for those who don't know
there is out there a topic for playing nfs and other window games
on your mac

Emulation in ANY form is NOT a solution, its a temporary bandaid at BEST.
We are talking about a FIX, not just getting by.
Getting by, we have bootcamp, parralells, vmware, and that codeweavers program.

You guys need to see this in a realistic manner. Apple is selling to a nich market, no game company in their sane mind will ever publish every of its games on the Mac. They do port block busters because they appeal to the most Apple Mac owners but that's it. It's basic economy, the best thing is still some form of virtualisation...

agreed - for the time being virtualization will be good

and when mac continues its rise we'll see some increase in gaming

In a perfect dream world Apple and Sony would cut a deal. Apple authorizes OSX for the Vaio and Sony releases a laptop graphics card complete with cell GPU + PS3 emulator.

and mac compatible blue ray drive

This is a MUST if Apple is going to appeal to the gaming market and not just for the iMac or Macbook Pro because the desktop macs lack decent upgrades as well. For example my upgrade cycle is 2 GPU's per Mobo/CPU/Ram combo i.e. I usually buy 2 graphics cards (once a year high-end) before I sell the core of my system (before warranty expires) and upgrade. With Macs the problem is there are no decent upgrades once the system is bought. Quad G5 owners are like two generations behind with their graphics cards although they have kick ass systems that is good enough for anything else. Think of the poor people stuck with Dual G4 systems. The system is good enough for mild PS and some audio/video editing work but they can not upgrade to the best AGP cards out there whereas some guy who paid 500 bucks for an AthlonXP system back in the time can upgrade easily and play the latest games. (X1950XT or 7950GT for example).
How long has it been since the 8800 GTX is released you said ? How much longer will the people with Mac Pro's going to wait for them ??? With the way things are going not many gamers will switch to Macs anytime soon. Doesn't Apple realize that gamers have money and are willing to spend it, haven't we demonstrated already how much we like to buy new stuff even when we don't need them ?

Apple does want the gamers as you can see from their most recent announcements from EA and ID. Unfortunately up until recently it's been hard for them to justify a full commitment to the Mac plarform from the Game developers due to Macs having such a small market share. Things have changed now and we can be hopeful of a much better selection of games being offered for OSX. The Intel transition has allowed for things like transcider's software that will minimize the work required fro developers to port games to the Mac. With Macs (very slowly but surely) gaining market share, and the R&D required to port games being minimized, I think we will slowly start to see more and more titles available for OSX.

In the meantime, there's bootcamp. There is also gaming through virtualization that's about to go mainstream. Either way, just load up TinyXP and install your games and away you go. I'm still happy that now I don't have to keep a seperate PC or gaming console just to play my favourite games.

You're forgetting OpenGL. OpenGL does not have the limitations that DX9 had, or Dx10 right now.

more games

um... you realise that OpenGL right now (let alone the version implemented in 10.4) is way way way behind DX10, and wont catch up until (i think) early 2008. so thats one entire year behind Microsoft.

Open GL 2.0 is supported in 10.4 if I remember right, which another version of it just came out, and open gl 3.0 support is suppose to come this year. Opengl is still contending against DX9, which is all that's important right now since there are no REAL dx10 games that are out now.

yes, but you seem to be suggesting that DX10 has some major drawbacks. the biggest drawback i can think of is that its built into a rubbish OS, which holds it back, especially when it comes to playing games designed for DX9. So its a slow at DX9, but that, and its overall speed can only improve with updates to both drivers and DX10 itself.

as you correctly say, OGL 2.0 is in 10.4 (actually its OGL 2.0+ which adds a small number of things from OGL 2.1)

as for OGL 3.0, thats quite a way off still. The next version is OGL 2.x codenamed Long Peaks, and is indeed set for later this year, but is quite an extensive rewrite of OGL 2.1 that changes the way that OGL works. OGL 3.0 (Mt Evans) builds on this by adding a load of DX10's functionality to the rewritten API.

