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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."
How about Apple fixes it's graphics cards lineup before shooting for the moon.
I have a Quad-Core 3.0 and I can tell you, with the GPUs that came with it, I can barely play WoW, nevermind any other new games.
I had to buy a new PC in order to play any of the new games out because my mac (as great as it is), cannot handle the games.
MABASPLOOM!
GM tried the electric car once before, it failed, and they're doing it again. It's because the Gaming industry is one that hasn't been affected by a potential recession, it continues to expand in revenue and profitability. It's because games (much like electric cars) are what consumers want. Go where the market lies, don't be afraid of past failures, or you'll be doomed to irrelevance.
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
Sales of Macs would skyrocket! Plus, DNF might actually run!
Apple pushes into gaming they flop. How many times have they promised new tools and support for game devs and come up far, far short? They have no passion for it and you can tell that comes from the top.
"Theorizing a Big Apple Push Into Gaming"
Phew, I thought New York was going to get into gaming. Had me worried for a new york minute there.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
While to me an annoyance, this standardization might actually work in Apple's favor when trying to woo game makers, as it could act to simplify development.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
Maybe because it's 10+ years later and both Apple and the gaming industry have changed?
Unless you're talking about hunt the wumpus or curses-based tetris, it doesn't do jack shit for Linux.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Because this time, they are not trying to break into a market. They are already in a market, with a very popular device (iPhone/Touch), that has decent power and 3D capabilities along with some really good control systems (accelerometers/multitouch).
Anyone who saw the demo of Monkeyball running on the iPhone from the launch of the SDK, is crazy to think that a whole lot of cool games are not forthcoming.
Furthermore, gaming on the iPhone has the same kind of hook that Wii gaming does - it's going to be kind of unique. Exactly because there's really nothing like a D-Pad on the system games are going to have to figure out what games work best with controls using multi-touch and the accelerometers. Being unqiue is also helpful in that games for the syste,m will seem different than what people are used to, even from the DS which already has a touchscreen.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Remember the history of all Apple products.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Because those are the next step in OSS gaming? Methinks someone needs to look at Vegastrike or a similar project.
A game that was originally developed for Macs became Microsoft's console's biggest franchise.
The iPhone / iTouch actually has a pretty unique interface for casual games. The touch screen and accelerometer allow for some really unique games that don't translate as well onto other devices. For instance, there are a few marble-maze sorts of games available for Jailbroken iPhones that allow you to control work your way through a maze just by tilting the phone. It's like those old games with a little bead of mercury or a ball bearing, only without the problems of friction making the ball stick. And there's a partial port of Crayon Physics that's really slick. Given a handful of good games, I could easily see the iPhone becoming a great handheld gaming platform.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Over the years, Apple has done everything short of spitting in the face of game developers.
Yes, there will be mobile games for the iPhone. I expect to see a Bejeweled port in short order. No, the iPhone will not be the next handheld gaming device a la Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, etc. It's capabilities will be similar to Windows Mobile, with fewer games. All development will be done by third parties who Apple will do nothing to encourage and whom Apple will end up screwing over (because they always screw over the developers). i.e. "We've just released the mandatory iPhone update X, which breaks all 3rd-party apps, and we didn't bother to tell developers this would happen, and no, we won't tell you what we changed to make it easy to fix your apps. We hate you."
Apple uses a modified version of gcc, but gcc has supported objective C since the NextStep days. GNUStep provides an OpenStep implementation.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I can't wait for my controller with only one button.
I love conspiracy theories as much as the next guy, but there were some very good reasons to eliminate the EV1. Check out this link: http://blogs.edmunds.com/karl/239
...it was because they were pissed at Microsoft and hated DirectX. I realize this comment was more or less off the cuff - but to say that THE strategic decision to use one platform over another was because they were 'pissed' at Microsoft is absurd. How do you account for the fact that all of their software is developed first for Microsoft based OS and not for Apple OS? So they started developing on OpenGL and as a result have HUGE market!!! Secondly, you state that the reason they have a huge market is because they chose OpenGL. I am willing to bet that the majority of their user base had no information as to whether their games were developed using DirectX or OpenGL.I can in fact prove to you by pointing to the system requirements of their pre-WCIII games that they did in fact require DirectX.
So besides adding fanboy momentum to this movement...what exactly are you saying here that is worth any value?
Let me make you a Fanboy Sandwhich, it is made of Irrational Appreciation wedged between two slices of Untruths.
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.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I hope you (and everyone else offering suggestions on this thread) is joking. A "pippin" is a type apple, as in the fruit.
Of course, that may just be an extraordinary coincidence.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
...unless DirectX comes to OSX. Mac's make up 10% of the market, something like that, right?
While I'm sure some games will be cross-platform, you try selling the idea of focussing your coding efforts on 10% of the total market to your CEO.
Remember too; games written for DirectX just happen to port real easy to the XBox too - that is real margin savings right there for most game developers.
Oh, and don't even compare OpenGL to DirectX because DirectX does way more than just graphics; it's an entire API set for every element of gaming.
throw new NoSignatureException();
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.
