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Apple Needs To Get Its Game On
BusinessWeek is running a piece exploring why Apple needs to get back into gaming. From the article: "Maybe Apple's user base just isn't fully aware of great games that are now available for the Mac? Sure, there are games to be found at the Apple store, prominently displayed in the software section. But does Apple market the Mac as a gaming machine? Adams says it should. 'The biggest thing that Apple could do is educate its users,' she says. 'Apple's message is so closely tied to iTunes and iLife and the iPod and these are all great selling points. We have a great relationship with Apple and they help us get the games ready. But we really need the users to meet us halfway, and only Apple can make that happen.'"
-1 Waffle.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
With solitare, minesweeper, and freecell already installed, who could compete?
Apple can market their machines as gaming platforms, but that doesn't mean that they are good gaming platforms. BootCamp helps, but they won't really be able to leverage that until they come out with an Intel PowerMac with some hooty graphics card.
The biggest thing that Apple could do is educate its users
:)
Educate them how ? Like Bob or Clippy ? Like Vista (à la "You need more privileges to move that file") ? No, thanks !
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
First thing Apple could do to improve the gaming situation is to sell an affordable Minitower computer with a accessible PCI-e slot, just like every other PC manufacturer on the planet.
Of course that would never happed because it would undercut all of their high-margin botique formfactors, damage the brand, etc etc etc. Style Nerds have more money than gamers.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Dude, you forgot Clock. You know, hours of fun...or maybe minutes.
FTFA: At one stage, I turned to eBay (EBAY) to buy a used PowerBook G3 with OS 8.1 installed, just so I could play Mac C&C.
So THIS is the guy that ended up with the P-P-Powerbook!
I'll bet it still managed to run C&C, though....
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
in the apple way, it would be iGames :P
You can play any Infocom game on the Mac. Who cares about anything else?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
'Apple's message is so closely tied to iTunes and iLife and the iPod and these are all great selling points.'
How about iCantPlayFPSWithOneMouseButton . . . thanks, I'll be here all week (or until the mods show up). Tip your waiters.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I have fond memories of apple gaming, back in the day. Karateka, Wavy-Navy, Oregon Trail, even Number Munchers.
iCould see Apple having some sort of store interface for interactive entertainment. Steam is a pretty good example of that (grumbling about required internet connection aside).
I just type my sig in the reply form...
Surely given that Apple's next os release will apparently let you dual boot to XP, you could use the XP boot for games, and Apple's OS for all the stuff it's been used so for. At least till we get games coming out that require Vista, I suppose. I guess it's a question of profitably - it'd be possible to convert a great many games on the Mac, but the returns wouldn't be that great until more Mac owners get into gaming. But since there aren't all that many games for Macs, it's catch 22.
Convince more game devs to use OpenGL, libSDL, OpenAL, and other cross-platform libraries, lest they settle with straight DirectX. Ports become very easy (and presumably less expensive) to do, making it more likely that a port will turn a profit. And we all know how the suits love a profit.
This is the only logical step for the company. Microsoft and Sony both have their own gaming systems; Nintendo is the only independent company left still making a system that isn't also part of a PC/Media company.
An Apple/Nintendo merger makes quite a bit of sense from a corporate culture perspective as well - Nintendo, like Apple, is the smaller, more personal of the gaming companies, focused on user experience more than sheer graphic/processing power. From a philosophical standpoint, their directions align nicely.
Additionally, Nintendo could help Apple expand into the Japanese / Asian market with other consumer electronics, given Nintendo's HQ and savvy with that marketplace.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=20427 6
Anyone remember the days when games actually came out first on Apple computers? All sorts of stuff used to debut on the Apple II - Castle Wolfenstien, Boulder Dash, Karateka (the precursor to Prince of Persia)...
The coolest voice ever.
Apple has a website dedicated to advertising the games that are available for the Mac. A cursory glance of the titles gives the impression that Apple actually has a large videogame library. However upon a closer scrutinization the games are a generation or two behind a series that is currently available to the PC. For example, Apple has Battlefield 1942, but they don't have Battlefield 2. Apple has Civilization III but they don't have Civilization IV. Apple has Ghost Recon but not Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. If Apple really wants to win over the gamer market they are going to have to end the typical 6-12 month delay that a game experiences before being ported to a Mac, if it is ported at all. Otherwise the gamers demographic will continue to be dominated by Microsoft.
I'm happy not being able to play games on my Mac. That's what my console systems are for. I'm tired of spending money on hardware just to play the latest games, and then find out the next awesomest specatular game will require the next level card up.
My Xbox cost me 500 dollars in 2001, and it has given me plenty of enjoyment for nearly five years without having to constantly upgrade just so I can play the next cool game. Granted can't play MMORPGS, but they are soul sucking demon spawns anyway (granted, they're fun soul sucking demon spawns).
Now with the 360 it's all happening again.
While the PC market has a very large gaming community, I believe most of them are already content with Windows, and really have no desire for the Mac OS, except out of idle curiosity.
Most want all the goodies DX9 offers, and they pay buku bucks just to get the high screen resolution, most anti aliased, and fasted frames per second possible.
They already know Windows can offer this, and has been offering it for a long time. Why switch now?
What kind of API can Apple provide that will be as powerful as DX? How about video cards, will there still be an Apple premium for video cards?
