Just a few months ago, it seemed like games on Mac OS X were going great. Battlefield 1942 was out for the Mac, as was Unreal Tournament 2004. There was Homeworld 2, SimCity 4, Myst IV, and Splinter Cell. But the PC gaming industry is now striking back again, with Halo 2*, Counterstrike Source, Half-Life 2, Star Wars Battlefront, Medal of Honor Pacific Assault, Battlefield 2, and many more, says X-Net.
Apple Should Get Into Games
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Sorry folks, there are already three platforms to port games – PC, XBox, and PS2. No one is interested in a fourth. Same goes for linux people waiting for a massive swell of game ports anytime soon.
Mac global marketshare is 1.8%. Sorry but you are not going to see platform-centric code like games get ported for that sliver of an audience.
Why should it be said: The PC gaming industry is now striking back ?
There is no competition between PC gaming industry and ‘Apple gaming industry’, it’s just a matter of porting the games yes or no.
What if the Linux desktop get’s a greater share, say 10-15%, wouldn’t that make it interesting to release the games for Linux, and wouldn’t that, in turn, make it easier to release those games for mac OSX as well?
In an ironic twist, the first game mentioned on the PC list is from former Mac Gaming darlings Bungie…
Games on the Mac have traditionally trailed their PC counterparts by months, if not years.
And this would suddenly change because …
Technologically speaking, there’s nothing stopping developers from porting games to whatever platform they want. What they lack is a support structure. It gets expensive to provide tech/customer support for multiple platforms. That’s why there’s independent companies dedicated to porting games onto the Mac, and they cover the expenses of supporting that port.
What if the Linux desktop get’s a greater share, say 10-15%, wouldn’t that make it interesting to release the games for Linux, and wouldn’t that, in turn, make it easier to release those games for mac OSX as well?
Be sure that if and when Linux reaches those figures, the game developers along with Adobe and others will be late to the party.
Hopefully it will teach them to write portable code in the future.
And as usual, we have the same old confusion between marketshare and installed base.
with an mac capable of running these games starting at 2000$ there is realy no point in porting them. who would be able to play them?
That there are so few games ported for the Mac: in the old times, they created their own 3D API instead of using OpenGL..
At the time, their marketshare was bigger: had they pushed OpenGL instead of suffering from NIH, OpenGL would have had a much bigger chance against Direct3D for game creation, increasing the number of games available on Mac..
Now Apple’s 3D API is dead and they have switched back to OpenGL but their marketshare is so small that I doubt it is a big help for OpenGL..
Sigh, I wonder how Apple could have been so stupid: when you’re the underdog your only real chance is to back up open standards..
Be sure that if and when Linux reaches those figures, the game developers along with Adobe and others will be late to the party.
Hopefully it will teach them to write portable code in the future.
And what party are they going to be late for? If there’s a viable linux market for games then games will be ported over. Maybe in 15 years or so when Linux has 15% of the desktop market we’ll see more games being ported. But until then, wasting your time porting to Linux is no party.
It’s not like game developers are sitting saying “Hey guys, make sure that code is portable because there might be a linux market for our game in 20 years”
Mac doesn’t really make a good gaming platform anyway considering that you can build one hell of a gaming rig for half the cost of a similiarly capable Mac. Besides the almost limitless tweaking and tuning that can be done with the PC platform. OC’ed G5 mac? not a good idea even if it is possible. I would guess linux on PC hardware would be the next up and coming gaming platform before Mac
> I would guess linux on PC hardware would be the next up and coming gaming platform before Mac
The Mac already is a gaming platform, there are plenty of games already ported. http://insidemacgames.com/ by the time someone gets around to trying to do what Loki did on Linux again, there will be heaps more games on the Mac. Currently Consoles and PCs have the greatest amount of games as you would expect, there are hundreds on the Mac too, Linux has what 5?
A few titles Apple pays to get ported to Mac so Apple’s marketing engine can build some sort of credible “games” story to get young customers.
However, the internal demographics at Apple show that the Mac user base is middle-aged (and growing older) and not into gaming.
So the reality is that Mac will never be a gaming platform.
As for the Mac being an expensive gaming platform of course it is, if you buy a Mac to do nothing more than play games you’re just plain retarded (you could probably say the same about people who buy Alienware boxes for the same reason). On the other hand people like me who own dual G5s for other stuff and want to play games aswell what’s wrong with that? I moved from using Linux as my primary desktop to OS X late last year and I have to say I love the games on OS X. The G5 is a great gaming platform, if you haven’t used one feel free to not comment at all
“Mac global marketshare is 1.8%.”
You are confusing market share with install base. Market share only indicates the total number of computers sold during a quarter, not the total number of machines in use.
Example. if yours and my systems comprised 100% of all computer systems on the planet, and you replaced your computer 3x as often as I did, your platform’s “market share” would have 300% more than mine, even though there are still just two of us using systems… meaning the install base is 50/50.
Mac install base is roughly 6-7%.
I get a kick out of the guy who says that the G5 isn’t a viable platform for games….I guess that’s why Microsoft is making it’s next-gen X-box with a G5 processor….
“Games on the Mac have traditionally trailed their PC counterparts by months, if not years.
And this would suddenly change because …”
That aspect wouldn’t change… but I don’t think too maany Mac users care about waiting a couple months for a port. its the notion that a port be made available at all is the issue of concern.
If apple were to get involved, more of the important games would get ported as opposed to leaving it to the small number of Mac game porting companies woring towards fulfilling this goal and only releasing a limited number of games.
“The internal demographics at Apple show that the Mac user base is middle-aged (and growing older) and not into gaming.”
I wonder where you got that statistic from, because I saw it lingering in your ass… so I wondering naturally if thats were you pulled it from.
i would imagine that if anything, the Mac user base is growing in all demographical areas.
“Mac doesn’t really make a good gaming platform anyway considering that you can build one hell of a gaming rig for half the cost of a similiarly capable Mac.”
The second comment doesn’t substantiate your first comment. The Mac platform is a great gaming platform. However, the PCV platform allows you to buy less and therefore payless because you can customize it specificly for gaming. As for the Mac, the hardware thats adequate for gaming is great for gaming and so much more.
“Besides the almost limitless tweaking and tuning that can be done with the PC platform.”
Tell me, why can’t mac users tweak and tune their systems as well? Considering the fact that Mac hardware uses the same parts that PCs do, your point is moot.
“OC’ed G5 mac? not a good idea even if it is possible.”
Not only is it possible put there no less or more reason to do it on a Mac than a PC.
