move to even low-end macbooks and the like, it is very likely that the lower end mac portables will compete well with midrange windows laptops - and that gap will be a massive chasm when you compare laptops with intel integrated graphics versus the integrated graphics on apple SoCs.