1) Apple starts hyping istelf as a game platform
2) Sony/MS/Nintendo nicely kick Apple's arse
3) Apple only loses a few million that year.
No. I don't think Apple should do this.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Apple's CPUs just weren't up to snuff. Now they are. Next up, graphics cards. I've heard the Mac versions are often terribly slow (mostly from arriving 1+ year after the PC part) for the desktops. The chip in my PowerBook was nice, but it was no screamer either. They also need to fix the integrated graphics issue (which is partially Intel's fault. Who makes a non-T&L chip in 2006?).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I can relate to what this guy is saying.
Macs are 100% capable of running all the latest games, and doing it well. Hell, these days they are basically a typical x86 machine with a totally ideal OS. You can get the most recent powerful video cards no problem, so it's not like performance is an issue, especially considering that every new Mac has a cutting edge Intel CPU in it (other than the G5s).
It would be nice if, for example, developers would use OpenGL more often considering it's actually the only reasonably cross-platform 3d API that has fairly widespread acceptance. I can't understand why companies willfully lock themselves into a Fisher-Price platform just because all the kiddies use it. It's frustrating as hell to me that game development companies are so shallow that literally all they care about is what will make them money.
I guess I'm just too idealistic in imagining a world where software is written with adherence to cross-platform standards, where people can run the same pieces of software regardless of what platform they prefer.
I shouldn't have to be locked out of huge portions of the software industry because I purchase the computers that work best for me. Unfortunately, it seems that "those who make the decisions" don't agree with that sentiment at all.
The range of Apple hardware specs and Mac OS variations are at their highest right now. There are still OS9-ready titles on the Apple store shelves, and now you have to worry about the difference between Panther, Tiger, as well as PowerPC and Intel.
Sure, I want to go into the store and see a pile of Universal Binary games that can run on my living room's Panther eMac and my wife's Core Duo Macbook Pro, with a nice frame rate and snappy audio feedback, but how many game developers really have the room for that level of publishing complexity, when the TOTAL of all said platforms still pales to the Wintel empire?
[
They plug the hell out of what games are available for the Mac currently, and have made some interesting contributions to the scene (Netsprockets a while back, firm OpenGL support, writing drivers for videocards, etc). Heck we even have them (amongst others, don't get me wrong) to thank for pushing widescreen resolutions.
What else could they do to try and spur development, other than sell more Macs?
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Because computer gamers are dorks. Not flamebating, but social fact. I can easily imagine an Apple switch ad for a Garageband user who'd go on and on about how "Music is my life...", but not a one for a hardcore gamer. Yes, "music is my life..." makes my stomach turn, but, apparently, it's socially accepted as a positive thing and makes girls swoon. Desktop Gaming, however, ummm, no!Can you imagine Steve Jobs as a gamer?
I was actually talking to an art teacher friend last night. She's going to buy a new computer, and has decided on a Mac, because of their better graphics capability.
Whether or not they actually have better graphics capability or not anymore, I don't know. But I know the historical use for Macs in business has been for graphic design, or other things that require very fine graphics.
All the best games have great graphics. You'd think that those games would be even better on a Mac, since they reportedly have so much better graphics capability. And yet, the big downfall for Mac historically has been that you have to have a Windows machine for gaming, because there just aren't games for Macs.
Which leads me to believe that maybe the "Macs have better graphics" line has always been a bunch of hooey. Had there been extensive game development for Mac earlier on, maybe there'd be 90% market share for Apple and 10% for Microsoft now. And you'd think that, early on and capitalism being what it is, game companies would have pushed games for the Mac. Did they?
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
I am a Mac user, and not much of a gamer.. I do play the occasional game for 15 minutes when I'm bored, but that's about it.
I think it would be to Apple's benefit to improve gaming a bit on MacOS, but I don't think that trying to compete with real gaming platforms is a good battle to fight.
What they need to do is:
- Integrate software purchases into iTunes. ITMS is simple and ubiquitous.. expand the scope of the store to include software, and you could guarantee good sales for small developers.
- Concentrate on mini games, which would be fast to download and appeal to the casual gamer. Solitare card games, Tetris, etc.. License old arcade classics, like Pac Man, Galaga, Tempest, etc. Charge a few bucks per game and you'll get plenty of sales.
-- Maybe produce a couple more complex games, like a flight simulator, golf game, racing game, or something like that.
"Maybe Apple's user base just isn't fully aware of great games that are now available for the Mac?"
Now, I love Solitaire as much as the next man, but what great games? Oh, I almost forgot Tetris. Reminds me of this video.
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
So...a game bitch complains that Apple doesn't push games, and the title says that Apple has to push games? WHAT? Who edits these things? Maybe Apple cares about gaming the same way Red Hat does...not at all.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
Excuse me? All I can remember of the early-80s gaming scene is that whenever a game came out for both Apple II's and C-64s, the graphics and sound on the C-64 version would blow away the Apple version.
Not convinced? Summer Games from Epyx. I rest my case.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Apple is all about designing, delivering, and controlling the user experience, and marketing itself as creative expression.
Games are OUTSIDE of Apple's control unless Apple want to become a game developer.
Given that Mac games are oftentimes delivered later than the PC versions, or not as good, games at best make the Mac on the par with PC's, and at worst highlight the Mac's shortcomings.