10.5 will either have Long Peaks or OGL 2.1, but it definitely wont have OGL 3.0, and so it wont have all the functions of DX10, which in turn means that gaming on OSX wont be as pretty as gaming on Vista until OGL gets updated. But seeing as Apple is quite slow in updating its OGL implementation, it could take a long time before we see DX10 effects in OSX.

oh, and DX10 functions will be appearing in force towards the end of this year, thanks largely to UE3.

I shouldn't have said that rofl, That was my bad.

haha.. yeah, youre right, DX10 does have major drawbacks... i couldve said that better....

lets see now "yes, but youre effectively saying that DX10 is a stinking pile..."
no wait "yes, but DX10 isnt all bad..."
yeah, thatll do.

Native games on the Apple platform run very well. Plus, in my experience, some like CoD2 and W3 run better on mac! But there are limitations that make the Mac platform less attractive that others to game development. First, macs are priced a little higher than their win correspondent. Second, Apple doesn't have a mac designed especially for gaming. The system that is more gaming-like is the Mac Pro that is more than 2000€ (mine, with x1900, CPU 2.66 and other stuff, more than 3000), with less than 1000€ you have a good win pc for gaming. Third, people who bought the mac pro for gaming wants a faster graphics card and at least 6-channel audio.
If Apple will make a Mac for gaming, that would be very interesting for game devs and maybe many games will come for mac.

PS: note that ID software John Carmack previewed his next-gen game graphics engine on a Mac... so Mac isn't a bad gaming platform after all...

I have three letters that explain why PC's are better(and prefered) than Macs for gaming.

AMD

There should be more native games (not cider/wine based)

I was excited to hear about the new EA mac games coming out, thinking they would be native, but they are only really windows games using a modified version of wine.

It's like linux I guess. Why should people be funding and developing a work-around when developers could be coding native games?

I'm surprised at the mac game prices aswell. (most are old windows games ported by aspyr/similar)
The only companies that seem to have created proper native mac & windows games (in the same package) are Blizzard & iD Software.

More OpenGL games ftw!

>_> No, I think Intel is more perfered than AMD right now. Even more, I don't see how an AMD machine can go against the mac pro with 8 cores, 4 gb of memory, and a Geforce 8800 ultra under windows.

if apple had better support for developers - perhaps giving detailed explanations of how to port windows games to macintosh there would be more mac games...
and like people have said, a mac gaming machine would help

I hope Apple puts more effort into gaming cause right not my Apple ass is not impressed by it.

If Mac Pro had more graphics cards. OPEN GL needs to get its ass in gear cause DX 10 is kicking ass, expect not many games out yet.. And all Apple needs to do is tell the world they are perpared for that and DEV will follow with it. OS X is number 2 in the world in users. Why not? Games would sell so well!

That is all i am saying.

Titles Titles Titles

is it?

Screenshot showing comparison of DX10 with OpenGL 2.1
OpenGL 2.1 looks pretty good to me, especially on the new idsoftware engine.

The problem at the moment is so many developers use directx

I just bought Hoyle Card Games for the mac.
It runs fine on the one computer, but it gets a blank screen on the other.
I think the difference is one has a nvidia 7600 GT and the other is running a 8600 GTS.
Don't know for sure, does anyone have an idea how to correct the problem.

Both cards have qi & ce supported.
Thanks

I think Apple has already vastly increased the gaming potential of their mid- to high-range Mac computers with one product: Boot Camp. Now, iMacs and MacBook Pros can run Windows games natively, which adds a huge number of games to the Mac gaming world. Although this could certainly discourage porting houses, it is terrific for Mac users because it gives them more choice. They can now play the Orange Box without Valve outsourcing it to EA and make it extremely sluggish (as with the PS3), which it won't anyway because they won't support the Mac in any way.
What Apple needs to do is add decent graphics to their baseline MacBook laptops. Please, just don't give us Intel integrated graphics. Even nVIDIA integrated graphics would be better. I myself am suffering from Intel's graphics on a Dell PC, and have to undergo the plight of Portal crashing every 10 minutes or so with a BSoD. That would perhaps provide a better experience for casual gamers (ex. me), who hesitate before buying a cheap Mac because of the graphics.
Then again, this might have a negative (well, mathematically positive) impact on laptop price. Therefore, what Apple should do is provide a line of gaming laptops that can run both OS X and Windows with 256MB or more of VRAM on a discrete graphics card, and market it to professionals as well. Oh wait, that's the MacBook Pro. Never mind.

