Slashdot Mirror
Apple Offers Huge Prizes For Video Game Ports
Oculus Habent writes "In an attempt to increase Apple's market share in the home sector, Steve Jobs announced today that he would personally fund prizes for ports of popular gaming titles to the Macintosh platform. Citing the common complaint of lack of game availability for Mac OS X, Jobs suggests that work in this area could seriously improve Macintosh acceptance. Said Jobs, "We've got incredible, stylish computers and an insanely great operating system. The Mac mini made has a huge impact, but it is only the tip of the iceberg." Prizes include Steve's yearly salary for the first ten ports, and twice that amount for "hot new titles" with a simultaneous release." Update: 04/02 18:02 GMT by Z : April 1st hoax story.
$1 to the first editor that stops posting April Fools articles. One i can handle, all of them is rediculous...again.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Even though it may mean a huge increase in market share, I don't think Apple will ever want their computers to be known as "good gaming platforms".
Mac = time spent "productivly"
Windows = playing video games, downloading pr0n
Of course the two are not completely mutually exclusive, you can be productive on Windows and waste time on a Mac, but this is the general path of their evolution.
Windows evolution = appeal to the masses, give them what they want, get huge market share
Apple evolution = damn the popularity race and bottom line and stick to a specific vision, a vision of what computers can and should be in our lives
Of course I know you can get A LOT of good work done in Windows. It's just that, by windows trying to be a "jack of all trades" and Apple being more focused in one direction, I see Macs being used more and more for the things their focused on, and Windows being used more and more for the other things, the non-productive but fun things we all generally waste too much time on but couldn't live without.
I think Steve Jobs is great for letting his vision be his guide, but yet we're seeing Apple also be a bit more practical lately, by introducing low price-point macs (MacMini) and other marketing tactics (marketing/price/cost manipulation with the ipods) in order to increase the market share and bottom line. This is also a good thing, to find a balance between ideology and practical concerns, but in the end to keep the balance from tipping too far one way, I think they'll maintain the Mac image as a sophisticated computer for those who, at least sometimes, are serious about getting some actual work done, and they will continue to shy away from trying to be a big gaming platform.
So those of you thinking "man if I could just play all my cool l33t new games on Mac it would be perfect, I could totally switch!"... I think you should forget it. If you want gaming keep a pc or a console to go along with your Mac because that's not what a Mac is or will ever be about.
As a disclaimer, I'm a total Quake 3 Arena junkie and I'm not putting down gamers at all with this. ;-D