“It’s time for Apple to use some of its superior design skills to come up with a game for the beleaguered Mac loyalist — like me,” Arik Hesseldahl writes for BusinessWeek. “There’s nothing that can be done with Windows that can’t be done better on a Mac. With one major exception: games. Gaming is the one area of computing where the Mac has seriously lagged in the area of software. While a few major titles have been ported over the years, Mac gamers are treated like a market afterthought. Major releases on the Mac are usually a year or so behind those on Windows. Most of the feelings I have about this situation can’t be put into polite language.”
“…A small shop in Austin, Tex., known as Aspyr Media… makes more games for the Mac than any other company,” Hesseldahl writes, “How many Mac developers does Aspyr have? Five who work full time. That’s it. Why so small a team? Because, as Aspyr’s Director of Development Glenda Adams told me, a successful Mac game might sell 50,000 units. It physically hurt my head to hear so low a number. My first question after hearing it was, ‘How do you do this profitably?’ Her reply: ‘It’s always been a razor-thin kind of thing.'”
“Turns out, Mac users aren’t really into games. That, or they just don’t think of Macs as the machine they turn to for gaming. It’s strange, since Macs have always been generally better at graphics, producing animation, editing sound, and so on. It would seem the Mac would be an ideal gaming environment. And yet the market indicates otherwise,” Hesseldahl writes. “Maybe Apple’s user base just isn’t fully aware of great games that are now available for the Mac? Sure, there are games to be found at the Apple store, prominently displayed in the software section. But does Apple market the Mac as a gaming machine? Adams says it should… But first, another question needs to be addressed. In the Boot Camp era — in which Mac users can simply install Windows on their machines — is there even a need for Mac-specific games? Aspyr’s Adams thinks so. ‘The majority of the end-users we talk to still want Mac-native games,’ she says. ‘If they can get Mac-native games, they’re willing to wait for them.'”
“And while we’re on the subject, why doesn’t Apple try its hand at building good games for the Mac on its own? Apple is full of creative people turning out great software, but why hasn’t it ever turned out a game? After all, gaming is in Apple’s very DNA. Early in their pre-Apple careers, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (some accounts suggest that Woz did most of the work) created Breakout for Atari… An Apple game might help prime the pump. One great game would get Mac users looking for more great games, and thus help demand, which would encourage more games. In time, one of the weakest planks in the pro-Mac sales proposition would start to look stronger,” Hesseldahl writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: First of all, a hex upon Hesseldahl for writing “beleaguered Mac loyalist.” Mac users are the last personal computer users who should ever be described as “beleaguered.” Now, while we’d like to see the end product of an Apple-produced game and we’d love to see Mac and Windows games released on the same day (only market share and games sales increases would really accomplish that latter goal), realism dictates that we recommend, “Get a game console if you want to play games.” You know which one we’ve got our eyes on…
FYI: Some Mac game links:
• Amazon Mac Games
• http://www.apple.com/games/
• http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/games/
• Aspyr Top Selling Mac Games
• http://www.blizzard.com/
• http://www.insidemacgames.com/
• http://www.macgamefiles.com/
• http://www.macgamer.com/
• http://www.macgames.com/
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puerile
Fixed headline typo – thanks everyone.
So we’re going to start making games for Mac now that the mini and Macbook have integrated graphics?
We already have a top game – Tumblebugs. Just can’t stop playing the damn thing.
I’m not sure if there really is a HUGE need or want to have a higher selection of games for our beloved platform. I have alot of friends who have Macs and none of them even have any thought of gaming. That being said, sometimes I do have that sudden urge to play Bugdom or Cro-Mag Rally!
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If Macs had more decent games like Battlefield 2 or GTA I would be able to get rid of my win$ box forever…
Wasn’t the award-winning game MYST realeased first on the Mac? About a thousand years ago?
First we are branded as social outcasts, and now as beleagured loyalists…
whats next
“”There’s nothing that can be done with Windows that can’t be done better on a Mac.”
…which says it all quite concisely.
Microsoft: Designed to make you feel stupid… and best for nothing but games.
they could just ‘do a microsoft’ and buy a games company, im not very interested in games, i got doom 3, my 1st ever mac game lol, ill play it once in a blue moon, most of us use macs for productivity i think, and those that play games buy consoles
What would they make? A first person shooter that fires off rainbows and pussywillows at the downtrodden?
I don’t know what that means. But, I think Tom Cruise does!
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I usually get a game or two every year around Christmas. I go to WWDC, play a few games, and add them to my Christmas list–although I might go out-of-order and get Call of Duty 2 this weekend because I liked the first one and I’ve played a little CoD2 on my roomate’s nephew’s XBox 360.
I don’t think Apple “writing a game” would really make a difference, though. I doubt it would sell more Macs, no matter how good it was. While people might be willing to spend $300 for an XBox to play Halo, nobody’s spending $1299 for an iMac to play a game that Apple develops.
We need more companies like Blizzard. Hats off to them for releasing games simultaneously for both platforms and also for shipping hybrid discs.
Who cares…that’s what game consoles are for. My Mac is for getting real work done. Next…
Ok I’ll sum up the gaming problem on Mac’s
1: Apple doesn’t offer a low end, open configuration tower that will appeal to the 3D Gamer crowd based upon price. Like PC’s have. 3D Gamers are mostly young and in a lower income level which 3D gaming occupies their free time inexpensively.
2: PC gaming in general is on the decline in favor of dedicated boxes like X-Box and Playstation’s which today are more powerful than most PC’s. M$ and Sony are losing a great deal of profit on the hardware and making up for it on volume sales of game licenses to third party developers. Sony and M$ also have alternate forms of income to wage this battle amongst themselves. Apple doesn’t have such a luxury to get into the console market to compete.