And as Douglas Adams said:
"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." (Douglas Adams)"
The video game market is one of the most expensive and toughest to crack into of all global markets. Only two new companies managed to make it from scratch in more than 10 years : Sony and Microsoft, each of them gambling huge amounts of money over many years. Apple certainly "could" theoretically make it, it has the talent and the cash, but as a business decision it would not make sense for a company that is mostly known for breaking changes and creating whole new markets. As for the "mobile" focus, doesn't make any difference : that field is crowded already, by Nintendo and Sony no less.
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.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Also, Sony may have failed with Betamax, but they succeeded wildly with 3.5 inch floppies and their Walkman line of cassette players.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!)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, Vista is a flop. You can't just compare sales numbers for a product from one company and a product from another. You have to consider the sales of products that came before it. Considering Vista in comparison to XP, yes, it is a flop. When you have OEMs trying to figure out how to continue to sell the old product on their machines because people don't want your new product, then yes, it is a flop. At least Apple manages to make every OS release sell decently in comparison to their last one.
iConsole: I'm an iConsole
Xbox 360: And I'm an Xbox 360
iConsole: Hey Xbox 360, what's wrong?
Xbox 360: Oh the red ring of death, looks like I have to be replaced
iConsole: That's too bad Xbox 360, you know the iConsole doesn't have that problem
Xbox 360: Yeah, you also don't have any games, plus you cost more than the PS3
iConsole: That may be so, but people appreciate a console that just works, plus no red ring of death
Xbox 360: Yes well despite that we still managed to beat the PS3. I'd like to know what your plan is?
iConsole: Well, while you're off getting replaced people can do fun things like make photobooks and watch movies from itunes
Xbox 360: Fair enough I suppose. I think I'll go play Wii on my week off.
I have nothing compelling to say
Mac applications are written in C and/or Objective-C, using the Cocoa or Carbon libraries to provide an interface to the user (and to the underlying OS). Games specifically are usually written using OpenGL with (optionally) a mix of other platform-specific functionality. Accessing the user (via HID), the graphics card (via OpenGL, CoreGraphics, CoreAnimation, etc), and the sound hardware (via CoreAudio) is all platform-specific.
Most of a specific chunk of code written for a Windows game will (most likely) be relatively portable already (with the possible exception of non-standard types). The bits that need to be rewritten to work on OS X are the same bits that would need to be rewritten to work on Linux. Porting to OS X gains Linux almost nothing.
...."Have you mooed today?"...
Because John Carmack is one of the rare game developers who is wealthy enough due to his previous and ongoing successes (and being first and best into a massively successful niche...the first-person shooter) to own and run his own company which means that he calls all of the shots. Obviously Mr. Carmack enjoys proving the technical superiority of his code and games by running them on many platforms, even if those platforms don't earn a lot of extra revenue, but most game developers don't have these luxuries.
As for Adobe, Microsoft, and backwards compatibility, there are always trade-offs to be made with regard to supporting existing customers and ditching the old in favor of the new. These include not just technical issues, but money issues too. It is easy to Monday morning quarterback previous corporate decisions when one has the benefit of hindsight, but for those of us who are not prescient we make the best choices (or what we believe are the best choices) we can with the information that we have in the time available.
"If it wasn't for the iPod they would have been edged out by now."
Which computer company has the strongest 1st quarter PC sales? you know the post Christmas, not yet tax refund season when people are swimming in Christmas debt?
Apple computer, they are usually within 1 million units or so of their 4th quarter (the strongest quarter for any PC maker) numbers in the 1st quarter... what does that spell to me or to you or to anyone else?
There are people who because they couldn't get an apple computer for Christmas tucked that money away and bought it in the 1st quarter. There are enough of these people who couldn't get it in Christmas, that the 1st quarter sales for apple are insanely high.
So what if anything does the I pod having 75% of the mp3 player market have anything to do with the massive massive popular demand for new apple products since Steve Jobs took back control of apple?
basically, nothing. if the apple computers weren't so popular they'd have abysmal 1st quarters just like everyone else in the PC sector. But they Don't.
Keep in mind that a significant percentage of 'total' annual computer sales are purchased by businesses, almost none of which buy apple, because they're looking for the most stripped down and cheapest PCs they can deploy for their companies employees. Apple has the strongest consumer market out there as demonstrated by how many apple purchasers buy in the 1st quarter because they simply couldn't buy what they wanted in the 4th quarter.
Doing good when all your competitors are doing bad is a strong sign of having a good consumer brand. Ipods definitely affect apples bottom line though, and they definitely saw the company through some lean years, but they have nothing to do with apple's 1st quarter PC sales.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Wrong: Apple didn't develop the Pippin, it was a product created by Japan's Bandai, a Mac OS licensee.
It was a packaged as a high end (well, higher priced) game console to compete against other failed attempts to provide something more than a game console and less than a computer, largely aimed at accessing the Internet.