What Apple needs to do is hire the WINE people or Transgaming to get something usable on the Intel Macs and include it free of charge (no Quicktime Pro nag) with the OS. This would be a stop gap solution as Microsoft is planning on destroying everything with Vista anyway but it would at least lower the "Mac's aren't for games" cries.
First though, Apple needs to sit down with ATi, Intel, and likely soon nVidia and get their drivers in better working order. they have the push to be able to do this so there should be no reason not to. Currently, the Intel Macs perform significantly worse under World of Warcraaft under OSX than booting into XP. Yes, this is just one app but it is a driver issue. This needs to change immediately.
Apple also needs to woo the developers (developers! developers!) to OSX. It's not going to happen immediately but if they can prove that there is both a market and a valid gaming system (get rid of crappy GMA-950, fix drivers) then they might have a chance. Developers are already going to have to switch to Vista's new way of doing things, they could also switch to OSX.
So, first step: get the back catalog. Next step: get the developers. Apple has a serious chance here. They better not screw it up.
I'm sure many great ports of PC games exist for Macs.
Since when did Apple ever support 3rd party ISVs ever? They want to make the whole stack. They always push their own software heavily as reason enough to buy a Mac. The push Office and Quicken because they help people switch away from Windows, but besides that and Adobe they want you to do everything else with Apple software. Microsoft, on the other hand, knows they owe their existance and success to third-party developers and treats the valuable ones like royalty.
Steve Jobs on stage playing CS going "omgz, i soooo pwnzor'd u!!!11" at MacWorld.
Apple should do more gaming just so I can see this keynote.
Yes.
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."
Maybe Apple's user base just isn't fully aware of great games that are now available for the Mac?
I'm pretty sure everyone's played Super Breakout and Warcraft 3 at least once already now.
... and Prince of Persia itself ...
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
One of my favorite franchises has just released a new game for the PC -- Heroes of Might and Magic V. I can't wait to get it. I have a PC that I had originally bought to run a specific piece of high end software for a job. Turns out it's a kick ass game machine. Upgraded the GPU and I'm off to the races. But I'm going to wait until this game is released on the Mac to support Mac gaming. For a Mac gamer, it's as much about advocacy as it is anything else. I'd dare say anything but casual gamers have a console, PC, or combination in the wing to anchor their gaming.
... but didn't.)
I have a MacBook Pro 2.16 all decked out. It should run HOMM5 beautifully. I'll support Mac gaming by waiting on this one (as I could have done for Doom 3 and Quake 4
I think Mac gaming is there for the taking. I find that, because of the way the OS is written, you're never going to get that last 10% or so of FPS. But most people really don't care. Most people who enjoy games just want to get the latest stuff and have it playable.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
I lost weeks upon weeks of my life to that game on the Apple II...then years later I discoverd this thing called an emulator, and once again lost weeks upon untold weeks to that game...
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
http://www.gamedb.com/ssps
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just because he likes Macs is not a reason to question his sexual preferences!
- Integrate software purchases into iTunes. ITMS is simple and ubiquitous.. expand the scope of the store to include software, and you could guarantee good sales for small developers.
No. No no no no. iTMS is for media. iTMS is not for software. Bad, bad idea. Bad bad bad.
If games by small developers is what you need, extend Made4Mac to have a better games browsing site, fine. iTMS is for music, videos, and the like. It's not designed for selling software, it shouldn't be for selling software. iTMS is not for software--I don't know what else to say. It's just not.
It's like this: I start a restaurant. Our specialty is pasta (music). Later, I add meatballs (videos). You can also buy wine (iPod) which easily goes with the pasta. I'm not going to go and sell furniture now.
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."
The Apple II came out in 1977 and took off very quickly afterwards - the Commodore 64 didn't come out until 1982. I rest MY case.
Anybody remember Myst? That game was designed on, and came out for the Mac WAY before it was available on Windows. Ah, those were the days!
Karma Schmarma
The game developers I know dislike the cross platform tools. They don't dislike that they are cross platform, they just find them inferior to work with compared to DirectX, they find it's a lot more work. One of my friends, who's currently learning all this for the first time (he's at a game dev school at SMU) says how much more work it was for him to get his engine to work in OpenGL mode than it was in DirectX mode (their project requires both).
Now, maybe these guys just aren't very good. Ok, fair enough but you have to consider those people as well as the Carmacks. You cannot make the argument that everyone should be a grand master, most people aren't.
Well, the problem is if 99% of developers find DirectX easier than the cross platform tools, they are more likely to use it. Again you come to economics. You are going to make, by far, more money on Windows than any other platform. So you calculate how much you think you'll make cross platform (and you probably lowball it since you want to CYA) vs how much extra cost in dev time using APIs your programmers don't liek will add (and you highball that for the same reason) and the conclusion is you don't do the port.
From talking to my friend the cross platform stuff just needs a lot of simplification and unification. He claims it takes much less effort to make something work in DirectX than OpenGL and that everything in DirectX, be it 2D, 3D, input, sound, etc is all done in the same way.
So I think what needs to be done first is to out slick DirectX. Produce a unified API that does everything, and does it easier than DX does. You have a leg up in that regard as you aren't shackled to any legacy designs. Make it so that, even if they don't plan on porting, developers want to use it because it is so much better. Port the API to everything, Windows, Mac, Liunx, the consoles, and so on. Then it becomes much easier to make the port argument "Well if you are going to use AwesomeAPI anyhow it takes very little time to port cross platform."
