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

Ironically

[JohnnyKnoxville]

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

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.

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.

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/