“There is only one reason I still have a Windows PC: games. Obviously, I need a device for hooking up to the net, answering email, and general productivity… But I prefer that device to be a PC so I can play the latest and greatest cutting-edge games. It’s not that the Mac gaming shelf is devoid of life — any system that plays Civ IV gets a thumbs-up in my book — but for a serious gamer the PC continues to be where it’s at,” Fargo blogs for FirePlanet.
Fargo writes, “This is not a new development. For years I’ve wanted a Mac.”
Fargo writes, “I know it’s humiliating, but for once you’ve got to look at what Microsoft is doing and copy it. Those guys are scared of you — and they know that games are the one and only thing that has prevented you from hitting the Tipping Point years ago. The ‘Games for Windows’ team is making noise at every game convention I go to. A whole division at Microsoft is devoted to developing game technology — like DirectX or the Microsoft XNA developer’s toolkit. Microsoft buys up development studios and publishes triple-A games with regularity. Microsoft knows that games are the key to getting people to adopt hardware: how is Microsoft attacking the American living room? Through a game console. How did they make sure that game console was a household name? They bought Bungie and brought Halo on board. Man, Halo was supposed to be a Mac game.
“They shanked you,” Fargo writes.
“I say, take some of that big money you’re making from iTunes and shovel it into gaming. Don’t go half-assed, Apple. Buy some companies up. Get with the mergering and acquisitioning. Get some exclusive content. Make sure that the next Spore-like event appears on the Mac first,” Fargo writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We remember sitting in the keynote hall at the Javits Center when Halo was introduced to the world by Steve Jobs (“Halo will be released simultaneously for Mac and Windows”) with a preview trailer at Macworld Expo NYC in 1999. Less than a year later, Microsoft bought Bungie.
Macworld Expo NYC 1999, Steve Jobs shows off Bungie’s Halo:
@Fargo: Get a life. If games are keeping you from the best computing experience possible, you obviously don’t deserve a Mac. Keep your PeeCee, or discover Boot Camp.
His dream was answered partly with the switch to Intel. Does he live under a cave. As a real mac user, I’d rather not have the gamers come over to our side. Sorry gameboys. Go with nintendo, it fucks up the scene like Apple. Duh. Go drink more code red.
I’m NOT a gamer and I would venture to guess that while there are a LOT of gamers out there, the number of people who AREN’T gamers far outweigh them. Going after such a small fickle (they will jump ship as soon as the next best thing comes out) market just wouldn’t make financial sense.
It makes far more sense to keep selling to “everyday” people (which DWARFS the “gamer that would switch if Mac had more games” crowd) and let the market create games if they want to. Besides, I have a Mac, a Wii and a PS2 in my house, what’s one more game (Windows) machine?
@ BustingTheSkullsOfIdiots
So as the great business leader that you are, your only recommendation is that a profitable, multi-billion dollar business should just go away?
I think you need your skull checked…it’s been busted.
@ChrissyOne
The irony link was too funny!!
this debate reminds me of teh EU complaining about iTunes DRM… Um… don’t complain to apple that software title X Y and Z don’t run on the mac, UNLESS apple makes software title X or Y or Z…
MDN is now unreadable
Want to play games?
Buy a JunXBox.
Im still waiting for an OSX version of This
Seriously, This guy has a point. I personaly don’t play games. I used to when I had an Amiga years ago but I prefer to use my Mac Productively, having said that if games bring bigger market share to Apple it’s a good thing right?
Just because Macs are poorly supported in one area it doesn’t make it a pointless area. Not when we are talking about market share.
Hmmmm, “A whole division at Microsoft is devoted to developing game technology — like DirectX or the Microsoft XNA developer’s toolkit. Microsoft buys up development studios and publishes triple-A games with regularity. Microsoft knows that games are the key to getting people to adopt hardware: how is Microsoft attacking the American living room? Through a game console. How did they make sure that game console was a household name? They bought Bungie and brought Halo on board. Man, Halo was supposed to be a Mac game.
“They shanked you,” Fargo writes.”
While I may agree with the above somewhat, I think its the gamers that are getting shanked. They have to buy a whole PC with windows to get a game machine.
People say Microsoft is so great cause they “BUY” a good company and then try to add software links so you “must” use it on a PC. CONTROL is the name of the game and I think that Microsoft is only good at mucking it up.
They bought HALO cause they did not know how to develop it by themselves, they they stop the Mac release for .. . . control. Yep, I think its the gamers that got hosed. If you want gaming power, consider an 8 CPU, 3 terabyte HD Mac Pro. Hmmm, I think that there is enough computing power there, don’t you???
And, Hey, if you buy buggy Vista, you can get 64 bit data control, but wait in the Mac you get 64 AND 32 bit data control, 128 bit CPU processing x 8, and its all seemless.
I hope gaming comes around, just for you guys.
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en
I love how none of you people who are whining “Get a life!” are noticing the irony.
