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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.""
Honestly I take the opposite perspective on Cider - I think it's going to be horrible for the Mac gaming community. Now, as Apple's market share grows, instead of publishers beginning to consider making native versions (not crappy ports) of their games we're going to see everyone using technologies like Cider that reduce performance instead. I guess it's fine for older games but its advantage in terms of development time is offset by the fact that the latest games won't have "good enough" performance.
Haiku for you!
...another layer of indirection. As if they didn't run slow enough on OS X already.
I use to port games to the Mac. It was a lonely, miserable life. Thankfully those days are behind me.
Apple is to the games market as Microsoft is to security - it is something each company just doesn't have a culture to ever have any competence in.
Just look at Apple's pathetic game development page:
http://developer.apple.com/games/
Some of the games I ported to the Mac only happened because I was a Mac user and wanted the game on my system. Companies greenlighted ports with the hope that Apple was getting their act together on the games front and my promises that Apple was changing their ways. But there were always big promises with each new cycle of Apple game evangelists followed by decline.
I have a hard time imagining that outside of the usual token Blizzard games and a few others that native Mac gaming is probably dead - for good this time.
Solutions like Transgaming will be bad enough to keep people playing games under Windows, and just good enough that the execs with the power to greenlight Mac ports will claim there is no point risking the expense.
It is really sad to think back after all these years. Apple could have been a fantastic gaming platform. But their outright incompetence in shipping up to date and decently performing OpenGL drivers gave the absolutely fantastic PowerPC systems a bad reputation in the gaming world. And I will skip ragging on the Apple game employees I've worked with over the years.
MMORPGs and piracy are really killing the PC game market - I think it has been in a steady decline for at least five years now. Most pc development houses I know are looking to consoles to save them. If there is any interest in other platforms it is Linux and not Apple that I see companies moving towards.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I disagree. Boot Camp has been the perfect solution for my sister. Her case may be rather unique, or maybe there are others like her.
My sister likes to play Unreal Tournament (the original from 1999). Her Blue and White G3 just wasn't cutting it any more for playing UT or doing any 'general computing' stuff. She's dead-set against buying/using an windows pc. After Boot Camp came out, she bought an Intel Mac Mini, and I helped her install Boot Camp, Windows XP, and UT on it. Now she uses OS X for all her computing needs and boots into windows and plays UT with us. UT plays *flawlessly* under Boot Camp (with the latest Direct3D8 drivers). UT is basically unplayable with Parallels.
Again, her case may be uncommon, but it works very well and certainly isn't "pointless and stupid."