“I would guess linux on PC hardware would be the next up and coming gaming platform before Mac.”
Lemme guess… you made this assumption based on the assumptions you made previous to that commnet.
As for the Mac, the hardware thats adequate for gaming is great for gaming and so much more.
And your point is? a PC built for gaming would be less useful for other things(compaired to a Mac) How?
Tell me, why can’t mac users tweak and tune their systems as well? Considering the fact that Mac hardware uses the same parts that PCs do, your point is moot.
How many different Motherboards, Processors, Video cards etc.. are available for Macs? I will make it easy for you….1 per proprietary Mac encarnation i.e. iMac, eMac, Power Mac etc.. Video cards being one of the only exceptions i think maybe there are 4 or 5 for the Power macs.
With PC’s i have a plethora of configurations to play with. With Mac(albeit a very nice machine) i have the computer equivalent of a toaster.
It may be worth mentioning that the next version of the XBox console will use PowerPC G5 processors. Therefore, essentially all games written for the next XBox console will be nearly 100% binary-compatible with both the Power Macintosh G5 and the latest revision of the iMac.
The Processor may be similar or even the same, but that doesn’t make proting so much easier. The main thin in porting is still porting the APIs. The XBox 2 will probably not use Open GL and Core Audio.
The Gamecube already use a G3-like Power Processor, but how many more games are ported to the Mac because of this?
This guy really doesn’t know a lot about the Mac or game porting. He means well for Apple and the Mac users, but really misses several points.
apple have tried the gaming industry before and failed. I would rather it stick to what its good at. computers for everyday people
http://www.fact-index.com/a/ap/apple_pippin.html
if Blizzard can do this (Make games for both Windows and Mac at same time) then anyone else can do it.
Maybe its a fun game online, but offline its just frustrating since the AI is so stupid. Which would’ve been fine for a game a few years ago, but its not a few years ago. So… don’t include it in your “striking back” list.
Regardless, any serious gamer shouldn’t buy a PowerPC machine, thats the way it is.
“The Processor may be similar or even the same, but that doesn’t make proting so much easier. The main thin in porting is still porting the APIs. The XBox 2 will probably not use Open GL and Core Audio.
The Gamecube already use a G3-like Power Processor, but how many more games are ported to the Mac because of this?”
There is a difference: the pre-release of the XBOX 2 SDK has thanks to Apple in the credits. In the archive of this site there is this news. 🙂
I guess Microsoft and Ninendo should ditch the XBox 2 and Gamecube platforms then.
methinks someone should partner with aspyr and start bringing all their mac titles to linux,.. that’d give us jedi knight2, C&C generals, and battlefield.
I have an iBook and a PS2. I use my iBook for Video Editing, Organising my Music Collection and Writing.
I also use it for Internet Access – Email, Web and IM. Occasionally I might get a Game for it.
I use my PS2 for Games. My Favourite Game ATM is StarWars Battlefront, which I play online regularly.
At Work, (I work in a Non-IT Environment), 5 others have PS2s, Everyone has a PC. Only two other people in our office use thier Personal Computers for “Real” Games, and those two play CounterStrike or Battlefield 1942 exclusively. The Copy of Counterstrike was not Purchased.
Meanwhile, 3 of the 6 PS2 Players buy new Games monthly, and the other 3 buy BlockBuster Games like Socom and GranTurismo.
Therefore;
Number of PS2 Games Purchased in the last month? 2
Number of PS2 Games Purchased in the last 6 months? 12
Number of PS2 Games Purchased in the last year? 24
Number of PC Games purchased in the last year? 1
Number of Mac Games Purchased in the last year? 1
Number of XBox Games Purchased ever? 0
Number of XBox Games Rented in the last year? 6
Number of PS2 Games Rented in the last year? 12
Number of PC Games Pirated in the last year? 1
In my Workplace, Consoles are the Winner, while the PC Gamers are an obscure Curiosity. I’m an obscure Curiosity too, ‘cos I have a Mac, but have forgotten more about Windows than they know collectively.
Apple doesn’t need to port games. Aspyr and a number of companies ALREADY do ports if the game companies don’t already make a Mac version. Apple just needs to concentrate on its strengths, namely kick-ass software and hardware. The only reason Apple should get involved is to get proper optimization of games for the hardware. There is no reason a dual G5 2.5 GHz can’t completely stomp any Windows system at games with dual 64-bit CPUs + 128 bit vector FPU, plus a 1.25 GHz FSB on EACH cpu, mated with a Radeon 9800 XT or an nVIDIA Ultra DDL 6800.
I think I have seen one…
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/?t=archives&date=2004-07-03
Joke aside, I think the Mac is a poor gaming platform… not because of the hardware but rather because of the dedication of the machine. I mean, they are not seen as gaming machines. People don’t usually buy Macs for gaming while I know hundreds of gamers buying PCs for this.
Furthermore, hardware manufacturers are not helping their cause. I mean, the video cards coming with Macs are quite so-so… and the good ones are coming with an huge premium just because they are for Macs. And let’s be honest… Card manufacturers are making tons of money with upgraders. Who do you think they will support? And with more and more games sponsorised by a video card manufacturer, it’s going to matter even more. Mac users are not renowed for upgrading…
Anyway, console gaming is probably the future so this discussion is a bit futile…
There is a difference: the pre-release of the XBOX 2 SDK has thanks to Apple in the credits. In the archive of this site there is this news. 🙂
It could mean anything. Don’t forget that the PPC was a IBM-Motorola-Apple collaboration, so they are probably just thanking Apple for letting them use their processor…
>>As for the Mac, the hardware thats adequate for gaming is great for gaming and so much more.
>And your point is? a PC built for gaming would be less useful for other things(compaired to a Mac) How?”
You misunderstood my comment. I wasn’t implying that a PC would be less useful for gaming, but that was lacking in comparison to a Mac that was more suped up made it lacking in comparison to those areas. The fact that a PC and Mac were equal in spec in gaming specific functionality didn’t diminish its gaming capeability (as you implied).
>>Tell me, why can’t mac users tweak and tune their systems as well? Considering the fact that Mac hardware uses the same parts that PCs do, your point is moot.
>How many different Motherboards, Processors, Video cards etc.. are available for Macs? I will make it easy for you….1 per proprietary Mac encarnation i.e. iMac, eMac, Power Mac etc.. Video cards being one of the only exceptions i think maybe there are 4 or 5 for the Power macs.
The ability to incorporate an inferior mother board doesn’t negate one’s ability to tweak hardware.