But I do think the better API has to come first. Make it a benefit, not a sacrafice.
What does Apple need to get its game on? Steroids? The fast track? Maybe off of life support?
Well, hard to market as a game machine... ...when the new Macs can dual boot into Windows and run the SAME games at faster speeds under Windows than OSX.
Unless Apple would just market the hardware, then sure, great game machines when you boot them into Windows, although they have under powered video cards.
(And yes, even with native Intel based OSX games, not just emulated)
World Of Warcraft.
As i'm not a Mac Fanboi persey, but if there was a greater selection of games available for the mac I'd switch without issue.
.conf file cause Xorg didn't work... No thank you... I'm all for different but I'm not gonna dedicate a lifetime to learning...
I'm sick of Windows, Not so much cause they suck, but because it's been the same old tired reused shit for 10 years now... Why Apple hasn't tried to tap this nitch yet I've no clue, but I really think they should. They'd find more support than they'd expect I'd bet.
And yes, I am one of those folks who paid more for my video card than most pay for a whole system. My current PC is pretty damn nice overall yet I have issues booting up and actually "Useing" it cause I'm sick of windows, sick of the way it looks, works, crashes, etc... I try Linux and get mired down in hours of research and learning just to delete 4 characters out of a
The mac is the next best alternative to re-invigorate the market IMO. who knows if they'll even try to pull it off tho.
One of the articles arguments is that Apple needs to make games. This isn't something new for Apple. They made a number of games for the Apple ][ product line (including Apple Adventure). They even made and marketed the game "Through the Looking Glass" for the Mac back when it first came out. Today, however, I think Apple wants developers to make their own products rather than compete with developers in the games marketplace. If Apple's games are perceived as lame, that makes the platform undesirable to consumers. If Apple's games are hot, then that eats up the customers for the products of other game developers.
:-)
Another argument of the article is that there are rumors of Apple hiring game developers. This purported fact goes on to suggest that Apple will be turning the iPod and the Mac into gaming platforms. I think that this is way too far of a leap. My first bet is that Apple is looking for OpenGL developers to speed up and fine tune OpenGL development in the undercarriage of Mac OS X's graphics system. Where else would you look for such knowledgeable people so focused on speed and performance of imaging than in the world of games? If development goes further than this, I expect that game developers are being paid to port the platforms games are built upon to Mac OS X to make it easier for developers to move their apps over.
Would Apple co-develop the next big game on Mac OS X with LucasArts (or whoever)? While not out of the question, I doubt Apple would want to be included in the credit and liability of such a game. Violence. Sex. and worse, a lame final result, might ruin the potential of the Mac for other game developers. One of the hottest games for the Mac when I was in college was MacPlaymate. It was an exercise in virutal dildonics and let the user get the on-screen half-toned bitmapped woman to emit orgasmic sounds of ectasy. It wasn't ported to other platforms (that I'm aware) but it probably sold more Macs on my campus when a cracked version made it to the campus computer labs than any other pirated app. Was Apple appreciative of these sales? Probably. Would Apple want to build a marketing campaign on such a unique product to the Mac platform? Probably not.
The Aqua user interface is something that Apple prides itself on. It isn't a gaming interface though. It's a standard user interface for business, education, and scientific apps, and it goes out of its way to tell you to follow our rules for making your app, or don't use Aqua at all. That doesn't mean that Apple is discouraging game developers, but it doesn't want corruption of its crown jewels in the process. Games that follow the rules are great (A board or card game for example) but if you go beyond that then you need to design your own user interface and immerse the user in that instead. Perhaps Apple will come out with a game interface that's themeable and radical and immersive and looks nothing like Aqua (just as it provides non-Aqua elements for Dashbaord widgets). But it's still not a certainty that game developers would want to use that interface.
Most likely in my mind is if Apple wants a hot gaming platform, it will start out by trying to convince other gaming platforms to come to Mac OS X. Play on the fear of Microsoft's Xbox to get Sony or Nintendo to develop a partial console that uses Mac hardware to make itself complete. I can see Apple throwing money at getting an existing game development environment onto the Mac, but I can't see Apple trying to enter this world by itself.
Oh well, back to running MacPlaymate under classic
You're correct that Mac games aren't released as quickly as their PC counterparts - BUT, the flip-side of this is, they also don't release titles of unknown quality, only to end up upsetting people who pay out $40 or even $50 for something that's a total flop.
... or graphics artists designing corporate flyers and artwork for product boxes.) Gaming is also a potential interest, but more of a casual one. They'll buy a good game here or there, but aren't concerned with it being something that "just came out".
In the current state of Mac gaming, small companies like Aspyr and MacPlay only want to expend effort porting a title that's already proven to be a "winner" in the Windows world.
Right now, no - a "hard core gamer" won't really be happy with a Mac. They want the latest stuff the day it's first released, and they also tend to spend crazy amounts on money on the latest video cards, just for an extra 15 frames per second improvement.
In general, Mac users buy their machines with intentions of getting useful work done. Most PowerMac owners I know use them for projects that pay back more than the cost of the whole machine upon a single project's completion. (Wedding videographers and photographers, for example
That said, I think one problem with Mac action games has traditionally been the way the PPC chip does math. The coders of Doom 3 complained about this holding them back from getting the game running on parity, speed-wise, with the Windows counterpart. With Intel based Macs, maybe they're finally free of this issue.
