Aspyr Media, Inc. announced today that id Software’s critically acclaimed blockbuster hit, DOOM 3 for Macintosh began shipping today and will be arriving on retail shelves everywhere by March 19, 2005. “DOOM 3 has instantly become a must have title for any game fan, and now Macintosh owners can experience the unmatched atmosphere and edge-of-your-seat gameplay that critics and gamers have been raving about,” said Todd Hollenshead, CEO, id Software in the press release. “DOOM 3’s intense combat, realistic sound and physics, and unbelievably terrifying creatures draw you into the gaming experience like never before, and our bleeding-edge technology is the perfect showpiece for the power of today’s Macintosh systems.”
DOOM 3 is rated “M” for “Mature” by the ESRB and is available at http://www.aspyr.com for $49.99. For more information, fans can visit http://www.doom3.com
DOOM 3 requires:
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.3.8 or later
CPU Processor: PowerPC G4/G5 or later
CPU Speed: 1.5GHz or faster
Memory: 512 MB or higher
Hard Disk Space: 2.0 GB free disk space
Video Card (ATI): Radeon 9600 or better
Video Card (Nvidia): GeForce FX5200 or better
Video Memory (VRam): 64 MB
Media required: DVD Drive
Recommended system requirements:
CPU Processor: PowerPC G5
CPU Speed: 2.0GHz or faster
Video RAM: 128 MB
A trailer for DOOM 3 is available at
http://www.apple.com/games/trailers/doom3/
When was the PC version released?
first post!
sorry never had one before.
Darn! missed it by that much!
Horseman:
About 6 months ago …
Will it run on my beige iMac with 107 megabitties of ram?
will it run on my 1.42Ghz mini?
🙁
Will it run on my Atari 800 with 64 kilobytes of RAM?
It’ll barely run on those specs. You’ll be better off with a PC on this game. The optimization for the Mac is at best, Terrible. You’ll need at least an x800 to run it. Before I got my x800, I had to kick everything down to medium.
After playing the original Double Dragon on an NES this weekend, and lovin every minute of it, it shouldnt matter if you have “kick everything down to medium” resolution for it to play well. A good game is about good game play, have we all forgotten? I have more fun with the original Sonic than the new 3D version that came with my GameCube.
There should be a demo version so people could test the game before they bought it. Someone know if it’s comming?
So, will the Apple Store carry it?
I followed the link to Aspyr, and their “Order” link redirects me to Amazon, which by the time it was in my cart, listed “J & R Music World” as the merchant. These days, I have no trust giving my credit card #’s to storefronts which morph around with each click.
“A good game is about good game play, have we all forgotten”
Yes, your right buffy but I prefer to buy a game and get the full potential out of it. Trust me, This game isnt the same in the different modes of graphics settings. If you want the best out of the game, you have to buy the best video card.
Kernal Panic,
The games requirements are also very demanding of PC’s as well.
Thus is the nature of a new game engine to use only the latest hardware as the game engine is sold to other game developers and it takes time for them to develop a game. By that release time hardware has advanced so it’s mainstream and they can maximise profits.
However I agree with you about certain optimizations of the game, it’s not multithreaded, but then again the game engine is not the bottleneck. Neither is the video card if it’s sufficient.
The main complaint of Mac OS X by game developers is how Open GL has it’s roots in the kernel, although this allows us Mac users to play 3D games in a window, even two 3D games at once, each in their own window, etc., it’s in the way and a bottleneck they say.
The game is designed using the free wheeling, quick n’ dirty, let anything take over, nature of Windows, thus maximising features for that. When transfered to a Mac with it’s OpenGL feature rich enviroment, the price to pay is degraded performance.
Now if Apple could stay ahead of everyone else in computing performance then the OpenGL and Mac OS X feature rich OS would make a Mac vs a PC game sort of even. Heck if Apple could stay WAY ahead of the pack in computing performance we could even run PC games in VPC as fast as a PC by itself.
Right now Apple is betting on the future, eventually there will be a limit on how much a game can do feature wise, processor chips will exceeed the games needs and feature richness of a OS will come to play as it won’t degrade performance.
Since Mac’s were usually a bit more expensive, being of better quality machine. The type of folks able to afford them usually are past gaming age anyhow. A well designed OS that works without viruses, exploits, spyware etc is more important that a difference in frame rate of a game to them.
I’m not happy Aspyr was unable to use multiple processors, even UT2004 throws the sound on the other chip so duallies can get a performance boost. And no 5.1 surround sound? (hopefully a patch later?)
Well at least I’ll be able to play Doom3 in a window and have the option to crank things up full screen. Since I’m not competiting with PC users online it doesn’t make a difference if my frame rate is 100 or 120, as long it’s above 30 fps for smooth motion then it doesn’t matter.
This is a sort of game you most likely play through and get bored and it’s done.
Not like UT2004 which is played over and over, online etc. Where the quick n dirty OS of Winblows would be a advantage.
Nevermind, found it. There’s no mention of it shipping (other than “March”) but is indeed available for purchase at the Apple Store.
Yeah, the games seem to be getting WAY ahead of the hardware. Im just gald that I can play games on both Mac and PC without the past limitations I had on the Mac. It would also be nice to be able to use the latest Catalyst drivers for Mac, Which you can get, however it lacks hugely in the tuning areas, Infact you cant even touch the video settings within OS X. That just plain sucks. I would think as games on the Mac become more popular, they’ll add that functionality.
AppleRules-
100 fps, don’t we wish! I saw a review of this and a comparison against a windows box. The G5 struggled to keep over 30 fps. The Mac didn’t have the 6800 ultra though. But I “ain’t” buying a $600 video card just to game.
The review was at Macaddict I think.