“With Mac(albeit a very nice machine) i have the computer equivalent of a toaster.”
Flame bait/Troll
I love your logic: Macs are not good gaming platform because they aren’t seen as a gaming platform.
“apple have tried the gaming industry before and failed. I would rather it stick to what its good at. computers for everyday people”
1) Apple never “tried” the gaming industry.
2) {refer to 1) Apple never failed at the gaming industry.
“I would rather it stick to what its good at. computers for everyday people”
Hmmm… you mean like… gaming? (Pippin was not a gaming machine)
“I think the Mac is a poor gaming platform… not because of the hardware but rather because of the dedication of the machine. I mean, they are not seen as gaming machines. People don’t usually buy Macs for gaming while I know hundreds of gamers buying PCs for this.”
So the Mac is a poor gaming machine because of poor perception of that fact then? The “dedication of the machine” is an asset not a deterent as you suggest.
“Furthermore, hardware manufacturers are not helping their cause. I mean, the video cards coming with Macs are quite so-so…”
The stock video cards coming with Macs are so-so… the same with the stock video card on PCs. Why would you think that you can’t upgrade?
“and the good ones are coming with an huge premium just because they are for Macs.”
Nah, Macs don’t cost any more than equally equipped PCs with the same hardware and software configurations.
“And let’s be honest… Card manufacturers are making tons of money with upgraders. Who do you think they will support?”
They will support any and every platform that returns a proffit. The Macintosh does for them… hence the reason why they are developing for it.
>>“There is a difference: the pre-release of the XBOX 2 SDK has thanks to Apple in the credits. In the archive of this site there is this news. :-)”
>”It could mean anything. Don’t forget that the PPC was a IBM-Motorola-Apple collaboration, so they are probably just thanking Apple for letting them use their processor…
Until you can supply evidence to the contrary I’ll believe the former argument.
If Macs were purchased by “gamers” we would see an influx of neon sales Alien-faced Mac cases.
“if Blizzard can do this (Make games for both Windows and Mac at same time) then anyone else can do it.”
Umm… that is not true at all.
Blizzard titles have budgets a lot bigger and they are able to support customers better than the games that don’t sell 8 million copies.
The average PC Dev has a hard time supporting and justifying the cost of the small user base.
Anyway, I wish Apple was better on games. A Direct3D rep from Microsoft came to my school recently and I asked him since Xbox 2 is on PowerPC and DirectX is also there, if they ever thought about a Mac port. He said they’ve thought about it a few times, but they aren’t sure how to make money off of it. They don’t see OSX as a threat to Windows so it wouldn’t be a huge deal to do it if they could make money. Fucking Box DirectX for Mac… if it meant more ports I’m sure they’d make money!
The XBOX2 SDK:
1) Costs a lot of money.
2) Runs on a Modified Windowd XP kernel.
3) Is shipped pre-installed on a Dual 2GHz G5 Power Mac.
Please note #3. In order to write an XBOX2 game, you’ll need a Power Mac. Also, we have WINE in Linux; thus, it shouldn’t be too hard to recompile WINE under Mac OS X and add the missing Direct X API’s. It should then be possiable to create a virtual machine under OS X to run XBox2 games.
Also, the reason Microsoft credits Apple for the SDK is because Apple supplied the hardware and also helped port the XP kernel to Mac.
The big question is: do you think it would be worth it to purchase the Xbox2 SDK just get get Windows running on a decent computer (ie anything non-Intel).
“The big question is: do you think it would be worth it to purchase the Xbox2 SDK just get get Windows running on a decent computer (ie anything non-Intel).”
I have Windows running on a decent, non-Intel piece of hardware… its called AMD 3=)
First, I’d like to say IAAGD (I am a game developer).
There are fundamental problems with Mac gaming, and some comments have touched on them, while others offered totally bogus arguments (clearly, mac gaming is dead because the Apple Pippin failed).
The bottom line is, as a game developer, it is not too difficult to make cross platform titles. Much easier than regular applications such as Photoshop, Word, Macromedia Freehand, etc. Those apps require to interface with the platform’s GUI. Games, generally, do not – they implement their own.
A few problems plague the mac, and marketshare isn’t the biggest. Mac games _are_ profitable – just ask Blizzard. The main non-technical thing stopping Mac gaming is the people in charge – the PHB’s at the head of the big gaming studios.
But technical reasons also exist. First off, OpenGL vs DirectX comes into play. The fact is, at this point, DirectX is better than OpenGL – better performance more features, because MS put tons of money into it. Mac OS X uses OpenGL, and migrating to it from Windows/Xbox DirectX is not an easy task. Something which could be avoided from the start if OpenGL was used at the beginning.
The second factor is hardware. PowerMac G5’s are great for gaming. But the fact is, the majority of Macs sold – eMacs, iBooks, iMacs, come with now and have traditionally come with underpowered video hardware due to Apple’s strategies. Now, this hardware meets all of today’s games video requirements. and this is good, but it does not build a good installed base of users for tomorrow’s games.
If Apple really wants to have much more games available on their platform – they do need to take action. But that action is not to start porting games themselves. Instead, they need to beef up the video hardware in their consumer lines (if they stuck video cards that cost only a mere $50 more than what they have currently in their consumer offerings, the platform would be much more attracting to game developers). Once that’s done, they need to support and promote game developers as much as possible, to get them to make content for the platform. Once the platform is attractive (better video hardware), and Apple shows their numbers to game developers – in official meetings – then they can double the number of titles that get ported to their platform.
And as usual, we have the same old confusion between marketshare and installed base.
There must be a hell of a market writing games that run on G3/G4 powered older Macs.
Installed base isn’t what game developers look at because they aren’t going to write games targeted towards your G3 slot loading iMac.
When game developers get enough requests for a Mac game they’ll write one. Until then it won’t happen. Only when they can see a profitable outcome will they take the time. Can’t fault them for that one.
You are confusing market share with install base. Market share only indicates the total number of computers sold during a quarter, not the total number of machines in use.
No he is not confusing it at all. Marketshare is what drives the business end, not the installed base. So what if there are 2 million people sitting on 68k Macs and using them daily. Those 2 million people are not in the market for a cutting edge video game and they obviously aren’t buying new hardware that will in turn help push game sales.
Example. if yours and my systems comprised 100% of all computer systems on the planet, and you replaced your computer 3x as often as I did, your platform’s “market share” would have 300% more than mine, even though there are still just two of us using systems… meaning the install base is 50/50.