WTF? Apple hasn't been "into gaming" since the Apple II. The mac has NEVER been a gamer's machine.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
So Apple switches from PowerPC to Intel just as the game consoles switch from Intel and MIPS to PowerPC. The XBox 360 is a 3-CPU PowerPC machine, after all. That chip would have made a nice Mac core.
Ultima 5. The Apple version kicked the everloving shit out of the C-64 version... (As did Ultima 1, 2, 3 and 4).
Your case is hardly rested. I'm not claiming that the C-64 wasn't an impressive machine (aside from the slow as hell 1541 Disk drive and the fact that even loading a game would require a process of starting up and then fixing dinner and watching a movie waiting for it to finish, even WITH the 'fastloader' module.)
I'd say a better contender to the Apple would be the Ti-994a. It had an impressive DSP and some pretty killer games (Parsec, for example).
Start making some calls Mr. Jobs
Apple ought to sell their own branded, color-coordinated gaming controllers. Maybe create a "gaming pack" with that controller and some games to go along with it, which you could add to your shopping cart when you visit their online store. That ought to dispel the myth that Apples are bad for gaming (assuming they aren't).
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I dunno... ITMS would seem rather strange, but if I could download cheap games to my iPod... Now that would be cool.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Apple wont get back into gaming until some contemporary games are ported (and they work decently)
Contemporary games wont be ported until Apple ships something better than GMA950 in a majority of their consumer level products (so Doom 3, HL2, etc don't look like a slideshow).
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Playing games on the PC was like.....
There are a lot of great games on the Mac, like...Warcraft III...ummm....that puzzle game with the Apple logo. That's a great game! I beat it, but, it's, it's still fun.
The confusing thing about PCs is, just...you go to the store, and there's just so many games...I mean, everwhere you look. But on the Mac, there's just six. And you know which ones are good, beacause you've already played them all on the PC like five or six years ago!
On the Mac, I can play plenty of great games that you just can't find on the PC now..Like Zork....Breakout...Super Breakout...photoshop.
Another great thing about the Mac, is upgrades. On PC you have to open up your case, swap out your video card, change "jumpers". on a Mac, when it's time to upgrade, you jsut pick it up, throw it away, and go buy another one. Now that's convenience!
My name is Gus Sorola, and I'm a gamer.
Well...I used to be.
They could use a "switch" ad. Red vs Blue already did a great one
It *used* to be that Apple needed to get some decent games to gain market share. But with the improvement in consoles I think this is changing. The hardware requirements and $$ involved in getting/keeping your Windows box up to speed for gaming is getting much steeper than getting a console.
Note that I have never had a console before but rather than upgrading my Windows machine I will be going the console route (perhaps a Wii) for the children rather than persue Windows Vista.
Furthermore, I write this on my first Mac, a new MacBook. I'm just so tired of Windows and I think more people are moving to Mac + console and losing the whole Windows pain.
Just a few things to point out why gaming isnt a mac thing: 1) No direct X implementation 2) Custom (crippled) PC version of graphics cards 3) Small customer base 4) Poor operating system performance 5) Poor OpenGL performance If I were a game developer, why would I write software for the mac? If I write a game on Win32 using direct X at least the game can go onto the regular xbox or 360 without a huge amount of recoding. I game regularly with about 10 people - we line the PCs up in the living room. One guy brings his mac laptop (because he is a mac fanboy) - he sits out most of the time because he is limited to playing Unreal Tournament 2004 and/or Red Orchestra. The mac sucks for gaming. -Brett
Or Mac only games that blew the face off PC games... like Marathon! I was saddened when MS bought Bungie... even more saddened when Halo was released and it was complete garbage compared to the Halo that was near production for Mac/PC... and finally even MORE saddened when no one who played Halo played Marathon, so as I pointed all the references out they were like "what?". I remember spending countless hours engaged in the wonderous Marathon world. Thankfully Bungie released the source code and some nice people ported it to the PC http://source.bungie.org/get/. Woo! Now I can play through the whole trilogy again.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Nah, that damn thing just gets to repetitive after pass the first day. Although, first day is a good action, I agree.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
(bought my 3rd one this week) .. I'm really not looking forward to hearing the news that Apple now has an iGame extension on the iPod tree .. coz .. I've got a pppowerbook, and such a thing as an iGame would be irresistable..
.. and man, what a great little platform it is, now that you can use any ol' USB device with it ..
In the meantime though, it sure is nice to put the GP2X's into the big empty space left by my old iPod
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I don't know about buying Nintendo, but I think that developing an entertainment console (games, sure, but build in iTunes and other Apple media technologies, too) and making it easy to port back to the OS X computer line from the console might be a sane, if expensive and somewhat risky, strategy for Apple to boost their OS's position as a gaming platform, and perhaps more generally.
Ever heard of Marathon? II - Durandal?
These spawned HALO, which put the xbox on the map.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Apple is sitting on billions and billions of dollars it doesn't quite know what to do with. All they have to do is spend 10 million dollars per year to pump out one head turning world-class game per year. If Halo is enough to get people to buy an xbox or upgrade to Vista, Apple can do the same. Sure, they'll lose most of the money; but when you consider how much money they sink into advertising ever year, it suddenly becomes a very cheap way to advertise the Mac as a viable gaming platform.
