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Gamers Itching To Switch To Macs?
An anonymous reader writes "CNET.com.au is forecasting Windows gamers will be flocking to Intel-based Apples, saying many 'have been looking for an excuse to switch to Macs.' The article says: 'Of course, games enthusiasts who like to customise their systems and upgrade their hardware (such as graphics cards) at the drop of a hat may still prefer the tinkering freedom a PC allows. But then there are the legions of more casual gamers who only upgrade every several years or so -- as long as they can play what's available at their local games shop, I'm sure they won't be fussed that they're not running off the latest gear from ATI or NVIDIA.'"
Considering that when many people say that they need a Windows machine to do "work" on, they actually mean they need it for playing games, I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see more people make the switch. Admittedly, as the summary states, this would be the lower to middle end gamers. The high end gamers will still spend 500 bucks every 6 months on the newest graphics card, all the while bitching about how expensive Macs are...
This guy's the limit!
Microsoft heaven, Apple users actually buying copies of Windows at full retail prices!
Common sense is not so common
Yup. And it works really well. Really, really well. Better than on my desktop PC.
At the Valve Developer Community, a few of us are logging how Valve games run on these new Macs, so if you've got any new information, feel free to contribute.
I do think it will kill most native MacOS gaming, or at least cause a major shake-up. But I'm not surprised - paying through the nose for years-old ports of PC games just didn't appeal to me, to be honest.
But what I've got now is a Universal Computer, capable of running Mac software (both PowerPC and Intel), UNIX stuff (thanks to Fink and X11.app) and now Windows stuff. I've been dual-booting on my PCs between Linux and Windows for years, so I'm familiar with the drawbacks, but the advantages are great. By day, for work and for my photography, I have a high-powered Mac laptop, and by night, for gaming and modding stuff, I've got a high-powered PC laptop.
Not bad!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
To everyone who thinks this is going to be Apple's demise, you are completely wrong. No one buys a Mac for the hardware. Apple blathers on and on about how they're a hardware company, but that's bull. They're a software company, and they make the best desktop operating system on the planet.
No one is going to buy a Mac now to run Windows on it. They're going to buy a Mac because they've always wanted to try OS X, but they have a few stubborn applications that they need to run on Windows, and until now couldn't justify the risk of switching and losing access to them. People on here would say "Just keep a second computer!", but most people aren't interested in that.
It is absurd to suggest that Apple is going to die now that people can run Windows on their Mac. The whole point of a Mac is NOT to run Windows. That's why people pay Apple's high prices - for the ability to run OS X. Companies are not going to stop making OS X software just because Apples can run Windows - if people wanted Windows, they would've bought a freaking Dell!
Take my dad, for instance. He loves to play chess against Fritz 8 and over the net with Playchess.com, which I bought him a few years ago. But it only runs on Windows. He's been wanting to get a Mac when his current computer dies, but until now he wouldn't be able to run his favorite software. He doesn't mind the hassle of dual-booting.
This will entice a huge population of people who have been teetering on the edge to make the switch. And now every time they reboot into OS X from Windows, or into Windows from OS X, the superiority of OS X will become clear. Even more so as time goes on, when the Windows installation becomes a spyware-infested, bloated piece of crap with fifteen different taskbar icons taking up 30MB of RAM each that starts to pause mysteriously after common tasks, and OS X just keeps humming along.
I didn't have any plans to upgrade my PowerBook before this, but I'm going to pick up a MacBook Pro this weekend.
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It's about time somebody said it. In fact, I'd say that not even 5% of gamers are so hardcore that they upgrade anything in their PC every six months or less. I usually just get construct a cheap rig and upgrade it after a year or two and then jump to the next cheap rig and re-use any parts that I can. I do have a desktop replacement that I replace every two years or so as well. I'm one of the legion, I suppose.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
It will definitely discourage game developers from porting to OS X. No one minds a two minute pause to reboot into Windows when they want to spend the next three hours playing a game.
It will not do anything to application developers, however. No one would tolerate a two minute pause when they want to run Photoshop, for example. And then a two minute pause when they want to check their email, and have to reboot again.
The ability to run Windows on a Mac does two things:
1) It makes it easy for people to play games.
2) It makes it possible for people to still run any Windows applications that they depend on. Not convenient, but possible.
#1 will impact Mac game sales, yeah. But I don't really give a shit about Mac games, they're overpriced and out of date. It's not like the industry was exactly thriving, anyway - most gamers with Macs have a PC.
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Heh. I'd be game for older games to work with current hardware. My little one has a mess of older games that don't want to run on anything but Win98.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Would this have helped me? It would give me reassurance, but I doubt I would have used it. Frankly rebooting takes too much time and it's just a hassle. I never reboot my Mac except when it needs security updates that require it. Otherwise it is on 24/7. I take it back and forth to school every day but I just close the lid and it goes into sleep instantly, and wakes up in about 2 seconds.
Now when someone gets either something like WINE working so you could play games (TransGaming... you've got an opportunity here for tons of sales), or true virtulaization gets enabled (some say Apple will do that in 10.5) so that you don't HAVE to reboot, you can just keep Windows in "the background" then I would have JUMPED at the chance to switch to Mac.
There are three things in life. There is having UNIXy goodness (got that), there is having great applications (iLife, Safari, and the ability to run Office/Photoshop), and there are games (got some, missing others). I'd say my Mac scores a 2.3/3.0. Windows is a 2.0/3.0 (games and apps).
Keep up the great work Apple.
So what will most people use this for? Nothing. I expect that virtualization will come out soon enough. All this will do is provide that reassurance for switchers until they go full-on Mac, and I doubt they would use it much.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Its weird how game compatibility goes. We can run almost everything made on things like Commodores and such (various emulators for everything), and with the latest release of dosbox, we can run almost all the DOS and a lot of the Win3.1 (not that there were that many) games. Its the stuff between that and Win2k that's iffy.
