[Randman]

You hear so many switchers and peecee users lament about Apple's dearth of games, much of which is true. So why doesn't Apple spend some money and create some kick-butt games, even do what M$ did and buy out a game company and release some Apple titles, maybe even a gaming division?
Good gaming would help draw a number of people over. Like the iPod. It wouldn't have to compete with the XBox or PS2 or anything, but a greater number of games and ports that come out at the same time not 18 months later would be great.

[Paco500]

I wonder how much good that would do. I remember reading when Doom3 was under development, the good people at Id could not have enough bad to say about the Mac as a gaming platform. I'm no expert, so I don't know what the issue is, hardware, OS, drivers, or what, but it's clear that a game like WoW plays much better on "equivalent" WinTel hardware than it does on my Mac.

It seems that unless there some amazingly killer game available exclusively on the mac- something so much better than anything available anywhere else, it wouldn't make that much of a difference.

I know gaming gets a lot of attention, but I would bet it's really a "niche" market. I think Apple would be better served busting open the enterprise than the gaming market.

[Goldfinger]

We need DirectX.

[budster101]

It would behoove them to break into the gaming market by buying Id outright.
<cough>pixar</cough>

[Eug Wanker]

Funny you should ask...

I don't believe this for a second, but here ya go: Apple Creating a Gaming Division?

Apple and ATI have been in talks about either creating or purchasing a Game Development unit.

The purpose of such a division would presumably be to create compelling games for the Mac platform to help attract more PC users to switch to the Mac platform.

[wdlove]

It must be that there isn't enough actual Mac fan's interested to make a change profitable.

[Mr Kino]

I have your answer.

Ok like, apple does not want us to waste our time playing games on their machines. they want us to be the productive side of the comptuer world. while the geeks play their precious WOW and FFXI, we will slowly take over the world. ha ha ha!!!

Its all part of the plan. stick to the plan...

[ManOfSteal]

Why doesn't gaming improve for Apple?

Hmm...

[budster101]

Steve Job's investments in MS stock would plumet?

[Krypton]

Apple practically subsidise Pangeasoft by including their games with all consumer Macs.

[OptimusG4]

Originally posted by Paco500:
It seems that unless there some amazingly killer game available exclusively on the mac- something so much better than anything available anywhere else, it wouldn't make that much of a difference.

We almost had that until Microsoft bought out Bungie.

[olePigeon]

It's all about market. id doesn't want to take the time to make games anymore becuase they don't make bazillions of dollars on the Mac.

When Quake III came out and it was wicked fast on the Mac, I think people saw that the Mac is a perfectly capable gaming machine when the games are acually developed to take advantage of it.

But Doom III is just pathetic. Again, another game "ported" to the Mac with little or no optimization. Then people yell out "look how crappy that is! It gets like 10fps on a Dual G5."

[theolein]

Originally posted by OptimusG4:
We almost had that until Microsoft bought out Bungie.

That is the kicker. Bungie was primarily a Mac developer, and Halo was originally developed on the Mac (as was Myth and Marathon). Steve Jobs should have bought Bungie outright back in 1999, but, and I can only assume this is what happened, Apple was only starting to make a comeback back then and in no way had the resources to buy and integrate Bungie's team and they were probably frightened of scaring off other 3rd party devs back then.

The main problem with a lot of games is the optimisation done for x86. The companies that do port PC games to the Mac, such as Aspyr, do not have the resources or time to redo much of the optimisation. Sometimes it works out well, such as in the case of Homeworld 2, and Unreal Tournament 2004, and sometimes it doesn't, as in the case of Halo or Doom3. I also think the porting of DirectX games to the Mac has something to do with this, but it's not universal, as Homeworld 2 was a DirectX game on PC and UT2k4 was an OpenGL game.

Still, Apple would do very well to open its own gaming division, even if only to assist game studios in porting their games to OSX. This is what Microsoft did with Win95. They even sent Microsoft developers to the studio in helping port DOS games to Win95. As an example of this there was a demo of Descent on the Win95 CD.

But Apple would probably be even better off if they added the Apple Touch� and did something different, like creating their own radcially different type of game that became as much a killer app as the other iApps have been.

[Hawkeye_a]

I remeber when Bungie did the Halo demo on a PowerMac at macworld... They bill comes along and starts throwing wads of money to get his way. It's weird that Apple gaming isnt as popular. If im not mistaken, companies like Bungie and Blizzard(starcraft, warcraft,etc) and Ambrosia all started out on the Macintosh.