Bend it with examples all you want the bottom line is that installed base has little to do with market viability. Its about how many sales are coming. Thats the numbers that matter. There were roughly 30 million Play Station 1 systems sold in the world and it likely has a very large installed base to this day. I don’t know of one gaming company producing PS1 software.
Its the sales and marketshare that count. Installed base is just a nice window in which you can sell product while something is still ‘new’.
Mac install base is roughly 6-7%.
With 1.8% or whatever they calculated as the marketshare for the platform the installed base will only go down in the years to come. Unless you want to count all the guys like me with a couple of Performas rotting in the closet as users.
I get a kick out of the guy who says that the G5 isn’t a viable platform for games….I guess that’s why Microsoft is making it’s next-gen X-box with a G5 processor….
That dosen’t mean that the G5 computer as sold by Apple computer is a viable gaming platform. That means that the processor running in the computer will do a fine job running games. Big difference.
“With 1.8% or whatever they calculated as the marketshare for the platform the installed base will only go down in the years to come.”
Ahahahaha! Yes yes and the cows are flying! X-D
Tell me, why can’t mac users tweak and tune their systems as well? Considering the fact that Mac hardware uses the same parts that PCs do, your point is moot.
Typically the products that gamers really want aren’t available on the Mac hardware wise. If they are, they cost a lot more. Go out and purchase a high end video card for the mac and tell me you didn’t pay more than the PC version. It sucks but its the truth.
Not only is it possible put there no less or more reason to do it on a Mac than a PC.
Really ? OC your G5 to the point of meltdown and then walk into any computer store and tell them you need a G5 processor and a new fan. I’m sure they have them on the shelf right next to the AMD processors all ready to roll and at a low price too eh ?
There is a difference: the pre-release of the XBOX 2 SDK has thanks to Apple in the credits. In the archive of this site there is this news. 🙂
Yeah it was running an alpha NT kernel iirc. There is the difference alright. Same hardware. Totally different software.
Apple supports the hardware development of the XBOX 2: it has the know-how that Microsoft needs. Than, Apple has VERY MUCH to do with the XBOX 2.
“Yeah it was running an alpha NT kernel iirc. There is the difference alright. Same hardware. Totally different software.”
Firstly, it isn’t an “alpha” kernel, because it’s a well known Windows Embedded kernel for PowerPC, specific for PPC 970. Secondly, I think PC is a different hardware that run different software, anyway there are many games ported on Mac from PC. 🙂
Nah, Macs don’t cost any more than equally equipped PCs with the same hardware and software configurations.
Really ? I can build/buy a pretty kick ass gaming box for under $1000 with upgradeable video etc. etc.
What does apple offer at this pricepoint that will work for gaming ?
Until you can supply evidence to the contrary I’ll believe the former argument.
Thats pretty basic knowledge man. We’ll be sure to file the rest of your posts in the ‘computer n00b’ file.
Firstly, it isn’t an “alpha” kernel, because it’s a well known Windows Embedded kernel for PowerPC, specific for PPC 970.
Yeah and its available in what again ? Thats right a development system for a gaming console that isn’t shipping.
Its an alpha of the kernel. Unless you honestly think they aren’t going to make any changes to it whatsoever during the development phase. I’m thinking its gonna change in ways that benefit performance on the xBox2.
Apple made CoreAudio, CoreData, CoreVideo(?), why not a CoreGame or CoreEntertainment that is a tailored set of libraries that build off of opengl, Xcode and throw in a few open-source game engines for practice?
That is what makes directx so nice, it is a complete package for game development.
According to Ryan Gordon, a.k.a Icculus (the guy who ports most popular PC games to Linux and OSX,) the Mac API’s are an absolute pain in the ass to program. There’s an interview that can be easily googled where he says just that.
Add on top of that most Mac games are ports, and not native clients, and you see why you have to drop $2500-3000 on a Mac to get competitive performance (RAM, good video card, etc.) to a $1000 PC when it comes to gaming. It’s not that the hardware is inferior, the code itself is.
>>You are confusing market share with install base. Market share only indicates the total number of computers sold during a quarter, not the total number of machines in use.
>No he is not confusing it at all. Marketshare is what drives the business end, not the installed base. So what if there are 2 million people sitting on 68k Macs and using them daily.
It has nothing to do with 68k or PPC. Mac users don’t upgrade as often but its not like there is a 10 year differential. Mac users probably have an additional 1 year gap on top of the average time frame a PC user might upgrade. This compounded with the fact that there are more SIGNIFICENTLY more PC users (IE, more often them upgrading more often) skews the market share numbers a great deal.
Hypotenetical situation: If two PC users and one Mac user replace their machines at the same time, then market share dictates the ratio to be 70/30. and install base is 70/30. Now if one of those PC users replaces is computer after 3 months (the time in which market share is gauged) but the other two don’t, market share dictates that its 100/0 despite the fact that install base is STILL 70/30.
The Mac user STILL has a very current machine, yet market share dynamics indicate that he’s not even counted in the latter scenario. For this reason, market share dynamics is an irrelevant statistic when a developer needs to understand the total number of possible platforms he can market to.
“Bend it with examples all you want the bottom line is that installed base has little to do with market viability.”
Install base has EVERYTHING to do with market viability. The more important statistic is the install base number telling the number of people that are using hardware that can run your software
“Its about how many sales are coming. Thats the numbers that matter.”
Sales of your software yes, sales of new computers for that quarter no. Install base will determine the number of sales you make. Market share will not.
“There were roughly 30 million Play Station 1 systems sold in the world and it likely has a very large installed base to this day. I don’t know of one gaming company producing PS1 software. “
And yet, under your Market-share = Bible scenario, if Sony were to somehow, for some reason not make any Playstation 2 sales 1 quarter, thus causing their “market share” to be 0, it would totally negate their previous Playstation 2 install base sold the previous quarter and developers would have no reason to write software for the gaming platform because there is no market for it because the market share statisitic said 0
“Its the sales and marketshare that count.”
No, its the sales resulting from install base that count.
“With 1.8% or whatever [statisitc meisters caluculated for Apple] as the marketshare for the platform the installed base will only go down in the years to come.
No, because install base can (and does) continue to grow despite the fact that market share going down. This happens when the PC industry grows faster than Apple. IE: Apple’s numbers grow, though not as fast as the rest of the industry.
[i]”Unless you want to count all the guys like me with a couple of Performas rotting in the closet as users.”
No, because that’s not part of the installed base if the machine is not in active use.
