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.""

Comments

bootcamp

[Anonymous Coward]

i think boot camp revolutionized the way games are brought to the mac.

Intel Macs market size?

[mbessey]

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

Re:Not Good

[spykemail]

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).

Re:First to post

[Joe The Dragon]

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.

Re:Transgaming is NOT the only solution!

[mrchaotica]

if sharing with WINE makes Codeweavers a technically better product, then your point may be valid

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).

Re:Not Good

[gutnor]

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.