I've personally learned to live with it though..... i get work done on my Powerbook and goto my console(Gamecube) for gaming. i think most people do the same, since no one wants to upgrade their PC constantly. having a homecomsole, ensures you have the hardware you need for games being released in the next 3-5 years or so, and no upgrades necessary....which i think is a nifty financial bonus. Not to mention that most consoles cost the same as a highend graphics card if not cheaper.

[TailsToo]

Apple would have to do something with their iMac hardware to really make them a gaming contender. You can't even play Doom 3 well on the majority of the new hardware, and those that you can are the machines that cost over $2k.

It would be nice if Apple would let users upgrade the graphics card in their iMacs, or better yet, Apple should put more powerful graphics cards in there from the start.

[TheBadgerHunter]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
It's all about market. id doesn't want to take the time to make games anymore becuase they don't make bazillions of dollars on the Mac.

When Quake III came out and it was wicked fast on the Mac, I think people saw that the Mac is a perfectly capable gaming machine when the games are acually developed to take advantage of it.

But Doom III is just pathetic. Again, another game "ported" to the Mac with little or no optimization. Then people yell out "look how crappy that is! It gets like 10fps on a Dual G5."

Actually Aspyr did an excellent job porting and optimizing Doom III. In fact people are reporting its more than playable on below 1GHz machines.

The two problems with gaming is there aren't enough companies developing for the mac, its all ports. Secondly, as you mentioned, mac games often don't sell well enough for less popular titles to be ported. So while we eventually get major titles the majority are not seen as worth porting.

[TheBadgerHunter]

Originally posted by TailsToo:
Apple would have to do something with their iMac hardware to really make them a gaming contender. You can't even play Doom 3 well on the majority of the new hardware, and those that you can are the machines that cost over $2k.

It would be nice if Apple would let users upgrade the graphics card in their iMacs, or better yet, Apple should put more powerful graphics cards in there from the start.

Again, Doom III is more than playable on any new mac and even many older ones. Just because some jerk maxed the settings and it played a little slow doesn't make that a benchmark of performance.

[sugar_coated]

All in due time my child! Have patience.

[Superchicken]

I like the idea of Apple sending out Devs or having Devs trained on Mac hardware and going out and helping different studios... I wouldn't want any of the OS X developers to be taking time away from OS X but I think it'd be cool if they worked and helped make games better for OS X... specifically EA's Battle for Middle Earth... dang I wanna play that game on my PB!

[goMac]

Originally posted by Hawkeye_a:
I remeber when Bungie did the Halo demo on a PowerMac at macworld... They bill comes along and starts throwing wads of money to get his way. It's weird that Apple gaming isnt as popular. If im not mistaken, companies like Bungie and Blizzard(starcraft, warcraft,etc) and Ambrosia all started out on the Macintosh.

IIRC Blizzard started out on SNES and moved to DOS.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by goMac:
IIRC Blizzard started out on SNES and moved to DOS.

Actually they started as Silicon & Synapse (Battlechess, The Lost Vikings). They made games for Commodore 64, Amiga, NES and DOS.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/090/090953p1.html

[TailsToo]

Originally posted by TheBadgerHunter:
Again, Doom III is more than playable on any new mac and even many older ones. Just because some jerk maxed the settings and it played a little slow doesn't make that a benchmark of performance.

According to Aspyr, the new iMacs graphic cards are only acceptable, not very good for today's games, and once something pushes the bar a little further, they'll be shut out.

In the PC world, a gamer could just buy a new video card and be fine. On the Mac, unless the gamer has an expensive G5, they are SOL.

Apple needs to have an afforadable computer that a user can actually upgrade if they want to. That would help Mac gaming immeasureably.

[Randman]

Originally posted by TailsToo:
According to Aspyr, the new iMacs graphic cards are only acceptable.

That's a crock. If they wanted to, they could adapt games to meet any graphic cards. Or create games for graphic cards. It sounds, to me, that it's just company-speak for "We don't see a market so we'll come up this excuse that others may jump on."

Another reason Apple should jump in. Comments like that, true or false, give Macs a bad name and may scare off potential switchers.