>>”I get a kick out of the guy who says that the G5 isn’t a viable platform for games….I guess that’s why Microsoft is making it’s next-gen X-box with a G5 processor….”
.That dosen’t mean that the G5 computer as sold by Apple computer is a viable gaming platform. That means that the processor running in the computer will do a fine job running games. Big difference.
And yet, it doesn’t make the G5 not a good gaming platform either. Big difference.
Really ? I can build/buy a pretty kick ass gaming box for under $1000 with upgradeable video etc. etc.
And I can buy a pretty kick ass console for $99. That’s one of the reasons why I’m not much concerned about seeing games ported to the Mac.
“Typically the products that gamers really want aren’t available on the Mac hardware wise. If they are, they cost a lot more. Go out and purchase a high end video card for the mac and tell me you didn’t pay more than the PC version. It sucks but its the truth.”
I did purchase a high end video card for my Mac. The price was identical to the PC one.
“OC your G5 to the point of meltdown and then walk into any computer store and tell them you need a G5 processor and a new fan. I’m sure they have them on the shelf right next to the AMD processors all ready to roll and at a low price too eh ?
“
The argument makes as much sense as if I were to tell you to do the same and suggest that you go into any store that sells Mac hardware and tell them you need a AMD processor and a new fan. Do you think they’ll have them on the shelf right next to the G4 and G5 replacement processors all ready to roll and at a low price too eh?
>>”Nah, Macs don’t cost any more than equally equipped PCs with the same hardware and software configurations.
>”Really ? I can build/buy a pretty kick ass gaming box for under $1000 with upgradeable video etc. etc.”
Oh, you’re talking about configurability. You can buy less and pay less. That doesn’t make the PC less expensive, however it does make it more configurable (at least at the initial buying stage). When you build a PC with the exact (or as close as possible) specs in both hardware and software the prices are either comparitive or the Mac comes out less.
Eugenia, MoronPeeCeeUSR is trolling.
It’s apparent to everyone here. PLEASE have him removed or mod-down his comments.
Amen.
Eugenia, I second that.
I’ve been a lurker on these boards (not posting very often) and I always cringe when I read Mr. MoronPeeCeeUSR’s comments.
They add nothing to the discussion other than taking it off track by not only propegating myths and misunderstanings but defending them fervantly in the discussion that follows.
There is much in these discussion boards I disagree with, but I tend to disagree with practically everything he says.
Yes, he is a troll, but you guys are only fueling his behavior by correcting it
(yes, you are indeed correcting it.)
While I agree that it takes the discussion off topic, I think its important to correct trolls when they come (Yes, MoronPeeCeeUSR is an example) because there is still a lot of confusion about differing platforms and people often times make their assessment of a platform based on what they read. If what they read is not only far too frequently negative, but unacuractly far too frequently negative it does a major dis service to that platform.
I think there needs to be a system in place so that if enough of us who can make rational arguments to contradict a troll do so, that the person should be banned. Trolls are the bane of discussion boards such as thiss.
The ease of a port is a function of how much effort developers make to reduce platform-specific ties. If that sort of code is abstracted into a class, then porting to any platform becomes a much simpler process.
Now – why port to the Mac?
Well, if you write your code well, you can publish a PC version initially, then an X-Box version, a PS2 version, a GameCube version, a Mac version and a Linux version. Each port involves minimal cost, as only a fraction of the codebase must be rewritten. Data can be ported without modification.
What are the benefits? For an extra outlay initially, you can port to everything for minimal cost and maximise profits.
The question then becomes: If the code is well written, why not port to the Mac (and every other platform)? Why not make some more money and increase your users?
I love your logic: Macs are not good gaming platform because they aren’t seen as a gaming platform.
But that’s the harsh, cold true. Read the next paragraph to understand why.
So the Mac is a poor gaming machine because of poor perception of that fact then? The “dedication of the machine” is an asset not a deterent as you suggest.
…and that’s why Macs are not sold very well for gaming. I have never seen the Mac being promoted as the “gamer’s ultimate machine” and I don’t think I will soon.
Don’t misinterpret what I said, though. The hardware isdecent, the industry support is simply not there and what makes a gaming platform good or bad are the games. I guess a Mac is okay if you want to play the major PC hits but that’s it. And I don’t think this will change soon because Apple doesn’t promote their products for gaming and the industry doesn’t seem to be interested. Whether you take account of the install base or the market share for the Mac, a single digit in the % won’t persuade many developers to port their games, especially when their profit margin is quite low. Blizzard can because they have the financial means. They can survive even if a Mac game becomes a money hole. Smaller companies can’t.
The stock video cards coming with Macs are so-so… the same with the stock video card on PCs. Why would you think that you can’t upgrade?
I didn’t said you can’t. However, most Mac people don’t. And while branded computers tend to come with craptastic cards, “white boxes” assembled by local stores tend to have good ones.
Nah, Macs don’t cost any more than equally equipped PCs with the same hardware and software configurations.
It’s only true for the bundle (e.g. Macs without extra like memory) and that’s even debatable (for example, open-source software does pretty much everything I want and it’s free).
However, that’s not my point. I specified that stand-alone video cards for Macs tend to be more expensive. Just go to the Apple Store, select Displays and you will see by yourself. As you probably want an example, I can get a PC 9800 Pro for the same price as the 9800 Pro listed in the Apple Store… but in CAD. And it’s a “built by ATI” retail box, not a card from a third-party like Sapphire or an OEM card without the goodies. Similarily, I have found that some games were also more expensive. I recently bought NWN Plat. DVD for 50$ CDN… As I wanted an iBook for a while (and I would have bought one if I didn’t had specialisated software that was only running in Windows), I compared the price with the Mac version… The basic version (without the two expansion packs) for the Mac was 75$ CDN. That said, it’s the worst case I have seen but “it doesn’t cost any more” is not always true.
They will support any and every platform that returns a proffit. The Macintosh does for them… hence the reason why they are developing for it.
Why wouldn’t they support it when the only thing they have to do is to change the VGA BIOS to something OpenFirmware-compliant and jack up the price? Furthermore, the chip developers are not doing the support… They develop the drivers, but the OEM is doing the tech support. Writing drivers is not an easy task task but according to what I have read, a developer at nVidia said that 90% of their Detonator/Forceware code is shared between Windows and Linux… I guess the % would be quite similar for Windows and Mac.
Until you can supply evidence to the contrary I’ll believe the former argument.
What former argument? There was no former argument. They did not said why they thanked Apple so it can be for anything.