It is both an Apple and a developer problem and it may not be so easy to solve. Apple's end of the problem lies in the hardware. The notebooks while greatly design are often used underpowered components to compensate for the smaller space (heat and battery issues). The gpu in the macbook pro isn't top of the line and to make things worse it is underclock. Apple can't up the components with the small form factor they push. This is a reason why the Alienware Auroras and the Dell XPS are 10lb/2in bricks. So, notebooks wouldn't be as valueable for gaming. Now, the desktops have some problems too. iMac can't be upgraded and moreover it uses the same components as the Macbook. They're out except for maybe some MMORG. The PowerMacs are expensive and rely heavily on multiple processors/cores to get performance but games aren't written for multiprocessors. Second, the Powermacs don't offer high end video cards for their expense and the cards they offer as an add-on are second rate and overpriced. Then, trying to drive high framerates on their 20" Cinema Displays with a first person shooter is a chore, but, Apple does offer anything smaller.
The developers heavily rely on DirectX which isn't a part of Mac OS X. Even if Apple had great gaming computers, the prospect of selling Mac OS X port where you may retail 50,000 copies is pocket change and no one is going to bother.
I am sure Apple my be able to offer good high gaming systems with the successor to the PowerMac. Let me be clear, I play PC games and I love my PowerBook and OSX. Though I would love to be able to ditch Windows completely, I can only see Boot Camp as a viable solution to playing games on an Apple-made computer.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
I'd contend that 'casual' games* are a snack food rather than a furniture as per your analogy. And larger games can be likened to banquets as music, video and gaming are all entertainment.
*: Casual games are expected to be the big growth area of the games market in the next couple of years -- just look at your smart phone and Nintendo's Wii as places for non-'gamer' games-playing to grow the market.
The 1990s called, they want their Mac joke back.
http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/
"Sure, there are games to be found at the Apple store, prominently displayed in the software section." This just isn't true. Two years back you would have an isle or two in the apple store with games, now you have a small shelf with games... mostly for kids. Dissapointing really. ipods have taken over the floor space. A negitive result of their popularity, unfortunately.
I suspect if apple did create a game that was up to their usual standard (which generally bring new ideas or a different perpective), then perhaps they could draw some of the users from the windows side over.
That being said, I think they have someother plans that are much bigger. I think them getting into the gaming market is small potatoes if they could make some real headway in the OS market, which I suspect they will in the next few years, if they play their cards right.
Did "The incredibles" count as an Apple game? Bahh!
So according to the article, a Mac Game developer thinks that Apple should stop what they're doing and promote Macs as... games machines? Holy Crap!
Steve should totally listen to that lady, I mean she must be a great businesswoman, what with deciding to work for a company that makes gaes for the Mac.
OK, that was rude of me, and before the flames come, I know Macs can do everything, like all personal computers they're general purpose machines.
But business 101: when you're in a market with lots of big players, you have to identify a unique selling point and promote the hell out of it. At the moment, the Mac USP is "imagine how good a computer must be if it's made by the people who invented the iPod" and while that does leave out lots of great things about the Mac, it's probably the best choice they could have made.
It would be suicide to push it as a games machine. If they did, people would say "Cool. Does it play GTA? Or Halo?" and the answer will be no.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
OpenGL has fallen way behind DirectX.
Open GL and DirectX are both supported on XP and in GPU drivers. If people have given up developing on OpenGL (which has more scope to be ported) and have moved to DirectX, maybe that's because a) it's better and b) it's easier to develop for.
If you own a decently specced machine (i.e. decent GPU) then in all likelihood you've got a recently produced intel-based Apple machine.
Just buy XP. Use OSX for everything else by all means - but games take over the whole user interface and once running full screen the OS running silently in the background is immaterial.
Quite how the writer of the article expects OSX porters to carry on, when shortly every Mac user can buy XP and run every game out there, is beyond me (unless he's some weird zealot type).
Apple needs to realize that a "Digital Lifestyle" includes mindless entertainment as much as it does photos, music and movies.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
This might be a bit controversial - but what would help MS, Apple and games in general is if MS released a stripped down/cheap version of XP.
Mac users want to play a game. They go go to Microsoft.com, give MS $40-50 or whatever and download and install XP which sets itself up as a nice dual-boot system.
MS gets money from people who weren't going to buy their OS otherwise, Apple gets cash from gamers who finally get tempted by pretty hardware and the potential games market expands by the 10% or whatever that OSX currently occupies.
In fact if you coupled this with direct2drive this becomes even cheaper to the end user. Whoever is selling the game won't get the sale unless the downloader can play it - so surely it's not too much of a bitter pill for the game publisher to pass say half their profit over to MS to subsidize the new OS required?
they're completely different companies.
Nintendo flogs hardware at pretty much cost - recouping by selling titles/accesories to the consumer.
Apple makes their money on the hardware sale and then pretty much writes off income until it's upgrade time.
Nintendo enters the market at the lowest price point they can to acheive maximum market penetration.
Apple sells at a premium and doesn't penetrate that much as a consequence.
If anything Nintendo is like Dell - they shift large numbers of units, at low prices and get into pretty much every demographic as a consequence.
