Theorizing a Big Apple Push Into Gaming

Ian Lamont writes "Terrence Russell has outlined an interesting theory about what industry Apple intends to break into next. He points to games. Forget Pippin II, or an iMac gaming rig — he thinks the mobile realm is where Apple will make a big product push. It's not the first bit of speculation about Apple's renewed interest in gaming, but Russell's theory may have more legs, considering Apple's invitation to develop games on the iPhone SDK, its strong mobile product line, and a Apple trademark extension filed three months ago."

Comments

I'm definitely not knowledgeable with Mac, but...

[poetmatt]

If Mac had a stronger stranglehold on gaming and depending on how things go, isn't Apple based off Unix? So wouldn't that cause games to trickle down to Linux via people reverse engineering and other methods, as well? /correct me if I'm wrong, as said I don't know Mac for Jack

Re:iPippin?

[Anonymous Coward]

GM tried the electric car once before, it failed, and they're doing it again.

If by "fail" you mean that nearly everyone that had one really like them and wanted to buy them, but GM wouldn't let them buy out their leases because they didn't want to upset the oil industry, then yes, it was a complete and total failure...

The Pieces are in Place

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple may not have exhibited much appetite for gaming on the Mac but the i-Phone platform could be very different. The new SDK supports OpenGL ES for 3D graphics (and it's a very capable API standard) as well as OpenAL for 3D audio (which could be very cool on headphones). Add to this the gyro sensor for control and you can expect to see a ton of games being developed with the new SDK...
then look how they adapted the i-phone to a music specific device (iPod Touch) and the concept of an "iPod Play" doesn't seem to far fetched to me.

Re:I'm definitely not knowledgeable with Mac, but.

[Culture20]

Because those are the next step in OSS gaming? Methinks someone needs to look at Vegastrike or a similar project.

Ironically

[JohnnyKnoxville]

A game that was originally developed for Macs became Microsoft's console's biggest franchise.

Re:Ironically

[beelsebob]

Further to the simultanious mac/pc release comment, all the demo videos they ran at E3 originally, were running on 300Mhz G3 Macs with Rage 128s in them. It was because they had to port a Mac game to XBox, and then to PC that it became a performance dog.

Doesn't get much more mainstream than Spore

[SuperKendall]

Unless they develop games for all mobile devices (highly impractical) or get mainstream games to run on their mobile hardware (not sure on the feasibility of this)

I agree there's no way they are going to have a platform for game development for all platforms. Whay would they? Apple wants to sell Apple platforms.

But Apple is pushing in a very big way for mainstream names to come to the platform. We've already seen demos from Nintendo and from EA, in particular a Spore demonstration. Now those were proof of concepts but it's pretty obvious both parties are interested in extending those relationships into real working games.

Games on the iPhone will be different due to how control schemes have to be altered. But we'll see names from many big players, and games from big franchises.

This may strike people as another nGague, but this time Apple is still focused on the core reasons for owning a device - and also making is useful for gaming, which is I think the right mix for a portable device that is not only a game system. I think it will be more successful than other non-gaming mobile platforms, because it has better support for graphics and control and a really good display for gaming.

Re:iPippin?

[Foofoobar]

Well this time it would go over better because this time game developers are 'pissed' at Microsoft and have been moving to OpenGL from DirectX. That was one of the reasons why Blizzard chose OpenGL rather than DirectX; It wasn't because they had a big huggy fest for Macs and Linx, it was because they were pissed at Microsoft and hated DirectX. So they started developing on OpenGL and as a result have HUGE market!!! No one else can natively play on Macs and Linux and though people may scoff, this has greatly extended their market.

Re:iPippin?

[tepples]

They'd almost be better off making a console than pushing for games on the iPhone/touch platform. I can imagine that U.S.-based microISVs selling proprietary shareware would have a better time getting published on iPhone than on Xbox Live Arcade or WiiWare. Nintendo's Wii development agreement, for one, explicitly excludes microISVs. Besides, players expect more sophisticated graphics from a system that is not handheld, and these graphics are often much more expensive to produce.

Of course they're heading into games

[Phat_Tony]

Of course Apple's going to push the iPhone as a gaming platform- they'd be stupid not to. Why? Because it already IS the platform- they're already selling a mobile device with the form factor, screen, and processing power required for a good handheld gaming system. So failing to make it into one simply due to lack of the games themselves would basically be silly. I don't think Apple set out to build a competitor for the DS & PSP, but if they're selling competitive hardware anyway, why on earth wouldn't they want to make it compete? Especially if doing so is as simple as beefing up the SDK with gaming API's and encouraging independent developers to do the rest. And there's really not any question about that, because Apple's already done that. They invited in game developers to use their new SDK, and the game developers say they're impressed with what a great game development platform Apple's made the iPhone. It seems that this is yesterday's news; Apple already announced the iPhone as a portable gaming platform, and already has major game developers on board. This article is speculating that Apple might do something that Steve said they've already done in his last keynote.

If you want crazy theories about what Apple could do as far as gaming goes... how about, instead of selling Mac Pros with two quad-core Xeons, they start making them with one quad-core Xeon and one Cell. Sure, it would take a mountain of work to make Xcode optimize its compiler to execute code for running on two different architectures simultaneously, especially one as odd as the Cell, but Xcode already generates universal binaries for x86 and PPC at the click of a button, and Apple's got the resources these days to make Xcode optimize as much as possible for the Cell, and make decisions about which code to run on the cell and which to run on the Xeon.