[mdc]

Originally posted by Hawkeye_a:
I've personally learned to live with it though..... i get work done on my Powerbook and goto my console(Gamecube) for gaming. i think most people do the same, since no one wants to upgrade their PC constantly. having a homecomsole, ensures you have the hardware you need for games being released in the next 3-5 years or so, and no upgrades necessary....which i think is a nifty financial bonus. Not to mention that most consoles cost the same as a highend graphics card if not cheaper.

couldn't have said it any better

[Hawkeye_a]

Originally posted by Randman:
That's a crock. If they wanted to, they could adapt games to meet any graphic cards. Or create games for graphic cards. It sounds, to me, that it's just company-speak for "We don't see a market so we'll come up this excuse that others may jump on."

Another reason Apple should jump in. Comments like that, true or false, give Macs a bad name and may scare off potential switchers.

Hmmm...honestly how many Apple users actually play video games on their computer ? Ill admit that the last game i baught for my Mac was Wolfenstein 3D ages ago. I am an X-Plane fan as well, but apart from that i just rely on my gameCube for gaming.

And i know i might be over generalizing here....but many 0-22 yr olds who are in school probably have a console as well as their Mac, and 22-35 yr olds probably use macs in the professional fiels and the others are educators, who love startcraft and such.

In my opinion,i think apple needs to keep up with gaming, but it shouldnt be obsessed with it such that it invests a lot of its resources intothat arena. Why ? The gaming industry is huge, and i THINK(dont quote me) majority of gaming is done on consoles these days.

And im a casual gamer....this is just an observation: game developers on PCs are just nerds writing games for other nerds(who own PCs)....and we all know what the nerds feel about Macs in general. I think the audience dosent justify it...unless Apple is serious about trying to convince diehard PC nerds that the Mac is actually better, which to me seems futile, snce nerds in general never admit anything, and will defend the technology they use with their life(just cause they can never admit defeat) .

So i think Apple caters to the casual Mac gamer, you get the high quality ports, and i think hat will suffice , compared to the state of Mac Gaming in the mid-late 90s.

Cheers

[analogika]

Actually, if x86 optimization (and lack of G5 optimized code) is such a clincher, and Xbox is moving to the G5 platform, shouldn't that make game optimizations much more easily portable to the Mac?

[ReggieX]

Steve wanted the iMac to be some great home gaming machine, and then Apple dropped the ball by putting only the cheapest, crappiest video chips into them. Apple needs to offer a beefier video chipset in the iMac as an option ASAP.

[analogika]

Originally posted by ReggieX:
Steve wanted the iMac to be some great home gaming machine...

Is there anything at all that supports this claim?

Or is it safe to assume that you have no idea, but merely prefer to believe that the iMac G5 is not *exactly* what it was supposed to be?

[The Godfather]

Originally posted by Hawkeye_a:
Hmmm...honestly how many Apple users actually play video games on their computer ? Ill admit that the last game i baught for my Mac was Wolfenstein 3D ages ago. I am an X-Plane fan as well, but apart from that i just rely on my gameCube for gaming.

And i know i might be over generalizing here....but many 0-22 yr olds who are in school probably have a console as well as their Mac, and 22-35 yr olds probably use macs in the professional fiels and the others are educators, who love startcraft and such.

In my opinion,i think apple needs to keep up with gaming, but it shouldnt be obsessed with it such that it invests a lot of its resources intothat arena. Why ? The gaming industry is huge, and i THINK(dont quote me) majority of gaming is done on consoles these days.

And im a casual gamer....this is just an observation: game developers on PCs are just nerds writing games for other nerds(who own PCs)....and we all know what the nerds feel about Macs in general. I think the audience dosent justify it...unless Apple is serious about trying to convince diehard PC nerds that the Mac is actually better, which to me seems futile, snce nerds in general never admit anything, and will defend the technology they use with their life(just cause they can never admit defeat) .

So i think Apple caters to the casual Mac gamer, you get the high quality ports, and i think hat will suffice , compared to the state of Mac Gaming in the mid-late 90s.

Cheers

You just called us all hipsters who don't give a damn about Mac games. You can't grasp the reality that we are mostly nerds who care about Mac games.

[Kees]

Originally posted by ReggieX:
Steve wanted the iMac to be some great home gaming machine, and then Apple dropped the ball by putting only the cheapest, crappiest video chips into them. Apple needs to offer a beefier video chipset in the iMac as an option ASAP.