Consistent updates with openGL. Support for more graphics cards ( GTX280, 4870x2) and multiple graphics card solutions, the implementation of SLI and CrossfireX. A Mac Gaming line (imagine Mac ProX or Macbook X, or some other lame name solutions to sell it to the masses, a black Mac pro with purple case lighting screams evil, though) and more opened drivers for both graphics companies. Less costly/exclusive/"uber-highend" parts, keep the Mac Pro case though . A smartly designed Mac Gaming mouse and keyboard. More "gamercentric" options (user hardware upgradeability (who likes buying a new system just for a better graphics card), tweakable openfirmware (overclocking, etc). Apple or Mac Games library. Release a Mac home console comparable/better than the 360, integrate some of those great OSX features from the start (a dock, downloadable games launchable from the dock, safari browser, "low power" mode for non gaming functions, get creative with it). iGames (to contend with Xbox Live) anyone?

NATIVE GAMING, no bootcamp, no parallels, no Wine/Crossover, just convince devs that your products are superior.

Maybe I'm just dreaming too damn big... It could work though...

Also, quit trying to target college girls and business professionals. Target everyone.

Woh wants to run games on a mac? You cant really do much to the hardware.

buy a macbook or macbook pro so you will got the better gaming

It would be an up hill battle for Apple to get into the computer gaming scene. There are quality games released for Apple... but I don't predict any big-name exclusive titles any time soon. Windows gaming has been struggling lately too, due to ramped piracy. For example, Gears of War 2 is reportedly not going to have a Windows port done. Epic is apparently "fed-up" with piracy on the PC.

1. Performance for Apple hardware comes at a steeper cost than generic PC hardware. ("Quality", support, and sex appeal aside.) Apple would have to compete on performance/cost against PCs AND consoles.

2. DirectX is a Microsoft product and, quite frankly, has been nothing less than sheer money-making brilliance for them. Meanwhile OpenGL has lost a lot of support from developers (such as John Carmack).

3. Mac OS features such as dashboard, expose, and spaces are a determent to game performance. The OS provides no means of toning down the UI eye candy for the sake of application/game performance.

I honestly don't think Apple should attempt to take on the computer gaming market anymore than they already have. Apple users have the ability, now, to install Windows on their machines and consoles are relatively dirt cheep. They should keep on doing what they are doing and not waist any time or money on computer gaming.

they need an exclusive thats actually good...for example like HALO before it was bought by the evil ones

Shadrack, to be fair though about the OS not cutting any UI down, it's not like the OS is any demanding.

there gaming is fine in my opinion...

mac is dead, for gaming !

a simple example,....

considered to get an imac for my son,...
- mac mini , don't cut it, plus it's obsolete
- mac pro , too expensive
- imac,... can't upgrade graphics card, that's the big one !!

gamers need to be able to change the graphics card, period !

game consoles,...
- apple does not have one !
- mac versions, are not ported to xbox or ps3 !?!
.... and list goes on,...

until leopard runs on dell's and they have a game console,... it's going to stay dead !
and what's a couple of billion of dollars to them,... they don't seam to care !

how could they get a game box out ? they can't even get an appletv right !?

Apple needs to get more developers and buzz involved. They can do this by encouraging the growing ipod/iphone game devs to target the "complete" mac environment rather than just the PDAs.

apple is taking gaming seriously now!
but on the ipod touch and iphone... lol

I'm sorry to say this, and I mean no rudeness in this at all, but Leopard not running on Dell? That defeats the whole purpose of this whole site, no this whole project! Now Dells aren't the only PC's out there, but they are out there like others! Apple doesn't need gaming honestly, their market doesn't demand gaming really at all. They make enough money. They know what they're doing. They're not dumb. And the pippin? And, here's a thought. Build your son a computer, because even if he got an Imac or Mac Pro, for games he'd basically have to run either XP or Vista.

the mac is x86 and make graphics better than windows especially if you run it vmware