Why would they try a crazy architecture like that? Well, in the markets Mac Pros are aimed at; video editing, rendering, Photoshop, scientific computing- Cells can, in certain circumstances, run circles around the competition. It could grant a speed advantage for certain tasks that Windows PC's would have no hope of matching. Throw in a quad Xeon, a Cell, and finish up making the OS offload some processing to the graphics card, and you've got a computer with three extremely different and very fast processors to throw at different sorts of problems.

But wait, didn't I say something about games? Well, if you're selling a computer with a Cell in it already, along with a graphics card, (how long could it be before Apple starts offering Blu-ray on Mac Pros...), could they license PS3 compatibility from Sony? They wouldn't even have to license it, Sony could sell a PS3 compatibility client for Mac Pros. Before you say "Sony would never do that," remember that Sony loses money on each PS3- they're in this for market dominance, not hardware profits.

Anyway, that's my crazy conspiracy theory regarding Apple gaming, to go with the "already happened so it's not even news" theory regarding iPhone gaming above.

Cards are fine, but Apple drivers suck...

[mario_grgic]

and suck is a compliment. They are absolutely horrid.

Did you know that nVidia Quadro FX 5600 ($2800 professional 3d sterio super duper workstation card) performs poorer than ATI HD 2600 XT ($130 card) for example in apple pro application benchmarks?

http://www.barefeats.com/harper10.html

I have 8 core mac pro with 8800 GT (a really good video card in the PC world even today) and majority of animation effects in OS X are choppy as hell and google earth is barely usable with it (5 year old PC with single core and 4 generations older video card beats it).

So, yeah Apple and video has a long way to go.

Re:iPippin?

[AKAImBatman]

look at Sony ... with Laserdisc (failed)

Laserdisc was a Phillips and MCA format. Sony was not involved in its development.

Also, Sony may have failed with Betamax, but they succeeded wildly with 3.5 inch floppies and their Walkman line of cassette players.

bribed the competition and succeeded with Blue-ray.

Both sides of the HD-DVD/Bluray war spent exorbitant amounts of money on promoting their format. The truth is that Bluray was the superior format and was always going to win. HD-DVD had a minor price advantage at the beginning, but that was about it. It never had a chance. Especially when the largest technology companies in the media industry were all backing Bluray. (Many had even contributed to its development!)

Relax, not a DS replacement

[SuperKendall]

Sounds like something that would be made for a DS.

Indeed (though I don't think the DS has the accelerometers). You are however I would point out saying that it's just like the DS, and the PS3/Wii - except it's like both at once since it combines the two things. Is that not somewhat different and new?

You can relax though, just because the iPhone may be popular for gaming does not mean it will replace the DS.

Now can you admit there is potential?

Re:iPippin?

[apt-get moo]

Just anecdotal evidence, but I certainly see more than 4/100 laptops being Apple laptops when I'm out and about. And I believe that laptops are a significant number of sales for computers today. Yes, Apple has traditionally been strong in the laptop segment, but they didn't manage to get a noticeable grip in the desktop market. Which won't change very much, as all they offer now are Mac mini and iMac that are lacking in performance for the enthusiast gaming nuts and too expensive if all you want to do is browsing the Web and listening to some music.

And as Douglas Adams said: "The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." (Douglas Adams)" While he certainly was a literary genius, Adams was a mere fanboy when it came to computing. Which nevertheless is fine with me, as he seemed comfortable enough with his setup to write some masterworks on Macintoshes.

Re:Um, no.

[Jerry Rivers]

Years ago game developers asked for, and got, OpenGL for the mac. Many developers have being developing for the Mac for years and show no sign of letting up. They have a happy and prosperous relationship with Apple.

http://www.ea.com/platform_mac.jsp

http://www.feralinteractive.com/

http://www.insidemacgames.com/

AllegroGL

[tepples]

Second, OpenGL, has not received the same amount of usability enhancements (making the libraries easier to work with and supporting other game features like sound and exotic input devices) and promotion that DirectX has. Sound and input devices are the job of Allegro or SDL. On Windows, it wraps DirectX. On Mac OS X and *Linux, it wraps something else.

Re:They've already shown support

[SuperKendall]

I'm unsure as to the exact percentage, it very well might have been 30%. According to my friend EA considered that figure excessive for a mobile phone game. The iPhone version is the same as every other mobile phone version with additional features.

That could be just posturing...

Are you talking about Spore or the character creator? Spore isn't coming out until September.

Whatever they were thinking to put out - I always figured it would be some variant of Spore, if anything. I still think we'll see something from them, they may well hold back the more popular titles hoping to cut down the percentage. I still think we'll see something from them.

Re:Can't see it happening

[Jesus_666]

Wooo, anecdote battle!

I'm studying CS at a German university and Macs are essentially taking over the department. The Sun lab was discarded in favor of an Apple lab and I'd say that Apple is the most popular choice for laptops with Lenovo as the second; lecturers are even more Apple-friendly than the students. Dell and HP don't come near.