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Electronic Arts Delivers OS X Games
pete314 wrote to say that "Electronic Arts had broken its WWDC promise to launch games for OS X on the same day as the Windows version." Thankfully, the company has come through, with four new titles now available for order: Battlefield 2142, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Need for Speed Carbon, and Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars . Thanks to mr100percent for the update.
Several of EA's games are now available from Apple's store and will be shipping shortly. Things change in 5 days.
Company tries to do something new and doesn't deliver on time. The sky *is* falling, yes ? I mean, it looks like it's still up there, but that's an illusion, right ?
The games will come. I doubt they intended to say one thing and do another, even if it is EA...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Since they're running under Windows emulation anyway, I reckon that within 6 months it'll be faster under VMware or Parallels than under their cobbled together WINE derivative.
A bit off topic, but is there any chance of this game, or other new ones running in bootcamp? Still on Windows here and have no idea what it can run.
I give this news a solid 'meh".
I like games. I have a Mac. But I also have consoles. If I wanted to play Madden, I could. It doesn't bother me that EA isn't doing this. Considering what many of their games are like (quality wise), this is probably a boon.
In all seriousness though, it doesn't matter too much. There are tons of web games. There are lots of console games (currently playing MGS: Portable Ops, FFXII, Picross DS, Chrono Trigger, and Metroid Prime 3 coming very very soon). I can boot into Windows for games that I find interesting enough (I'm playing through Half-Life 2 that way right now, then I've got episodes 1 and 2, and BioShock which I'm downloading as I type). There are also games that are available on the Mac (current in that category for me: Diner Dash - Flo on the Go).
Macs aren't great game machines. I'd like them to be. The graphics chip in the Mini is really anemic. The chips in the iMacs are... eh. The MacBooks share the Mini's chip. The MacBook Pros (like I have) have some pretty decent chips (HL2 runs great at full rez), but the MBP is expensive. The graphics cards in the Mac Pro are, from my understanding, just OK unless you pony up even more cash above and beyond the base Mac Pro price. If you just want games, you will get WAY better bang for your buck buying a PC (or a PC and a console).
Let's not forget that these games are NOT native. They are using TransGaming's Cider platform. While I am very interested in this technologically (has anyone ever used this kind of translation layer for so many big games) and how it performs, etc... these are not native games. They won't run that well compared to how they should. They are probably bad ports (after all, the last few EA games I played on Windows didn't seem to run without occasional issues).
Now as other have mentioned, 3 or 4 games are now available for purchase off of Apple's store. That said, there are still others that are not. Some were delayed for quite a bit, and one that came out just a week or so ago didn't get a simultaneous release. We'll see how they do in the future but given how well the Mac is set up for games right now and the size of its market I'm not that surprised.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The company also said that Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 08 and Madden NFL 08 are expected in the "September/October window." Heck, did anyone even check EA's Mac platform page?
EA Games hasn't been good for a while anyway. I've bought several of their games within the past few years and have been sorely disappointed every time.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
If you follow the links on TFA you'll find it refers back to a lengthier piece written at arstechnica.i ng-on-the-mac-getting-better-but-not-there-yet.htm l
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070818-gam
c0w goes moo.
There mini still has the low and gma 950 only 1 gb of ram and laptop parts.
The I-mac update only added mid-range video cards and there build in screens remove choice and make games slow down when running at full screen.
The mac pro at $2000+ is over top in cost and only comes with a low end 7300 and 1gb of ram in the base system and adding ram costs a lot because of the FB-Dimms and the video card up grades are a rip off as well $249 to go from a 7300 gt to a a ATI x1900 XT with a EFI rom or you can add one to your mac pro for $399.00 so you are paying $150 for a 7300 gt with a EFI rom. You can much better video cards on the pc for the same price this may be part of why EA is pushing the games back.
Set A of EA gamers
Set B of Mac Gamers
intersection of set A and Set B = 3 frat boys who grew up to be graphic artists.
I'm sure all three of them will be very disappointed.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Shame, Zonk, shame. If you're going to edit a story after it's gone live, fess up and note it like the other editors do.
