Slashdot Mirror
Transgaming Technologies and Mac Developers
ZerocarboN writes "With such current Mac publishers as Aspyr and MacSoft typically spending months to bring games to the Mac, Mr. State said: "We imagine that they are re-evaluating their business models. Our technology does revolutionize how games are brought to the Mac, which we believe will result in a paradigm shift in the Mac game publishing landscape." He added that TransGaming has no plans to license Cider to other companies, but "we are always open to discussion.""
i think boot camp revolutionized the way games are brought to the mac.
I don't see why you're worried about "crappy ports." Anyone seeking to make a profit off of a games in any operating system, including MacOS or GNU/Linux, is going to need to keep their level of quality up no matter if they use Transgaming technologies or do a native port.
At least now MacOS users will have a few extra titles made available that would otherwise remain out of reach.
Okay, I understand that this guy's trying to sell the solution that his company produces. But it's pretty weird to say that these sorts of API translation technologies will be "the way" to bring games to the Mac when Intel-based Macs are a tiny minority of the total Macintosh user base.
I understand it's a lot less effort for the game developer to utilize something like this technology rather than porting the game to native MacOS X. But to the extent that game publishers claim that the Mac market is "too small" to justify porting games, I can't see how a small fraction of that too-small market is going to look any better.
I'm sure they'll claim that this is a zero-effort solution to supporting th Mac, and it's therefore 100% upside to add this in and get a few hundred sales to Intel-based Mac users. I'm sceptical that's really going to work out.
-Mark
What I'm saying is that Cider is a performance hit. It's great for ports, but it really can't be used for the latest and the greatest because you need native performance. I'm concerned that its existence will act like a cane that all game developers will lean on instead of deciding to actually make Mac native versions of their games (or even better, Mac only games).
Haiku for you!
it's also better because unlike Transgaming, Codeweavers contributes back to WINE.
This must be some metric of "better" that I, as a software consumer, am unfamiliar. I've heard of better performance, better user experience, better return on investment... but "better because some developer I don't know helps out some other developer I don't know" does not trump the others in my book. As long as everyone's following the rules and licenses they acquired their code under, which they are, this really won't be an issue to Mac consumers. So really, I see this as one case in which open source is being judged along with the products... if sharing with WINE makes Codeweavers a technically better product, then your point may be valid-- if not, it's evidence that open source is not working in this case. I prefer to follow the evidence, not the religion, and not pre-judge the situation.
Besides, I *VASTLY* prefer Transgaming's approach to the market. I want to see Mac ports of games, with Mac installers, Mac support, and possibly even a mention of minimum Mac requirements, all of which Transgaming is implying they'll provide. I do NOT want some compatibility box I can buy that lets me run Windows retail boxed games if I can get them installed and translate their requirements to Mac models and operating systems. Considering how easy Transgaming claims they're going to make things, if a company is not willing to put in the little extra expense, I'll find one who is.
E pluribus unum
No we need good gaming hardware first and the Mac pro costs way too much for most gamers. The iMac does work with people want to have there own monitor and the mini gma 950 sucks with games. Apple needs a min-rage Mac with a video card in slot to fit in the gap form the low end Macs to the Mac pro.
Gaming for the PC and Mac market is doomed anyway in the near future, look at Mark Rein's talk at develop conference in brighton the pc market is dead with intel putting only low end graphic cards on their motherboards. Everybody's moving to laptops anyway and high end graphic cards are energy wasters. There is just no purpose developing photo realistic games for the top 5% of pc market that can run those games. Look at games like halflife2 and doom3 which costed millions to develop I wonder whether they made a profit (well they do as they license their engine) as I could not run either of those games on my 3 year old laptop. I would just buy a Wii/Ps3/Xbox360 than at least you would know the next 5 years you'd be able to run any game.
...what matters is what you like, not what you are like...
I'll wager that that's exactly the case.
More importantly, however, paying Codeweavers gets me a better bang-for-my-buck, because the work it funds will improve WINE for my Linux box as well. In contrast, buying a "Cider-ported" game won't do me any good when using WINE because Transgaming forked WINE before it became GPL. Whether they're complying with the legal requirements or not, they're still assholes for closing it and I refuse to support them because of that.
I also don't like Transgaming's business model, both for Cider and Cedega. I don't like Cider because I'd basically be re-buying most of the same technology for every Cider-ported game, and I don't like Cedega because it's a subscription (i.e., also re-buying it over and over again).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No, he's not trolling, he's making a valid point. In general, there's NOTHING that I'm aware of in open source / free software licenses that requires that you "contribute" any changes back to the original project. In fact, as I recall there's been quite a bit of criticism of companies that have semi-open licenses that require that changes be passed back to and vetted by the originator. If a company takes open source, modifies it, uses it, and redistributes it, they are following both the letter AND the spirit of open source / free software movement.
In general, there's NOTHING that I'm aware of in open source / free software licenses that requires that you "contribute" any changes back to the original project.
You are not required to submit anything to the original project, but if you distribute binaries you have to make available the source code. The maintainters of the original project are free to choose if they want to incorporate your changes.
If the company closes off a project like Cedega, then they got access to the original source for free and are keeping all improvements for themselves. No one is suggesting that this is illegal or evil, but it's not as good as if they made the source available.
If a company takes open source, modifies it, uses it, and redistributes it, they are following both the letter AND the spirit of open source / free software movement.
That is true if they make their modified source available too.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Please go and destroy some other market, Mr. State. You already wiped out the Linux native games market with your stolen technology (when exactly are you going to give back to Wine as promised?) - I sincerely request you don't do the same to the Mac market.
Besides, people have fallen for you once. I doubt they'll do it a second time. Your scam is over, no pick up your toys and get the hell out of here.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
On a more serious note, Mr. State and his company and completely missing the point. If I wanted windos, I'd have bought a windos machine, right? The fact that I bought a Mac instead makes it clear that I don't want windos - I want something better. So how is bringing the very old, unreliable technology I consciously avoided back to me via some game libraries not a recipe for total fuck-up?
Game companies, if you're listening: I will buy your native Mac ports. I will not buy your windos versions, not even if you package the shit with a thin layer of Aqua and call it a Mac version.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
We are not talking about a platform that used to be a leader in gaming and is slowly sliding into oblivion. This is not the final nail on the coffin like it would have been for Amiga or Atari back in the days.
There is no gaming scene for Mac. Don't lure yourself, people that want to play games or think game s are even midly important on their home computer already have Windows somewhere. People buying Mac have given up gaming.
Anything that could drive down the cost of development of game for Mac is welcome. Companies don't invest in costly cross platform development if they don't think they could get their money back. And considering what I just said, Mac market is not something appealing ( wasn't Steve Jobs saying that Mac is not and will never be a game platform or is that an urban legend ? ) With this techno, they can try the Mac market for cheap and if they make a few buck out of it, they may consider developing for Mac in the future.
Also throwing more games to the market can only dynamise it, and maybe convince a number of current moderate gamer ( like me ) to switch to Mac ( why dual booting and pay for both Windows and Mac OS ?? )
Note, I'm aware that WoW exists on Mac. But games like WoW are exclusive, it is very likely that because of the subscription involved, playing WoW means not playing anything else for years, so I think the WoW port effect is somehow limited for the Mac Game Market as a whole.