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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.
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.
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?
Boot Camp is Windows.
It's Apple's name for basically a partitioner, a boot loader, and a set of drivers.
I have a MacBook Pro and I use it for one thing and one thing only: Windows for Half-Life 2. It runs fantastic, but since Windows is on the bare metal, this is basically hat you'd expect.
If you don't want to go that route (which is really the only good way to do things right now for games) there is through these special game packages (they should work pretty well, but don't expect decent performance I'm betting).
Past that is Parallels (which is amazing) and it's new ability to run Direct3D stuff. That said, Half-Life 2 runs with all the details on very well on my MacBook Pro at full resolution (15" model). In Parallels it stutters unbearably at 640x480 with lower details. We are talking up to 5 (yes 5!) FPS. This is partly due to RAM (when I'm in Windows, it's got a full 2 gigs, when in OS X it has to share so it gets about a gig), partly due to optimization (they just released that not too long ago, they can tweak for better performance), partly due to the nature of Parallels (it will never be as fast as running native). For simpler things I'm sure it will run great. I bet you would have no problem with Half-Life, or Quake 3, or any other game from more than a few years ago. But for something as complex and detailed as HL2, it wasn't great.
Note that HL2 was the only thing I tested as that's all I was really interested in playing.
Hope that answers your question.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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.
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.
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?