The mini's a very entry-level Mac. It can be used as a media center and for basic use. It's not a hardcore gaming machine.
The iMac is the mid-range desktop solution, it comes with an OK graphics card.
The Power Mac is a powerhouse, but it's mostly for professionals.
The Macbook is somewhere between the Mini and the iMac. It's the entry level mobile platform.
The Macbook Pro is the professional powerhouse mobile offering. It has a pretty good (DX10 actually) video card.
Macs aren't aimed at gamers, since in the past most Mac users have been audio/video professionals and basic internet/im types.
Apple isn't a gaming company. They've never claimed that. But they CAN be used to play games, just like any PC.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
All five Mac using gamers were *really* pissed.
i can see why publishers dont do a whole lot of worrying about selling games on the mac, its because they come stock with video cards that are typically found in mid range laptops. with the exception of the mac pros, you still have to buy your own card which I'm quite certain most mac consumers dont even bother with upgrading this particular feature of their mac.
:(
ok so that was being really negative and honestly if its a step closer to more osx its also a step closer to more linux gaming. Hell i'd love if my beloved mac mini can run any of this
I'm running bootcamp on my mac, and I can just play the windows version of the games, but it is nice to see that games are being ported to Mac!
Apple also wants you to use them as your home system but they need a mid-range tower and better gameing hardware to get more people to stop useing pc's for gameing.
for a grand total of 5 games for OS X! woohoo! That's ALMOST enough reason to switch to a mac.
I agree with everything you said until "Apple isn't a gaming company. They've never claimed that."
I've been told personally from Apple twice that they were going to be "big into games". Both times they made a huge deal then..after a couple of months..they lost interest.
Sadly, the best thing Apple ever did for game developers was releasing Boot Camp.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
OSX is for professional computer users... Anyone serious about their computing, content production or coding etc, will use OSX. What is that alternative? Windows? you cannot be serious. So for gaming i bought a cheap, fast PC with a sweet video card. I know all you college students might not be able to do this, but i'm not a fucking college student.
I'm not going to be bent over and pay $1000 for a PS3, so i use windows on my cheap PC to play games exclusively. I rarely even surf the web on it...
For everything else, I use OSX. I'm really quite happy with this setup.
Apple : Porsche prices for Chevette parts. It's been this way since the iMac and the blue G3s were introduced, way back in 98/99 - they use completely mediocre hardware, stick it in a nice case, and charge you a steep price for the privelege. They got away with GeForce2s and Maxtor hard drives because at the time they were plugged into the only commercial PPC processor on the market. Now Apple's lost that excuse - now you're paying for a pretty case and the ability to legally run OS X on it. There's nothing really special under the hood anymore.
Oh, and Mac video cards during the PPC era were roughly 3-5x the price of their PC counterparts, if they were available at all. Maybe that's changed with the move to Intel processors, but what hasn't changed is if you want the privilege of an upgradeable video card, you still have to buy their most expensive (read : highest marked-up) hardware.
Don't get me wrong - I've been using Apple kit since before it was trendy. But the kool-aid wore off a long, long time ago.
Same thing here except I bought an XBox/big LCD TV for gaming and mini for browsing. Both PCs are in the bedroom as spare parts/experment boxes, i haven't touched them for much in 3 months.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I'd probably switch over to a Mac if more games were available for it, as the main reason I continue to use Windows is for the PC gaming. Yes I know there's bootcamp and VMware and all that, but If I could NATIVELY play games that I KNOW will run on a Mac with no more stress then there is in installing and normal gameplay, then I'd be a happy camper. So this move, while I despise EA, is a good thing and I will applaud them for a rare act of unsuckage. Oh well. Just my two cents.
and this, fellow slashdotters, is the definition of a fanboy.
Any chance we Mac users can try a demo of any of these games before we decide to buy something that runs through an emulation layer like Cider?
My iMac runs Call Of Duty 2 and WoW for Mac OS X fine, but I have no idea how that translates to Battlefield 2142.