I love Macs, but their choice for pathetic graphic chipsets has kept me from upgrading my kit on several occasions, opting to just get a faster GPU instead.
On the PC side, it's hard to find an FX5200 with only 64Mb VRAM, they all have 128Mb (Ofcourse, the chipset is still slow, but it does help some) Those 128Mb FX5200s cost $45,- @ places like newegg.
This, but with half the VRAM, is what Apple sticks in all iMacs as well as all G5s except the top-of-the-line 2.5GHz (but at least those can be upgraded)
You can't blame Aspyr, or anyone else, for being a little upset.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by Randman:
That's a crock. If they wanted to, they could adapt games to meet any graphic cards.

What? There's no magical "optimize" button or process or anything that will make a cutting edge game run acceptably on older graphics cards. If people only ported old games, everybody would complain that all the games coming out on the Mac were 5 years old (rather than 1-2 years old as they generally are at the moment).

Or create games for graphic cards. It sounds, to me, that it's just company-speak for "We don't see a market so we'll come up this excuse that others may jump on."

The PC games industry is massive. The amount of money involved in developing a new, A-List title is huge - they have teams of programmers, artists, etc working flat out for YEARS. However, the market is huge and they can sell millions of copies and make huge profits.

Expecting small companies like Aspyr to compete with that is unreasonable - especially as the Mac games market is really quite small. Of course, you get smaller devs doing in-house stuff (see Ambrosia, even Beenox - although they're obviously doing a fair bit of PC stuff now, too).

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
But Doom III is just pathetic. Again, another game "ported" to the Mac with little or no optimization. Then people yell out "look how crappy that is! It gets like 10fps on a Dual G5."

Yeah, no optimization. And I'm sure you could do much better. Have you read this post by Glenda Adams of Aspyr?

[ReggieX]

Originally posted by analogika:
Is there anything at all that supports this claim?

Or is it safe to assume that you have no idea, but merely prefer to believe that the iMac G5 is not *exactly* what it was supposed to be?

Nice attitude.

Steve Jobs said it himself during a MacWorld presentation, fairly early on in the iMac's life.

[TailsToo]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
What? There's no magical "optimize" button or process or anything that will make a cutting edge game run acceptably on older graphics cards. If people only ported old games, everybody would complain that all the games coming out on the Mac were 5 years old (rather than 1-2 years old as they generally are at the moment).

The PC games industry is massive. The amount of money involved in developing a new, A-List title is huge - they have teams of programmers, artists, etc working flat out for YEARS. However, the market is huge and they can sell millions of copies and make huge profits.

Expecting small companies like Aspyr to compete with that is unreasonable - especially as the Mac games market is really quite small. Of course, you get smaller devs doing in-house stuff (see Ambrosia, even Beenox - although they're obviously doing a fair bit of PC stuff now, too).

Just what I was about to say!

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
What? There's no magical "optimize" button or process or anything that will make a cutting edge game run acceptably on older graphics cards.

actually there sort of is, you can create a game that relies more on cpu or more on graphics cards to do its processing, besides, mac games tend not to use graphics cards as heavily as pc games. Also the imacs cpu reflects the speed of its graphics card fairly well.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Yeah, no optimization. And I'm sure you could do much better. Have you read this post by Glenda Adams of Aspyr?

Nowhere did I say it would be easy. Plus, taking a game that's built for one specific architecture, then modifying it run on a completely different architecture is a crap load of work. I admire Aspyr for the work they've done already, and judging from that post, they've done a ton of work (and have quite a bit more to go in regards to the OpenGL stuff.)

My cynicism comes from the beginning of the development. It seems that Aspyr gets the game after it's done, then ports it. That just sucks. I would like to see id or some other company work with Aspyr or Westlake from day one in development. Have two branches going, one for the PC, one for the Mac. Then Aspyr or Westlake guys can make the appropriate adjustments to the code for the Mac while id goes on ignoring it as usual.

Then I bet we'd some great products with comparable performance to the PC (if not better if AltiVec and similar technologies get used.)

So I say screw porting, we need these games developed for the Mac.

[The Godfather]

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
actually there sort of is, you can create a game that relies more on cpu or more on graphics cards to do its processing.

That's nothing like a magic button

Originally posted by olePigeon:
I would like to see id or some other company work with Aspyr or Westlake from day one in development. Have two branches going, one for the PC, one for the Mac.