Please understand that I am not saying “PC rulez, Mac suxx0r”. Hey, I wanted a Mac for a while. However, I don’t think it’s a suitable platform for gaming… and honestly, I don’t see that as bad. Console gaming is slowly killing mainstream PC gaming. I think they are doing the smart thing.
By the way, I don’t understand why some people hope that they will see many next-gen console games just because Nintendo and Microsoft (and Sony, I believe?) decided to use PowerPCs for powering their consoles. There was a time when many consoles were sharing the same processor: either a 6502 or a Z80… Still, a game designed for a console didn’t automagically worked on another one. And even if Microsoft did ported their XNA to the Mac, I doubt they will make it available to the public. They don’t control that platform.
Please note #3. In order to write an XBOX2 game, you’ll need a Power Mac. Also, we have WINE in Linux; thus, it shouldn’t be too hard to recompile WINE under Mac OS X and add the missing Direct X API’s. It should then be possiable to create a virtual machine under OS X to run XBox2 games.
Don’t count on that. The Xbox is pratically a PC-in-a-box, yet Microsoft made enough modifications to prevent people from playing their Xbox games in their PC. I do not doubt that a skilled hacker could possibly find a way to make an Xbox game run on a PC… but I am not sure if somebody is interested in getting his ass sued by Microsoft.
Also, the reason Microsoft credits Apple for the SDK is because Apple supplied the hardware and also helped port the XP kernel to Mac.
That’s pretty much what I said, except for the kernel porting part. Honestly, I didn’t thought that the NT kernel was still portable after the modifications they made since NT4… I am quite surprised. By the way, did they ported it to the Mac… or to the PowerPC? There is a subtle difference between both.
“Also, we have WINE in Linux; thus, it shouldn’t be too hard to recompile WINE under Mac OS X and add the missing Direct X API’s. It should then be possiable to create a virtual machine under OS X to run XBox2 games.”
WINE Is Not An Emulator. It most certainly will be hard to “recompile WINE under Mac OS X” since you’ll first need to write an emulator. Cloning the entire Direct X API isn’t exactly a trivial undertaking either.
The graphics cards they include for even the high end games could barely chug along on Doom 3 which is not even out on Mac. You are stuck with 5200 Ultra’s and 9600 cards !! For crying out loud any real gamer would not waste their time on such a expensive piece of old hardware.
@glenn
Sorry to burst your bubble of multithreaded computer games thats only for the mac but even the most demanding titles aren’t multithreaded so unless your running other stuff in the background while your playing your game having 2cpus won’t do much for gaming. Its all about the gfx card and that 1 cpu that is running the game. If one of them sucks then you are going to have problems playing that game. But on a positive note if you really want a mac gaming machine just get a single G5 machine at the highest clock and replace that crap stock videocard that it comes with and now you got a mac gaming machine that will save a couple bucks. If you are a big multitasker then dual is the way to go including if you want to run a game server and play the game at the same time. Happy mac gaming
Anonymous
Sorry MoronPeeCeeUSR isn’t trolling. If he was trolling he would blatantly say mac pos mac pos mac pos all the way. Thats trolling. Their is a difference between a troll and a person who explain issues. If you read his posts you can actually learn something. He even gives solutions on how the mac platform can be equal or superior in the gaming market. Just imagine if their was an afforfable mac gaming machine for sale right now. That would increase your “install base” and “market share” (I hear those way to much in these threads and they have to be the worst argument on both sides of the line and very few people explain those well) and then the mac can get even better with better hardware support and better software support. Also what he is saying has everything to do with the thread. Your take on mac users and pc users upgrading patterns doesn’t make sense because you are talking about gaming. To be able to play the games “the way it was meant to be played” you need hardware to get the result of “the way it was meant to be seen”. You keep on forgetting that they’re many of us that make our machines. Do you think just a G5 is enough to play all the games coming out in the month of november 2004 alone. I’d like to see how your stock videocards handle halflife 2, dungeonseige2 ect ect on a geforce fx 5200 which can barely handle yesterdays games. Directx9 class games mix it up on cpu power and videopower so both of them need to be top notch to play these games at 1024 by 768 which is the common playing resolution for many gamers. Who the hell plays at 640 by 480 anymore but with a geforce fx 5200 you will not even get playable frames even at that resolution. You see us upgrade our computers so often because gaming software keeps evolving and believe it our not it evolves faster than any software out their because of such high demand. I am not downing on the G5 in anyway but am downing on the fact that even on your 3000 machines the gfx card you guys end up with is an entry level card which is what moronpeeceeusr is trying to explain to you guys. Mac has the potential of being a great gaming platform and I wish it was but maybe it still can be if all these issues are resolved. IMO you guys can blame microsoft from screwing the mac over when it comes to gaming because if it wasn’t for directx and if it was all opengl we wouldn’t even have this article. Also you are right negative news about a platform does a disservice to a platform and produces stereotyping. Another poster wrawrat gives good reasoning on why the mac is not known for its gaming capablities. Look at the console wars and wonder why the ps2 is doing so good against more advanced hardware from the likes of the gamecube and xbox? Looking even farther back why wasn’t 3do outdoing supernintendo and sega genesis? Why did the gamegear did so poorly against the original gameboy? It is the amount of content out for those inferior systems that made them more popular and more successful than those “superior systems”. Hell I never had a G5 gaming machine but why the hell would I since it is more expensive and has less content than the PC. When it comes to PCs however it is slightly different in which cutting edge hardware are first introduced towards the pc platform like pci e,ddr2,faster than 400mhz ddr,gfx cards, sli, sata rev2, mxm, ect. Games always take advantage of these cutting edge technologies and as I said before I have not heard any news of any of these technologies being introduced to the mac platform first. Mac users buy their computers we build ours and we build them better and cheaper than those PC vendors that charge an arm and a leg for theirs. Most PC gamers just replace a part or 2 and they are back on track again. We don’t buy whole machines so every part in our machines is what we want in it and nothing more. Also since PC gaming machines are made up of the latest tech out their it can do far more than gaming as one poster said something like mac gaming machines can do more than play games unlike a pc gaming machine. PCs gaming has so much oomph in them it will blow away any dell,hp,compaq,gateway,ect in everything. Also whats wrong with overclocking? We overclock for 2 reasons. 1. to save money by buying a cheap part and making it into its more expensive cousin and 2. to take high end hardware and push it to actually play the game the way it was meant to be played. What the hell is wrong with making a computer faster by adding better cooling system ? Oh because the G5 is so good it doesn’t need to be overclocked. Thats a load of bs right their. Lets see you guys play some real games when it comes out for the mac and then get back to me on that one.