I'm finally going to buy a computer (instead of building one) and it's a toss up between an iMac and a Dell. The sole reason for the Dell is to play games, that is all. If I could merge the two together, then I would get a Mac. They have everything I want in a computer, I just don't need two.
Apple should release another game console - PIPPEN TWO!
Or - not.
It's gotta be Intel making them do it, even the Radeon X200 would be better and it shouldn't cost any more. Yeh, it's "integrated graphics" and eats into the RAM, but at least they don't have to blow one of the CPUs for software OpenGL.
manboy
:)
part man (physical), part boy (mental).
While maturity is an option on one vector, it's mandatory on the other.
Attracting the correct melange can be quite a lucrative business...
Photoshop's not a game?
Applesauce!
The last time I went into a CompUSA or Fry's all I saw was a handful of MMORPGs and a couple Quake engine war games stacked in a hard to find corner.
Isn't computer gaming pretty much dead and buried?
It interferes too much with their hardware strategy unless they put upgradeable GPUs in the iMac somehow. The problem being that to have a gamer computer, they would have to offer a low end upgradeable box which will never happen. I guess they could come out with a gamer's Mac, somewhat patterned after the Mac Mini, but seems a bit silly overall.
Yeah.
Marathon
Myth
Of course we all know what happened to Bungie.. *sigh*
"Ultima 5. The Apple version kicked the everloving shit out of the C-64 version... (As did Ultima 1, 2, 3 and 4)."
Huh? It's true that with Ultima 5 you had to have a C128 to hear the music due to ram limitations but with Ult3 and 4 on the Apple you need a Mockinboard to get the music at all. The C64 version also didn't have that annoying Apple 2 color fringing which occured around the color white.
You are exaggerating the slowness of the 1541. The fastloader (in particular Epyx FastLoad cart) seriously improved the speed of most loading. The slowest loading games were caused by copy protection which in some cases was pretty bad (EA I'm looking at you).
The C64 had better graphics and sound than the Apple 2. That's simply due to the technology - it isn't really a debateable point. It was also release years after the Apple 2 - so that's hardly surprising.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
How can any Apple computer be a games machine, if you can't play Oblivion on it?
Case in point - I just picked up Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4 for the Mac this week to run on my G5 (2x2.0, 2GB ram) and have run into several issues which are largely OS related. While I understand that I should be grateful that these titles were released at all for the Mac (and, ashamedly, I am grateful), I'm having a hard time getting over paying $50 a title for games that were ported over with little thought.
No, 2% doesn't buy a lot these days... :-(
I say screw gaming! Focus on making the computer as useful as possible, and let the entertainment houses come on their own once people find that they'd rather have a Mac for the utility of it. To put it another way, I don't think there's anything Apple can do to bring games to their platform other than to make the best computer, and thereby increase their market share until the audience is large enough that game developers consider targeting it by their own choice.
I, for one, love having a machine that actually allows me to focus and get work done efficiently. My Mac is the best machine I've ever had in this category, and I'd rather see people focus on making it even more efficient for work than to waste their time wooing game developers.
Just a couple of handy links with regard to Mac gaming:
- http://www.apple.com/games/
- http://www.insidemacgames.com/
- http://www.aspyr.com/
- http:///
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Mac OpenGL is a neutral abstracted version and will take a hit vs a custom vendor tuned version like I hear ATI, NVidia include with their windows cards to increase their stats for Carmak's games.
OpenGL has to cater to many interests, not just 1 bent on being a gaming system (microsoft.) OpenGL 2 is so so slow in coming...
Ported mac games don't have the resources put into them PC games do. Now with Intel ports, they should get better--although PPC ports will still have the same troubles. Also Intel programmers don't seem to care about casting FPU between INT but on PPC you get punished for it.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
And Marathon: I used to borrow time on company Mac's to play that. Unfortunately, the creators of it switched to the XBox and created Halo (which has numerous Marathon references subtlely embedded).
1) I'm a man fanboy.
Well, that's one way to come out of the closet.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The Intel GMA 950s have nothing to do with it. Apple has to include something sweet standard in the Mac Pro. Like a 7800 GT. A 1 GB RAM, 4 core 2.0 GHz 7800 GT computer for $2000 will scream "serious" to gamers. Similarly, the iMac could use a better card, like a X1600 XT (or an X1800 if the MP goes higher) instead of the smaller X1600 model. No one is gonna buy a Macbook or a Mini for gaming. period.
Apple's customers are like no others--a rich blend of the most sociologically elite with those seeking elegant, simple computing... Unlike users of Intel/Windows computers, a significant portion of Apple's users are active , exploratory , avant-garde and early adopters . The activities they enjoy are unique in the way that they more often incorporate rich media such as video and music as well as more active prosumer behavior than many more passive Windows [and Linux] users.
With above-average household income and education levels, the Mac population [is] very attractive [ intellectually as well as physically
"Macs are 100% capable of running all the latest games, and doing it well."
Ah, but the problem is which Macs.
Apple's gaming market consists of its pro users and iMac owners--not exactly sizable enough to set game publishers' hearts on fire.
Meanwhile, the bulk of Apple's computer hardware sales are consumer-level machines. Nobody's going to play any new games well at all on a Macbook or Mini with anemic integrated video.
This leaves Apple in the same place it was prior to the Intel switch: without commodity hardware that can appeal to the gaming market. This could change, but it won't overnight.
