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How can Apple make gaming better?


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All bashing of Apple aside, their prices really arent THAT unreasonable. But the software having a premium over Windows versions is just another nail in the coffin.

 

The software prices from games from that nasty port problem. Mac ports have traditionally come mega late (6 months or more!) and by then, the price for that same game on Windows just got reduced in the sale bins. Timnig of these ports have gotten better, but it's still an issue when something goes into the sale bin when the Mac version is released. Of course, this can be solved by companies making hybrid games (and people buying them as opposed to stealing them), but that might be wishful thinking.

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Blizzard's made every game they've made for the PC run on a mac too. It cant be THAT hard.

 

Great! Then you can port all the games over!

 

Just kidding of course.

 

Economically tho, what you say doesnt make sense. If what you say is true, then every developer would port their software to osx and that just doesnt happen. Since most feel it is too difficult for the money they gain, they write only for windows.

 

If it was easy as you say, or "not that hard" i really have no idea. But i know for a fact they think it is too hard for the money they will make.

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Game companies obviously take cost-benefit analysis into consideration. They want to sell the most products at the lowest cost. Developing for Mac OS X is simply not going to work if you look at the cost of development on Mac and how much money they are going to make. They're not there to please customers...they are there to make money. That's the bottom line....Mac users are extremely lucky that a niche company like Aspyr exists to port these PC games over.

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  • 4 weeks later...

First of all... I'm sure if apple could adopt DirectX they would do it, but DirectX is made by microsoft... to do so would not only be a legal nightmare but it would be almost impossible with the almost completely undocumented libs of DirectX.

 

Secondly, Blizzard is able to port most of their games(I believe from Warcraft I and up.) to Mac becuase their programmers are extremly talented... To write a rendering engine to run on multipul APIs is extremly hard, But blizzard is able to do it easy after like 7 games (not counting Expantion Packs).

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There are lots and lot of people saying Apple needs to partner up with Nintendo. I think that would make a very interesting position for both companies and it would make Nintendo games available for Mac and not PC.

 

I can imagine playing Zelda now on a Macintosh. *drool*

 

Apple really needs a kick ass game that is only available for the Mac platform. This was the original intent of Halo until Microsoft bought them out so they could have a kick ass game for the XBox.

 

Nintendo is not interested at all with computer games.

 

Go buy a Wii when they come out.

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The reason why so many people like PCs better than Macs, is because their fully customable. You can build your own PC, change sound card, video card, put in a physx card which is a BIG boost in game performance, and upgrade a cpu if your motherboard is compatible with a stronger CPU. You can't legally build your own mac on your own. You can get different parts in it, but you can't build your own. That's Apples biggest problem. If you want a full mac expirence, you have to buy their computer.Which, aren't cheap if you want one for gaming. You can build a decent gaming rig for $500 atleast.You need to pay $1300 just to get a decent FPS on most games for Mac. Apple needs to consider the budget gamers, the GMA900 won't cut it either in the Mac mini, unless they atleast put in a Radeon 9800, Radeon x700, or a Geforce 6200. Hell, the 9200 is better than the GMA900, just needs more memory than 32 mb.

 

EDIT-What's funny, is Microsoft top selling series on the Xbox, is the Halo series, which Bungie started out on Mac platform, and designed the original Halo, which was stradegy at first, was going to be on Mac, as shadow stated. But, the closest Nintendo will get to a computer is Opera on the Ds, and the rumor that Opera will be on the Wii.

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I think Apple and Nintendo should merge... so they can be called "Appendo"... which just sounds awesome. The name alone would make mac gaming unstopable.

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With recent ATI + AMD, hardware-wise, apple will be getting more and more of the Nvidia hardware for games. and Nvidia are well-know for their support to game developers. The question now is, will game developer and publishers start to make more games available to Mac users... Only time will tell.

 

For now, Mac is not a good platform for gaming, if you really want to experience the latest and greatest.... Company of Heroes, BF2, Age of Empire 3 (latest expansion) Star wars - forces of corruption, Upcoming game Supreme Commander (Just to name a few). I still think it's better to spend about 600-800 dollars for a PC gaming system. PC mag recently featured an article on how to build a decent gaming rig for about 600 dollars.

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apple can only make gaming better on osx, if they make a osx that runs on all pc's

 

companys will only invest money in games development if there is a market for it

 

right now osx only has 4 percent of the pc market.. that to little for big investments in games development

 

is all about economics.. :P

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As someone new to Macs, maybe someone can answer this for me - what's wrong with the hardware? Why do people say that Macs aren't cut out for gaming?

 

I know that there aren't a lot of Mac games out there (relatively speaking) but is that because of the hardware or something else?

I think the problem have always been the lack of native games, now you can install Windows and that solves the problem a little, but Apple doesn't seem to build machines for gamers yet, maybe later. iMac, Macbook Pro and Mac Pro are decent machines for people who wanna play games thought.
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I think one major problem before all hardware and software issues ; is a personnel issues. And that is Steve Jobs.

As far as we can tell he currently does not give a damn about gaming on Mac. And as the result there are currently no talk between the games developer and OSX design teams. What they need and how to make things easier for them.

Even traditional OpenGL game dev such as John Carmack has been lured to the Direct X platform ><.

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well there is a thing called unity out there that can make games for mac, windows and linux

 

its also made for the mac, it runs on some open-source version of .net which means its easier for windows games to be ported to os x

 

since more people are using macs maybe game devs might start doing more mac games

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well there is a thing called unity out there that can make games for mac, windows and linux

 

its also made for the mac, it runs on some open-source version of .net which means its easier for windows games to be ported to os x

 

since more people are using macs maybe game devs might start doing more mac games

 

Not likely to happen though, as 95% of the marketshare is still Windows, and Mac is barely breaking 4% of the market.

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What does Apple need to do to make the Mac gamin experience better?

 

They can put a god damn video input port on the back of my 24" iMac, so you can hook up a PS2 to it. That would be awesome, as I haven't used my PS2 in over 4 months (my iMac replaced my TV). 3rd party solutions like eyetv have lag, so I won't even bother trying them.

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I only see 2 things working in favor of Apple for games:

* They should make GFX upgradable and allow third parties to make those (Maybe an MXM format of some sort) that' a bit of investment but in the end it'll be profitable by both Apple and third parties.

* Finance the development of a Wine/Cedega style engine to make windows games compatible. It'll costs less than porting every games and could works really well if done by a professional team in contact with games editors.

 

I don't see this happening any time in the future as Macs are still too pricey and non evolutive and Apple already took care of the "gaming problem" with Bootcamp.We'll still have to see what Parallels will do in the future, fast DX9 support would be an ideal way to not boot into windows anymore (at least not natively).

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I disagree.

Apple making bootcamp is NOT taking "care" of the problem. It is simply giving the user a way to get by for now. Adopting 100% a different OS to play games is hardly a workaround.

 

Until Apple either makes a deal with Microsoft to lease DX10, or they make a DX10 killer, you will NOT see this os surpass Windows.

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