Also someone said that the pc gaming market is slowly dying. I would agree on that one if I actually played the ps3,xbox 2 and the next gen nintendo system but none of us did . All we know these concept console systems might not play directx 9 games all to well. Hell the console systems we got now only does a decent job at direct x8 games. Why wait to play direct x9 games from these concept consoles when we can play them now on mid range gfx cards such as the geforce 6600gt or the radeon 9800pro. We also don’t know how much these things will cost. I’m thinking 400-500 in the beginning maybe even more.
the problem is, consolegames suck. i can’t understand how you can bear battlefront on an console. ego shooters aren’t controlable with those stupid controllers. i would rather not play games at all than having to play on a console. no good strategy games, uncontrollable ego shooters. just stupid ever same sports games, racing games and jump’n’runs. who needs that?
Can you please use paragraphs? Monolithic blocks of text tend to make readers jump to the next post instead of reading yours.
Speaking as a gamer you can’t get a the newest cards for macs. Show me a Nvidia 6800 Ultra for a mac please or a ATI X800 XT for a mac. Also as a gamer I like messing with my rig to squeeze every once of power I can get from it. A real gamer would never go for a mac because apple controls the hardware to tightly and prevents you from modding or even finding cheap alternative parts for you machine. Not to mention the fact that I can’t even build my own G5 machine from OEM vendors. Something any real gamer would do instead of shopping at Dell or HP. Apple for serious gamers is a dud.
I usually post in individual paragraph and didn’t even notice I made a really really long one.
I don’t know how to do links here but, here is your 6800 Ultra for the Mac:
Best ATI you can get at this time is the 9800 Pro.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/723…
Recently there was some announcement about some new ATI card for the Mac but don’t remember the specifics.
I find it funny when PC users talk about what you can and can’t do on a Mac with authority. I mean, most of them don’t even have Macs so how do they know?
So what if the Mac game market is a few months behind? If a game is worthwhile it should have a very long shelf life. Those games that make it to the Mac tend to have a very long shelf life.
Why should it matter to a PC gamer anyway? Personally, I think it hurts their egos when a Mac gamer frags them. Does it really hurt that bad?
The graphics cards they include for even the high end games could barely chug along on Doom 3 which is not even out on Mac. You are stuck with 5200 Ultra’s and 9600 cards !! For crying out loud any real gamer would not waste their time on such a expensive piece of old hardware.
Interesting I wonder how my G5 got the 9800 XT in it? And if you knew anything about Mac hardware you’d know you can get the 6800 Ultra (with the GT coming soon), and also that Apple has an X800 coming out for Apple any day now. Anyway I’ll go back to playing games that don’t exist on my G5 now.
Best ATI you can get at this time is the 9800 Pro
That would be a 256 MB 9800 XT actually the Pro was the top of the range card in the Rev A G5s.
1 – If I recall correctly the Pippin WAS primarily meant to be a games console (with added computer functionality).
2 – Mac Gaming isn’t great but its not bad. I have g4 733MHZ PowerMac which runs my games fine, wolfenstein and WC3 mainly. Granted these arn’t the latest and greatest but it meets my needs. My G5 Rips through these games (obviously, infact it rips through them whilst ripping a DVD in the background).
3 – Gaming and Marketshare: Bungie created a market that wasnt there before. Namely, high quality games specifically for the Mac. They made both alot of money and got alot of attention. ( oh how I used to enjoy Marathon!). They got bought and the rest is history. The point is, a games developer has much less competition on the Mac then on windows, you can create a good game and make a killing on the Mac rather than make a good game and be one of thousands of good games available on the PC.
at the end of the day, every now and again a great mac game comes about that for me is enough, port or not ( DarkCastle, net-treck, Falcon, sierra games, SimCity(s), The Journey-Man Project, Marathon, Myst, Command and Conquer, Unreal(s), StarCraft and Warcraft(s) , Medal of honour,) sure, not enough for hardcore gamers but more than enough for me. I have an xbox with Halo and soul Calibur 2 for my other gaming needs.
And as usual, we have the same old confusion between marketshare and installed base.
Wrong. If market share is 1.8% then the installed base is an ever worsening percentage. And installed base covers also the 50% of Macs Steve Jobs admits are STILL running OS 9/8.x (which are used in niche markets and are unlikely to change).
So regarding OSX, only market share counts. The installed base is miniscule. And since we are talking about games, you can also count off those G3s running OSX, because there is no way they are suitable for a port of say Halo2.
So there (post written from a iBook G4 1.2 that I love, but fair is fair).
And I can buy a pretty kick ass console for $99. That’s one of the reasons why I’m not much concerned about seeing games ported to the Mac.
But some of us aren’t enamored of sports games, fighting games, and endless final fantasy clones.
No Sir, I’m not wrong. Your first concern as a game editor (or any software editor for that matter) is having a market. If you’re interested in making games for OS X, you must know the following: Is there an OS X market? Does its size allows me to profit? How many are we to eat of that pie? Is the pie growing? Can I grow my part of the pie?
Does market share give you any information about that? No. It just let you know there may be a market there, since there are people buying OS X systems. But it doesn’t tell you anything about the size of your market, and doesn’t even say anything about its evolution. Understand that even if the installed base (or market share) decreases in percentage, it doesn’t mean that it’s not growing in numbers, hence, that your market is not healthy and profitable.
Perception makes reality, yeah!
The number of PC games has been falling in recent years because they are less profitable than the console games. Does anyone seriously thinks mac games would be commercially interesting to gamemakers?
Did you ever look on the side of the game software box at the logos and notice that most all of them have a Quicktime logo? Who the heck do you think developed quicktime??? It wasn’t a PC vendor, it was Apple. So bow down and thank apple for releasing the technology so you can even play your games. I think Tron runs 10x better on my G5 then on a PC. And I agree with RISC, if you haven’t used one feel free to shut up.
No Sir, I’m not wrong.
But I’m afraid you are!
Your first concern as a game editor (or any software editor for that matter) is having a market. If you’re interested in making games for OS X, you must know the following: Is there an OS X market? Does its size allows me to profit? How many are we to eat of that pie? Is the pie growing? Can I grow my part of the pie?
Does market share give you any information about that? No. It just let you know there may be a market there, since there are people buying OS X systems. But it doesn’t tell you anything about the size of your market, and doesn’t even say anything about its evolution.