The failure of the Pippin was no more Apple's fault than the failure of the WinCE-based Gametrac was Microsoft's fault.
In addition, the other circumstances of 1995 and 2008 are a bit different too. For example, we now have fairly common WiFi rather than only dialup, so you can download games rapidly. Apple has also changed from a weak PC ghost to a consumer electronics powerhouse with its own retail outlets.
Interestingly, Apple's iPod Touch/iPhone compare pretty well against the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP as a gaming platform:
iPhone 2.0 SDK: Video Games to Rival Nintendo DS, Sony PSP
As you point out, sales in relation to cost is one factor. MS bragged that Vista cost something like $6 billion to develop. It's certainly a flop by that standard.
The OP was comparing MS' license sales to Apple's Mac sales, which is a false comparison. MS makes all its money from license fees. Apple produces software in order to add value to its hardware sales. Apple brings in half MS' revenue from sales to 5% of the PC market. Certainly, comparing unit sales of their respective OS licenses is not useful.
Apple doesn't want to sell OS licensees to PC users, it wants to sell them Macs. It's doing far better selling Macs than it would if it were to trade its hardware business for 5% of Microsoft's software business and ineffectually scratch against the monopoly as NeXT, OS/2, BeOS, and Linux have.
You might as well keep going and tell us that the iPod is too expensive for people who just want to listen to music and that the iPhone is too expensive for people who just want to make calls.
The PC serious gamer market is not big enough for Apple to attack. The desktop PC market is reaching a plateau. Apple is growing far faster than the industry overall, with consistent ~35% growth while the PC market chugs along at 4% on average.
Apple's percentage of the worldwide market for PCs and x86 servers (which is the numbers IDC and Gartner throw around) include lots of markets Apple does not even compete in. Those numbers are designed to marginalize anyone who does not sell x86, Windows-based PCs.
For the first time in decades, Apple is revealing how absurd those figures are. The reason everyone sees Apple logos on computers in every cafe, concert, conference, and campus is that Apple now has a large chunk of the consumer market, and is working its way into corporations because of that.
That's like saying if you build a WalMart from bricks and it doesn't work out, you can use your bricks to build a McDonalds somewhere else instead without much trouble, because you already have the bricks.
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You might be able to share some library code between platforms, but applications developed for Cocoa Touch are not going to be highly portable to Android because of a subset of commonality in of the programming languages used on both.
Android is essentially Java, except the code is converted into a non Java bytecode to run on a different VM so that Google doesn't have to pay Sun for it.
Cocoa Touch is based upon the very different Cocoa frameworks.
It will be easier to port Java code to Cocoa Touch, although the UI will still need to be built custom for the Cocoa Touch platform.
According to my buddy at EA, Spore on the iPhone is dead. Basically, Apple told them they had to sell it through iTunes (and iTunes only) and wanted 1/2 the revenue. This is apparently going to be the "standard deal" for commercial apps on the iPhone. So no commercial apps, meaning no games on the iPhone.
This seems very unlikely given the stated 30% figure for any other commercial application, you figure there's no way a large company would give up more than that percentage nor would Apple try and force that out of someone like EA.
We'll see in June.
Not in the early days at least. I was in the Apple Developer Program and we weren't told shit about new OSX releases. This was back in 1999-2001.
And I was in the program a year or so ago, and am in the iPhone program now (in line waiting for a cert like many others, though I know people are are fully in). OS X developers have been getting new OS seeds for years before official releases. iPhone developers currently get access to install the beta iPhone 2.0 OS along with the development cert.
Again, this must be new. Back in the day we got a list of bugs fixed, but no descriptions of those bugs or what was actually changed. Changes to Carbon were completely undocumented. I had to track down the developers in person and beg them for info.
The iPhone SDK updates have been pretty good about documenting changed classes and attributes, and the docs are pretty good for a new API (along with a lot of very helpful sample applications).
FWIW, Sun was basically the same as Apple in terms of support.
I've also been a Java developer for a long time, and they have had beta releases of new Java versions before the official release. But in those cases it mattered less because companies are a lot slower to upgrade Java VM's than consumers are computers or other devices.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Alot of game developers and studios are moving towards OpenGL these days not just because of the popularity of the Mac as a platform and because more college aged people are getting Macs but because they are disatisfied with Windows and DirectX."
It's actually more likely that they're developing for OpenGL because they can target the PlayStation 3, Wii, Symbian, iPhone, and in the future, Android with it. Macs are definitely icing on the cake that provide an added attraction, but they aren't the primary motivation, especially when many DirectX games can be fairly easily ported to (Intel) Macs with Cider.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Apple has succeeded in areas where they take something complicated and make it easy enough for general public. That has been their advantage The original Mac freed users from using command lines. The current lineup makes things like Wi-Fi making movies easy. iPod made digital media players accessible. iTunes made buying music online for your media player easy. The iPhone made surfing and making phone calls less of a headache. Gaming consoles these days are pretty idiot proof. The games are hard but running the console is easy. There isn't an advantage for Apple.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.