It's frustrating as hell to me that game development companies are so shallow that literally all they care about is what will make them money.
Heh, me too, and I have lots of good gaming hardware here in addition to my Mac. And thanks to the corrosive shallowness of today's corporate gaming industry, there's scarcely a damn thing that holds my attention beyond the first hour. Games have become the new Hollywood--but that's a post for another day. ;-)
Apple has had job offerings listed for OpenGL and game-oriented programmers for a month or two now.
The expense of marketing a game in the current business model is what kills most companies second only to TECH-SUPPORT (ooooooo).
Tech-support on PCs is a nightmare. On Macs it's practically non-existent. Why? Consistency of hardware. So in theory gaming companies could eliminate a large percentage of their overhead.
As for marketing, there is all that packaging and fighting over shelf space at your local Fry's (the electronics store not the supermarket). Apple and gaming companies could eliminate all of that by distributing games via iTunes. Apple gets a little piece of the action and gaming companies reduce their costs.
Ah, I miss my TI. Expanded Basic was the only cartridge you really needed, and you had all sorts of nifty graphics (sprites with simple avoidance detection, etc) at your fingertips. That's where I cut my coding teeth, come to think of it. An amazing computer at a reasonable price, years ahead of Apple, pushed by a company who (like Xerox for that matter) couldn't market their way out of a wet paper bag. Too bad, really.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
As far as Apple not advertising and educating about the Mac as gaming machine.. oh, come on! Maybe that would be better for Mac gamers in the short-term, but is that really good for the Mac as a whole? It's easy to spend too much money on advertising or to spend it ineffectively. Somebody else would say that Apple should promote their machines for education or graphic design use, but why dilute a message that is apparently working well for them? As long as Apple is attracting new Mac users, that will improve the market for games and increase the money spent elsewhere to develop titles for that market. So if Apple says "Get a Mac because it's easy to use and will hook up to all your devices painlessly" and that brings in a bunch of new Mac owners, then eventually more money will get spent developing games and the Mac gamers win. Just let Apple go get their customers in the most effective way they can.
The problem is probably a technical one, because smaller game developers making games that don't need to push the technical envelope will go after the Mac market and get paid for it. Like was said above, the reason you don't see AAA titles released simultaneously on the Mac along with PC and consoles could just be because the cross-platform tools and resulting performance when using them are inferior.
I like macs, but to imply that there are any sort of number of "great" games available for macs is pure and simple hogwash.
Basically, the biggest known FPS will be ported, and a few other large grossing Windows games, and well, thats it. The port quality will be mainly junk unless ported by the original developers(e.g. Id) and/or come out over a year AFTER the Windows version. By this time the Windows version is in the bargain bin, while what would have been a $50 new Windows game that came with niceties like manuals, and maybe some other goodies will be $60 for the mac and, typically, include zero goodies or manuals. And let's not forget other "minor" items like construction sets, etc. which almost invariably never make it to the mac version either, e.g. Neverwinter Nights.
Expect Oblivion on the mac? Keep dreaming, i.e. get real.
The only way that Mac gaming is going to go anywhere is to install windows and either run a ported version of WINE or a virtualized instance of Windows(for convenience) or dual boot btwn OSX & Windows.
(I've always kept a Windows machine around for gaming purposes,, and typically refer to it as my expensive console, although I can't really call it an "expensive" console any longer with XBOX & PS3 console pricing schemes...)
...but when you REALLY want to do some serious work, you need an IBM PC!"
That's what Apple was afraid of hearing back in the '80s an what lead them to ignoring the games market.
-- Boycott Shell
But, seriously, I don't see this happening. It makes a nice dream, but it is right up there with "If Superman and Wolverine combined their DNA..."
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
Let's face it - Star Trek on the TI-99/4A rocked!
One thing Apple needs to do to really get gaming down is to get the whole control and user interface situation under control. If I buy a non-Mac-specific control device, whether it's a keyboard or a joystick or a dance pad or a head-mounted theremin, I should be able to map any control to any input on any program in one central place.
You can buy third-party applications that do some of this, and many applications have very sophisticated preferences for input as well, but really this should be handled the same way everywhere.
Obviously this isn't a general solution to the problem, but it's part of a solution.
The other half to this is output. If I'm playing a game - whether it's full screen or in a window - I should be able to interact with other apps without having the game go through a lengthy restore process when I return my attention to it. And with the GUI in the GPU I shouldn't have any flickering from composition whether it's compositing two Aqua texture-based translucent windows, or an OpenGL translucent overlay on top of an OpenGL window.
Similarly, I should be able to run an app and have it limited to a certain amount of VRAM, real RAM, and swap... or reserve a certain amount for it. So a game can have a guaranteed 128M VRAM, 800MB RAM, and no more than 384M VRAM and 1.5GB RAM... even if I have 512M and 2GB. And find that out, so it can scale its resource use so it's never paging to disk and never having textures flushed from the GPU behind its back...
(oh, and emulate Mach as much as you need to... but don't actually use it more than you have to)
And who can forget Parsec? And munch man? Is it bad to admit that I could actually play all 20 levels of MM with the monitor turned off? Ah, for the days of insufficient randomization. Although I did have to start a certain mix tape and begin to play at exactly the right time. That first (and most heard) song? Billy Jean. Wow, what a memory.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!