It pretends to be windows.
No it doesn't.
The game makes use of an API. The wrapper is not "pretending" - it IS that API, being called directly, and doing what Windows would have done.
Semantically you have no stable ground in this argument.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am thinking about installing Bootcamp, just to play Bioshock - I too have Parallels but was pretty sure it was not up to the task yet.
However an interesting alternative would seem to be Crossover. They explicitly support Half Life 2, so I was wondering if you had tried that option for running in OS X- it's basically a commercial version of Wine and thus a lot like what EA is doing. Especially if you replaced some DLL's with native ones...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Arent they teacheing spelleing in highskool anymoar?
Call me when EA bothers to design games for Mac from the start like Blizzard and others do. DirectX emulation sounds like it might be unreliable and seems like it just adds cost to development in terms of licensing and hacking around a black box like Cider.
I think Cider is only interesting to game publishers because it's almost no risk and "free" money. TransGaming promises a lot and asks for little in return. The technology is less than perfect, but hey, if you can sell Mac users games without any unfront investment it probably seems like a good deal, even if the games are inferior to the Windows native version.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Well, when talking about Apple and gaming, it's kind of important to keep in mind Apple's history. During the early years of the Mac, Apple was scared that people would perceive it as a toy. This is kind of what happened to the Amiga 500, by the way: A powerful desktop computer that was mainly used for gaming. Apple, however, wanted a "serious" computer, a business computer. Macs didn't look very serious next to DOS computers with their green screens and text input, so Apple discouraged game development on Macs so as not to give people the impression that Macs were toys.
Later, Apple tried to change that and introduced the Pippin, a Mac-compatible gaming console, to increase the Mac gaming market share. It failed. Then, there were the Sprockets on pre-OS-X systems. Basically, that was Apple's gaming API, and it didn't survive the move to OS X.
After that, Apple never really did anything for gaming. I think they've basically given up caring too much. Gaming is nice, but Apple doesn't really need it to survive, and after their ambivalent past and many failed steps to get gaming on the Mac, I think they've just stopped caring.
Okay, so it's only EA and so not necessarily the best games, but now that a big dev house is starting to consider Mac OS X as a gaming platform, will they consider Linux as well? Given that they've got a similar *nix base then it shouldn't be too far a leap.
And yes, I know there's Wine and Cedega (which ran worse on my machine than Wine with Dawn of War) but something officially supported would be good. Even if it's just on a few main distros.
Heck it runs Oblivion in 1680x1050, full details, extra-high-res textures and modded to increase the view distance.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'd probably ditch my PC as a gaming machine and get a Mini for non-gaming stuff too if more FPS games on the 360 supported mouse & keyboard controls find using an analogue stick for targeting to be clunky and imprecise.
R Tape loading error, 0:1
.. then OpenGL titles are running on Irix emulation.
Interesting thing to note I own a Laptop with 1GB of ram and an Intel GMA 950 with a Pentium M 1.7Ghz chip. I play Myst Online: Uru Live which is ported over to OSX with the Transgaming Cider thing. My Laptop can run Myst Online: Uru Live at the capped frame rate with all the setting half way, the Mac Mini's can't, even at minimum settings they have a low frame rate (1 or 2 FPS) and have huge rendering issues. As far as we can work out its the intel driver for OSX limiting Mini owners from playing as Mac's with similar specifications but Nvidia or Ati cards can play MO:UL and using bootcamp on the Mini MO:UL actually runs extremely well.
Because they are not trying to grab markets where there is a lot of money spent. They still spend their time making nice looking machines that run a proprietary operating system. They claim at a recent developer conference that they want/desire/whatever gaming on Mac systems yet they don't offer anything with a good price and performance ratio.
I have a iMac24 on order... I do wish to use it for games, I don't need a $1800 "The iMac is the mid-range desktop solution, it comes with an OK graphics card" machine to just sit there for email and the like. I mean, get real, its $1800 and thats their offering hardware wise? The profit ratio must be extreme on these things.