3: When one gets older and can afford a pricey Mac gaming tower, their reflexes are most likely shot to hell anyway so online play really isn’t a option. Plus there is a certain “immaturity” and desperation issue when a 30 plus year old is at home playing video games instead of going out and chasing girls and socializing like a adult should be.
4: 3D Gaming is almost 100% video card performance dependent, it needs to be upgradable over time to take advantage of more detailed games. So where is the money for Apple if the parts can simply be upgraded via third party sources?
Apple creates mostly closed systems for all their computers except the expensive Towers for two reasons, to keep people from voiding their warranty, increasing after-sale repair and for adequate turnover in the lower margin area.
With the Tower, Apple caters to the computer experienced, and less likely to be operated on by the house 16 year old. In fact Apple will be glad to ship most customer serviceable parts to a Tower owner overnight for their own self repair.
Now Apple has offered a 3D graphics upgrade option in the iMacTel line, this has solved our need for a zippier mid range product as well as preserving the closed box design Apple craves in this market segment.
If Apple wants to appeal to 3D Gamers, a very small market, they will need to produce something that addresses the cost concerns, open architecture, expandability, customization options etc.
Also now that Apple is on the same Intel processors as PC’s, they need to have a easy method to compile Windows code and DirectX into X-Code and Open Gl for developers.
Developers complain that the Mac platform doesn’t return as much ROI to bother tweaking the code. So we get lousy ports of Windows programs if anything at all.
So if the ROI is higher for developers, they can not refuse the Mac market, perhaps even including Mac and PC versions on the same game disk, to be sold in millions of stores all over the world.
Cheap advertising for Apple. People check the specs to see if their PC can run the game and there they see a Mac. They ask themselves “What is a Mac computer?”
Walla.
There are plenty of game developers out there that would port their versions to Mac’s for extra cash provided it was worth it to do so.
They had a game. It was called Halo. We all know what happened with that.
It would have been a watershed for Mac gaming, but…
Apple needs to hire the best game designers around and build the best game platform in existence. They should make the engine cross platform but the development tools Mac only. They should produce a couple of best in class games with the engine and then make it freely available to developers and commit to keeping it current.
Why, you may ask? The answer is simple games to not matter to most of people, probably less than 10% of the market even considers gaming before they purchase. However, most of the developer and tech class consider gaming as not only important, but critical. Apple needs these people to switch to Mac, because they write the programs you use and they offer advice to the 50% of the public that have no clue what they need. How many times have you heard some one say that they didn’t buy a Mac because there were more programs available for windows. When you quiz them on what they use, they not only could they have used a mac, but the mac has best in class software for what they need. The problem is their geeky nephew that told them that there was no software for the Mac, because they didn’t offer 7 of the 10 games that he cared about. He was not lying to them, from his view point the mac really didn’t have nearly as much software as the windows machines.
Apple is cool in all but two classes, the tech (gaming) geeks and and corporate IT types. Apple needs to target these groups to switch as they hold an enormous sway over what people purchase. Apple is making huge strides with the cool crowd, and they should not let up here, but if they can turn a few geeks the pay out could be huge. Gaming is a great way to reach them, as I have seen them go buy a new game console to play one killer game – they tend to have money, they just need for the mac to appeal to them.
Beleaguered?? To quote Ronald Reagan, “There you go again…!”
Actually, I’ve been feeling beleaguered lately, since my dog ate both my install disks for win2k… argh! Talk about beleaguered!
I agree with RePlay. Apple should have bought Bungee when they had the chance and turned them into a second party developer like Claris. While we’re on that subject, they should have done the same with Macromedia and Connectix.
So
In order to stop people from booting into Windows on their Mac’s to play games which won’t be released for the Mac until a few months later.
Apple needs to provide a method that it’s in the developers interest to compile BOTH verisions at the same time.
Not to resort to having make seperate packaging etc for the Mac version. Both on the same disk/package.
What’s cute about this is if Apple Stores sell these games it would act like a draw for PC gamers who might be interested in a Mac eventually. It would hurt Apple to have all that software on display either.
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Lame pickings at the Apple Stores right now, getting better, but still rather lame.
Correct “would” to wouldn’t” in previous post.
Amen praise Jobs.
mdn – you are sooooooooo out of touch with gaming reality.
have you yet to put windows on your macbookpro????
thought so.
Gaming is an on line community.
If you had a Mac only game it would appeal to about 0.001% of the people out there.
I’d rather Apple just opened their war chest and started a program to push Mac development of the middleware (engines, online networking, etc.). Peter Cohen at Macworld wrote an article about this issue a few months ago (http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/gameroom/2006/03/middleware/index.php) and it’s pretty depressing. If they were to float the bill for middleware development and then offer it free or at a very reduced rate to the Mac gaming companies, then we would at least get more games than we do now, and there wouldn’t be any problems with a Mac user playing against a Windows user. They could take the program even further and subsidize the cost of the game development as well, and then perhaps there wouldn’t be any lag time between platform releases.
They sort of tried this already.
HALO was originally to be a Mac only game (or at least first on Mac). They previewed a MacWorld and talked it up really big and had a demo. Then there was a quiet period of months. Microsoft started to get into console gaming, started developing the Xbox and decided it needed a flagship game. So they bought Bungie Studios. All of a sudden HALO became a Console FPS and Mac Users were left hanging.
The main problem is not hardware anymore. Any gamer out there who can afford a gaming PC can afford a Mac Pro or whatever they are going to call it.
The issue for gaming can be summed up really easily. Direct X. A lot of games use Direct X and obviously that don’t fly on OS X. That’s why people want dual boot or virtualization. To be able to play games on a Mac in Windows, and then go back and use all of Apple’s goodness. Best of both worlds.
MDW – Months. As in 2 months until WWDC