It almost seems like there's this hole that's a lack of support, and its shrinking from the tail end while eating up a bigger and bigger time period. Not sure if its expanding faster than its shrinking, but its rather interesting. I think with Vista's release, a lot of older but still-playable games (late 98 era) will become unplayable, and at the same time Wine will keep getting better and will be able to play the oldest games unplayable now (95-era and such).
On a different note, software like dosbox and the like seems to go partway toward nullifying the argument for open-sourcing games. I mean, games that were open sourced (Gladiator, Rise of the Triad, the Dooms and Quakes, etc) do live on today on modern systems, but the games that weren't are still very much alive and playable. In facts, Dosbox's enhancements like modem and IPX emulation make those games better and better! Of course, no matter how good Dosbox gets, it still won't be able to make, for example, the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe be anywhere near as good as OpenTTD, but its still cool how they improve well after their support life-cycle is over.
I kinda lost my point in all that, or maybe disproved it or never had one to begin with, but its still interesting. Maybe a bit off-topic, too....
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
People are accustomed to not buying their OS, since nearly every computer ships with one today. Microsoft's demand that OEMs install Windows before shipping the computer has this side-effect: You expect the OS to be part of the deal. You don't see that you've paid money for a copy of Windows, so in your mind, you've never had to pay for it before. Do you think that will somehow change? That people will suddenly start paying for something they never had to in the past?
If someone does a study on this a year from now and finds that more than half of the copies of Windows installed on dual-boot Macs are legal, I'd seriously question the study's methodology.
Meanwhile, because Apple is not a Windows OEM, that means that Microsoft (or other OEMs) must deal with the support calls made when things go awry. This increases Microsoft's costs, and the costs of Apple's competitors.
It gets worse for Microsoft: They are in no position to strong-arm Apple into an OEM contract of any kind. Apple doesn't want the contract, and the claim that they're shipping computers without an OS is leading people to pirate the OS falls flat. Apple is shipping an os, they can claim that what people do with the dual-boot is not Apple's responsibility, and they're right.
Microsoft can claim that Boot Camp is leading to more piracy, and they'd be right about that; however, the claim that Apple is somehow deliberately enabling this loss of sales -- although very likely -- is a subtle point. You can also see how Microsoft themselves, by strong-arming OEMs, have created a trap for themselves to where a company that Does Not Need Microsoft -- such as Apple -- can exploit that gap.
The more I look at it, the more impressed I am with the evil brilliance behind Apple's move. And yes, I meant it when I said "evil." This was truly devious. It benefits all of us in the short run, but in the long run it benefits Apple the most.
Note OS X's fast user switching. Did you know that Apple already has a patent on fast OS switching as well? After all, Boot Camp is a beta with more user-friendliness promised for even its full release in 10.5. Could we be looking at a future of seamless full-speed emulation ala Rosetta? That would be ideal, of course, but with OS switching potentially taking less than 30 seconds, it's not a far stretch to imagine a whole lot of people switching. Penny Arcade, who created a character specifically to pick on elitist Mac users, has switched and loves it. I do my gaming on a desktop replacement laptop now (had to sell the Alienware system in my cross-country moves), and the MacBook would be perfect for my needs. I'll be switching as soon as I can come up with the cash.
In regards to the extra money spent on Apple hardware, that's less true than it used to be-- Alienware systems are actually MORE expensive than Macs these days. Are homebuilders and 'hardcore gamers' gonna be making the switch? No. But who gives a flying fuck about that 5% of the computing population? Regardless of what many people think, the 'hardcore' are not the ones out buying games-- the more casual gamers make up the vast majority of purchases. Most PC gamers (not the 'hardcore' minority) buy a handful of games a year, and replace their system every 3 years, with a few upgrades in the meantime.
Which brings me to my next point: Apple hardware retains its resale value much much better than other brands (including Alienware). That leads to an interesting cycle that is even cheaper than the homebuilding route, for achieving reasonable performance with excellent polish and style and OS X exclusive software. In short:
Step 1:
Buy MacBook Pro for $2500.
Step 2:
Use it happily and effectively for 2 years.
Step 3:
Sell it for $1200 when you can no longer play with heavy graphical goodies.
Step 4:
Buy New MacBook Pro for $2500.
Looking at it that way, you spend $650 a year after an initial $2500 investment to have a fantastic laptop that can play games. Now, before you jump all over me, be sure to look up your numbers. 2yo PowerBooks really do sell for $1200. Even for 12-inch. Additionally, PC laptops are what, $300 or so cheaper AT MOST at purchase. Yet they don't retain the same kind of resale value. You get back every penny you spent on the more expensive Apple product at resale and then some.
So yeah. I'm gonna switch ASAP. And it's the right decision.
Peace out.
"Normal" gamers won't switch because they'll spend most of their time in Windows so they can play their games, thus defeating the purpose of buying a computer that costs much more than a non-Mac equivalent. There's also the hardcore gamer that has to be on the bleeding edge of everything, and Macs don't allow that sort of crazy upgrading.
Casual gamers won't switch because they would've already switched to begin with if that was the only thing holding them back. Stuff like Solitaire and PopCap games has always been available on the Mac, and you don't need to dual-boot for it. (And no, if you're one of those gamers who plays a certain Windows-only game enough to where you're willing to use an OS you don't like just to play it, you fit in the first category, not this one.)
Who are the people that will switch?
One thing that might happen is that these people switching will increase the marketshare significantly, which would encourage the big game developers to make OSX ports for all of their popular games, and then you'd see gamers start to switch. I'm sure this is what Jobs is hoping for. But it's not going to happen right away.
Rob