Apple needs to get serious. They don't have a console. They don't have a viable platform for games compared to other contenders at HALF their price point. You honestly don't think Apple could grow even faster if they were to offer BTOs with better graphic options? I would love a user upgradeable MXM module for the graphics in the iMac... or at least a factory option for a better card. It is a much more elegant lan gaming machine than any "box" that most people use.
Gamers have money. They like style WITH performance. Apple is ignorant not to have offerings for them.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The problem is their huge gap between the iMac and the Mac Pro. You used to be able to buy a G5 tower for about $1600, now the cheapest you can get $2500. Most people don't need the huge tower, or the 16 Xeons (or whatever the hell Apple's putting in them that costs so much.) I just want the iMac hardware in a case that can be used to add HDs or video cards.
Because of this, I actually moved from Apple to Dell. Dell gave me the exact hardware I wanted for a good price, and Windows Vista isn't bad enough to make it worth moving back to Mac.
Comment of the year
PC gaming in general is usually more of a fight than I'm willing to put up, though. It's come a long way from having to make special boot disks to squeeze every bit of RAM out of DOS, but it seems like on a fairly regular basis a game will come out that doesn't like your hardware or driver levels and upgrading those breaks everything else on the system. That's more work than I'm willing to put in to a game, especially if it's one I've paid $50 - $60 for.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
so are these (well, C&C and BF anyway) multiplayer compatible with the windows versions?
Have you considered a PS3? Not only does it support keyboards and mice but you have a choice of bluetooth, USB or RF sets that have a receiver which plugs into USB. I've had success with the MSFT wireless keyboard/mouse combos but I have not admittedly tried to see if games support them.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
NBA games must be late because they have to add in a ref that bets on the game and makes bad calls. The NFL games must be late because they have to add in Michael Vick dog fighting side-games between the Football games.
By the way, Macs spelled backwards is Scam. That is the truth of Macs and video games.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The mini's a very entry-level Mac. It can be used as a media center and for basic use. It's not a hardcore gaming machine.
Correct! Worthless for gaming.
The iMac is the mid-range desktop solution, it comes with an OK graphics card.
Actually, it comes with a crappy graphics card which is actually slower than the card in the previous iMac line.
The old 24" iMacs had a GeForce 7300GT standard, which is faster, in most cases, than the top graphics card in the new iMacs (ATI HD 2600 Pro). It could also be upgraded, for a fee, to the 7600GT, which demolishes the 2600 Pro in nearly every game it's tested on. Whenever the 2600 does beat the 7300/7600GT, it's usually by tiny increments.
Since I can remember, Apple has included benchmarks of their iMac vs the previous model on their apple.com/imac product page. This is notably absent from the current product page, and it's pretty obvious why.
The Power Mac is a powerhouse, but it's mostly for professionals.
Actually, they call it a 'Mac Pro' now, and all the graphics cards (Quadro 4500, GeForce 7300, Radeon X1900) are all at least 19 months old (they were all released around January of 2006).
Apple NEEDS to fix this. Regardless, this is not supposed to be a gaming rig. At $2500, you could get something way better for games for 20% less.
The Macbook is somewhere between the Mini and the iMac. It's the entry level mobile platform.
You neglected to mention its video card: Intel GMA--worthless for gaming.
The Macbook Pro is the professional powerhouse mobile offering. It has a pretty good (DX10 actually) video card.
Yeah, it's great... for a laptop. This is probably the only Apple product I'd say includes a proper video card.
My point is not to disagree with you, but to point out that the reason EA and other companies don't make games is that out of the top selling mac computers (Mac Mini, Macbook, Macbook Pro, iMac), only one has a decent graphics card.
Apple has a tiny market share, and only a small portion of those users have a computer capable of running the latest games. The latter is Apple's fault. If Apple were to start including better cards, the image of quality over PCs they try to project would be much more truthful.
The iMac is especially sad, because even though they have packages going for $1500, $1800, and $2300 they all include a mediocre video card. This really represents a terrible bargain. Not only that, but Apple downgraded the video cards in their latest model.