Not from day one, but at some point in the middle.

I don't think ID could afford the load of being synchronized with Aspyr/Westlake from the start. The production starts with planning, experimenting and headscratching. Why would Aspyr/Westlake want to be involved in this?

Perhaps when the 3D engine has been completely written for the PC, Aspyr/Westlake could participate by porting it to Mac. I assume that at this point, ID hasn't yet started with PC optimizations and hasn't finished art production and levels.

However, the most correct position to take on this issue is futility. Just get a gaming apparatus and forget about FPS in your Mac.

[Randman]

Originally posted by The Godfather:
Just get a gaming apparatus and forget about FPS in your Mac.

That's my point. I'm happy with my XBox but Apple gets a bad rep, partly deserved, from its dearth of gaming. I just wonder why Apple doesn't address this. The bad pub along has probably scared off potential switchers.
Apple doesn't have to rival M$ or the XBox or PS2, but a concerted effort to improve gaming, even if a little, will do much to plug holes of doubts in many people.

[Hawkeye_a]

Originally posted by The Godfather:
You just called us all hipsters who don't give a damn about Mac games. You can't grasp the reality that we are mostly nerds who care about Mac games.

Umm...no not really. I just think many gamers use consoles for gaming these days. Im not saying all mac users are 'hipsters' (whatever that means) and all PC users are gaming geeks. Just that ..it seems like the gamers on macs have found gaming elsewhere, whereas those on PCs hve their PCs....and consoles.

From a purely strategic and busniess standpoint, i think it's a bad decision for Apple to start a gaming development section to try and convert wintel users. Cause i dont think there are many(if any at all), hardcore PC gamers who would actually even consider a Macintosh for doing anything (work or play).

And for us mac users who want more games.... like i said, for the most part, i beleive most of us have started using home consoles or even PCs.... so it's not going to make us want to buy more Macs purely for games. So what does Apple satnd to gain if they target more of their resources on Mac gaming ?

Thats wh yi think , what they are doing now is sufficient..

[Link]

I have to admit, most of the computer games I've ever wanted either were already out for consoles, almost immediately going to be out for consoles, or had better console versions; After all, Need For Speed, GTA, maybe GranTurismo (I like the sound of it, never played it), stuff like that are essentially good computer/console games.. and exist for both.

Most of the TRULY GOOD computer games (like starcraft) find their way to the mac platform, though I won't be the first to say I haven't seen one in a long time... It's been a while since I've heard someone bug me with "hey let's play Marathon!" or "let's play starcraft!" enough times to actually make me get it.. Here I am playing MI-A1 because a few friends bugged me about that!

Just to dump a few thoughts but really now, it seems lately there's been a few interesting games, a lot of graphical redesigns (Halo 1.5... erm.. 2.. and Half Life 1.5... err 2! I promise yeah it's REALLY innovative!!), And a few "What the hell were they thinking?" (nanaca crash, haha just kidding) games....

Why hasn't anyone in the game industry realized there's more to do with a keyboard and mouse (and insane graphics capabilities) besides make games where you <insert type of attack here> with <insert huge grotesque weapon here> a <insert huge grotesque enemy here> ?

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by Link:
Most of the TRULY GOOD computer games (like starcraft) find their way to the mac platform, though I won't be the first to say I haven't seen one in a long time...

Must I bring it up in every thread?

W O R L D � O F � W A R C R A F T !

[goMac]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Must I bring it up in every thread?

W O R L D � O F � W A R C R A F T !

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
My cynicism comes from the beginning of the development. It seems that Aspyr gets the game after it's done, then ports it. That just sucks. I would like to see id or some other company work with Aspyr or Westlake from day one in development. Have two branches going, one for the PC, one for the Mac. Then Aspyr or Westlake guys can make the appropriate adjustments to the code for the Mac while id goes on ignoring it as usual.

Have fun convincing EA or whatever to do that.

Also, is World of Warcraft really that great performance-wise on the Mac? (The Mac version having been developed in parallel with the PC version, internally at Blizzard...)

[analogika]

Originally posted by ReggieX:
Nice attitude.

Steve Jobs said it himself during a MacWorld presentation, fairly early on in the iMac's life.

What attitude?

So Steve himself stood there and said "we would have loved to stick a better graphics card in this machine, but we decided against it"?

Link, please?