Wrong. A decreasing market share means a decreasing slice of a pie. A decreasing slice can get to zero, an increasing slice (by definition) cannot. That says something, doesn’t it?
When you make an investment to make a program you justify it not only by there being PEOPLE (number) to buy your program on a specific platform, but also by what percentage this people represent. If you can get to a 98% audience by only targeting windows, then it is not worth the effort porting to the other 2% EVEN if it represents 20 billion people. Why? Because the other 98% represents 49 TIMES MORE people. So why bother?
Let’s hear Joel (from joelonsoftware):
Now let’s talk about platforms. Windows has 90% or 95% of the desktop market. Macintosh has 5% or 10%. If you’re talking about office users, Windows is even more dominant; Macintosh has a bit more of the home users, but probably not even near 15%. What this means is that if you are a software developer, the only thing that makes sense financially is to develop a Windows version first. Then, you need to evaluate the cost of doing a Mac version. If that cost is only 10% more, it’s worth it. If that cost is something like 50% more, it’s not worth it. If I have a product that cost me $1,000,000 to develop, and 10,000 Windows users are using it, that’s $100 per user. Now if I have to make a Mac version, and it’s going to cost me $500,000 to port the Windows version, and the product is going to be just as popular among Mac users as Windows users, then I will have about 1000 Mac users. That means that my port cost me $500 per user.
This is not a good proposition. I’d rather spend the money getting more Windows users, because they’re cheaper.
What does this mean to you, a Mac tools developer? It means that your number one priority is making it possible for Windows developers to port to the Mac for less than 10% of the original cost. The big companies that have products on Mac and Windows (Macromedia, Quark, Adobe, etc) generally started on the Mac. That means that it was worth almost any amount of money to port their product to Windows, because the market was so much larger. The only big exception is Microsoft, which has several different portability layers that allow them to develop one product for both platforms. For products at Microsoft which already have portability layers (Project, Word, Excel), they can do a Mac version for less than 10% extra, so they do it. For other products (Access, FrontPage), the cost of a Mac port would be more than 10%, so they don’t do it.
An interesting point is that today, try as one might, there is just no great way to create a Mac port for less than 10% of the cost of the Windows original. Which is why not much stuff shows up on the Mac anymore, unless it’s strategic in some way (like the Real Media Player).
Understand that even if the installed base (or market share) decreases in percentage, it doesn’t mean that it’s not growing in numbers, hence, that your market is not healthy and profitable.
The only way to decrease in percentage and grow in numbers is when the overal pie is growing to compensate for the percentage loss. But the sales of computers is getting to a low, it’s just not growing fast enough in this decade (with the exception of laptops).
Also, as I said above, EVEN IF in the numbers are increasing, IT DOESNT MATTER compared to a decreasing percentage. Because it means that the NUMBERS on the other side not only are bigger, but are also increasing faster.
It’s not the numbers that count, it’s the percentage. Why? Because the percentage shows the slice of the pie that you can target to and be successful.
My solution to the lack of good, i.e. no-twitch games for kiddies, being ported to the mac was to maintain a single x86 architecture box dual-booting(at various times) Windows, BeOS, and a linux distro.
Why? I wanted games like Morrowind, Halflife, etc. that will NEVER see the light of day on a mac. The primary drawbacks with this solution is having to keep around an extra box, extra keyboards mice, or some sort of KVM. I also must say that I needed this platform for other little things like various PDAs and e-text readers that only had x86/Windows based synch programs and dev kits. (Of course my trusty Palms can synch on ANY architecture or OS that I run: ppc/x86, *BSD, Windows, BeOS, linux, etc.) and the same goes for the gcc based dev tools. Beyond these reason I never used that box much and came to essentially consider it to be an oversized console.
In addition to that box, I have also had several console, and since RPGs are really my preferred genre of games, they have served me well in that regard. More RPG titles have come out for consoles than for “PC”s even though they are primarily of Japanese origin and, hence, different than typical western RPGs, I still enjoy most of them.
On a closing regarding porting, IIRC halflife for the mac was finished, but since the mac didn’t support DirectPlay(IIRC, I may be wrong, so many APIs, so many names, but it’s the DirectX network component) was not available for the mac and whatever the porters of halflife to the mac implemented was NOT compatible with the PC version, Sierra decided to kill it just before release.
Direct3D: OpenGL 2.0 doesn’t offer enough similar features to Direct3D to be comparable?
Apple’s 3D API(proprietary): you have to remember when it was designed and released opengl wasn’t much and Apple’s market share was MUCH larger, sort of like when M$ originally started with the Direct APIs, a skunkworks project originally. (This entirely ignores various opengl imlementations for Windows & glide.) Also Apple in later years DID support opengl on the classic systems.
hardware: Yes, I think that even though the mac installed base is larger than the 1.8% sales share, MOST mac users keep their machines around for 5 years or so, hence are fairly antiquated for more recent power hungry games. Of course, I bet many linux users also use relatively antiquated hardware, especially with all the DRAM, system bus, and CPU interface flipflops in the last several years.
It’s not like game developers are sitting saying “Hey guys, make sure that code is portable because there might be a linux market for our game in 20 years”
Can’t you read?
This is the problem with software development today.
Developers code with no foresight whatsoever and then if something like Linux comes along they will have to recode basically everything if they want to port it over.
Perception makes reality, yeah!
Exactly, because most developers won’t bother to give a try to a market if they don’t see it as profitable. Like I said before, Blizzard can afford to support Macs because they know they are renowed and they have a loyal base… Smaller ones can’t.
Feel free to stay in your reality distortion field but that won’t change the current situation: Macs are not good for serious gaming. But hey, don’t be sad, they are quite good for most other tasks.
Too much work to answer fojjs now. Maybe later
I have no problem with “Macs are not good for serious gaming”, if you give me good technical (objective) reasons. But saying that it’s not good because it’s not perceived as good (subjective) doesn’t make sense: the fact that it is not perceived as good doesn’t make it bad.
Following your logic, I could say for example: “Black people are inferior, because they are not perceived as equal or superior”. Now that logic makes life easy, at least for racist morons.
directx
any game coded to that can be hell to port…
atleast if you use direct3d for your graphics work.
i realy like the fact that all id titles use opengl
(and i belive that they now use openal for sound)…
there is a library called SDL (simple directmedia layer) that can act as a translator. this enable the developer to recompile on linux, mac, windows and whatsnot.
there is allso a diffrent problem when porting to mac, big-endian vs little-endian. atleast thats a problem for one free game where i try to keep up with what the developers are doing.