I'd be willing to wager that EA's broken promise was partially due to a divestment in the Mac ports due to the insanely crappy nature of the new Macbook, Mac Mini, and iMac specs.
Why release games to a market which can't even run them?
Latewire
Did anyone notice that the 4 games don't work with integrated graphics? That eliminates 2 of the 3 "consumer" systems that Apple sells!
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
It's a substitute library that handles the win32 calls so in theory it can be faster than Windows itself
That's still emulation. FreeBSD's Linux and SCO emulation works that way, handling the system calls directly. Meanwhile both VMware and Parallels include specialized drivers and libraries that bypass the hardware emulation when possible. The difference is not so great as you imply.
In theory, yes, WINE could be faster.
But the difference between theory and practice in practice is greater than the difference between theory and pracice in theory.
It's hardly new. The only remotely new thing about the EA OSX versions is that they're, apparently, doing them inhouse rather than farming them out to another publisher, e.g. Aspyr or GraphSim who did the VAST majority of mac OSX and prior releases usually at least a year late, and at a significantly higher price point than the comparable Windows version at it's release. (By the time that the mac version was out, then Windows version was likely to be in the bargain bin, not to mention the paucity(and poorly selected ones at that) of titles actually ported.)
Id was one of the few companies that ever actually did do simultaneous releases. Hell, they usually even had linux clients to boot.
Bottom line is mac gaming blows, and four mediocre titles from EA aren't going to change that. It's been promised before, and half hearted attempts made before with the worst offenders being the games that were either entirely online or had major online components in which mac players couldn't play with Windows players, leaving them with their already ridiculously small community. (See Half Life cancellation and others.)
Sorry, been there, done that, never again. If you want computer games on macs, do yourself a favor and either get Parallels or be happy with wine for x86 macs and get a helluvalot more games, better selection, and better pricing. Otherwise if you're a causal gamer, get yourself a console and be happy with console tripe, or consolejacked PC games.
I am mac user. I love Apple computers. I think currently Mac OSX is the best operating system out there. However, gaming on the Mac platform is one of its most glaring (frightening) weaknesses. The weakness stems from Apple's stringent control of the Macintosh platform. The control limits the Macintosh platform to a paradigm dictated by Apple. With the exception of the Mac Pro, all current systems Apple sell are intended not to change over their lifetime (except for memory). This situation is advantageous for Apple but terrible for gaming. Gamers like/need to upgrade their systems. In addition, Apple doesn't design any system with gaming as a priority. Gamers who want Mac OS X but are not satify with Apples offerings are left with one option. (buy a PC). For those reasons, I can't see any reason that game developer will take the Mac platform seriously. This deprives the platform of viable avenue of growth and limits its potential. Gaming isn't the only avenue that Apple cedes away to Windows. How long can the Mac platform live on just the creative market?
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
...and use it to slice my Swiss cheese for sandwiches. Sorry couldn't resist...
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Unfortunately there's nothing for the PS3 that's caught my eye as much my 360. The 360 also supports mouse & keyboard but not for many games. Any game support is mostly limited to RPGs apparently.
R Tape loading error, 0:1
Blizzard, the same group of insensitive clods who claimed Mac Starcraft would be released the same time it would for PC. Then they said it would be shortly after. Then by summer. Then by Christmas. In the end a FULL YEAR passed before it finally got released. AND, to add insult to injury, they made all copies PC/Mac hybrid discs, and had the audacity to charge $50 for a copy if it was in a "Mac" section of a store, but only $30 for the identical product if it were in the PC section.
Is the sky falling? Nope. It's just a par for the damn course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)
The Mac market has always been "People with more money than time".
Obviously, not you. Otherwise you wouldn't have time to post about it on Slashdot.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Caulfield (GNAP) - Vancouver, British Columbia
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Trolled
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I'm not sure since when. It has been fairly recent.
Maybe Apple has been slow for whatever their reasons might be, but the mini did get an upgrade.
(Not that I care that much since Apple stopped selling PPC Macs.)