I think the best course of action is to appeal to the design studios. Getting them to develop a Mac and PC version simulaneously would be fantasic. However, if they would work more closely with Aspyr or MacSoft during development then the delay between release of a game for PC and Mac would be greatly reduced or even eliminated.
Games consoles are a dead end, high end PC/Mac with multi-core processors are the solution.
The GPU from likes of ATi and nVidia is going to die, ATi knew this which is why they sold out to AMD. Muti-core CPU with GPU like functions are the future.
Furthermore, DirectX and OpenGL are going to die, Intel have just demoed Quake 4 using multi-core CPUs and RAY TRACING — that’s Pixar quality graphics people!
Ray traced gaming will make GPU (and console) gaming look primitive — and will work just as well on multi-cores Macs as PCs.
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Quote from The Inquirer:
Intel shows off Raytraced Quake 4
Coming to a desktop near you soon
By Charlie Demerjian: Monday 23 April 2007, 11:47
INTEL WAS SHOWING off Raytraced Quake 4 at IDF, and it’s creator Daniel Pohl gave us a little tour of the game. There is a lot here that will be in the next generation of games, or the ones after that, this is much more than a demo.
You see it as soon as you watch the demos like the one above, it does things that other games don’t, they cheat and cut corners, this one does not have to. See the multiple reflective surfaces that are all accurate? Try that with standard raster graphics.
Raytraced Quake 4 (RQ4) casts one ray per pixel by default, and using four ganged 4C machines, it can run at an almost playable frame rate. This means a Tigerton system should be more than able to render this on a CPU with a GPU there simply to throw pixels on the screen.
There is another raytracer at Intel that will so the same job on a single QC CPU, so this is not a job for a Tyan Typhoon anymore, you can do it on a Kentsfield box now. In a year, this will be quite acceptable on a mid-range machine, and in three, you will have to wonder why you need GPUs anymore. Oh wait, that is no surprise, it is already faster on a Kentsfield than a G80.
If you want to do the same colored lights trick that Epic pulled off in UE3 a few GDCs ago, you can, and you get 100% correct shadows thrown in for free. You also can do physically correct glass shaders, reflection and refraction.
If you have the CPU power to spare, you can also cast more than one ray per pixel and get the equivalent of AA and AF. With 16X AA, you obviously need 16x the horesepower, but that is already on the roadmaps.
Without getting too much into the math, lets just say there are some scaling advantages to using raytracing over normal raster graphics. Where you would have to up geometry and take a non-linear scaling hit if you are using a rasteriser, raytracing will do the same job with a much more linear increase in complexity.
In a neat bending of technology to an unintended use, Daniel Pohl did one really cool thing, he used the same rays that you use for graphics to do collision detection. You cast rays out from the player and everything they hit may be an object.
Since the math is being done already, collision detection, one of the harder problems with 3D games, is done for you. It isn’t free, but considering how many millions of pixels there are on a screen, 1600*1200 would be almost 2 million pixels, a few hundred more per object is rounding error. You can do much more accurate collisions for every bullet and bit of debris spinning around, and do it right.
Basically, this is the future. AMD and ATI have both said this is the path they are on, and Intel has demo’d it at a few IDFs. With the work Daniel Pohl did, combined with a few Intel programs, it is on the short term horizon for gamers. Now that Pat Gelsinger has uttered the ‘L’ word, you know things are for real. µ
MDN word = average. Like the quality of most posts about gaming.
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>we need a mac mini pro….
I agree — in a 1U rackmount form factor that would make it an instant hit among touring musicians and small studios. There would be enough extra room in there for a couple serial ATA drives and a card slot. It would partner beautifully with a host of existing rack-mountable pro gear used by audio and video folk: multi-screen displays, audio monitors, digital audio I/O, preamps, keyboard drawers and the like. For music and light video, an X-Serve is overkill (and noisy) and a laptop is too delicate (and easily stolen). I’ve put a Mac Mini in a rack with an external hard drive and it worked great, though it would be sweet to have it all together in one noise-damped rack unit with heavier-duty jacks and no external power block.
Such a unit could also be configured as a small server for home-based businesses and small workgroups.
I think open letters are something very hip these days.
I’m not a “gamer.” I play some games, but gaming does not impact my decision to buy a Mac instead of a PC. If it did impact my decision, I’d still buy a Mac because it can run Windows. Some reviews have said Apple makes the best Windows PCs on the market. I can buy and install a generic version of Windows XP (not Vista) and be rid all the “craplets” that come install on a brand-name Windows PC. And I wouldn’t have to deal with Vista issues.
That’s the best of both worlds.
I’ve long said that this market was the one remaining catalyst to propel the mac into serious units sold numbers. If Apple could motivate more companies to co-develop for the mac, sales would skyrocket both for macs and games.
But how to do this? Game companies develop for the platforms they think will move units. Heck, PC gaming is even falling off the wayside to consoles due to sales.
I think a good set of cross-platform dev tools, with libraries that can extend target platform to perhaps even include consoles, are the answer.
Deals with game publisher is also essential. Perhaps subsidize some client development for big MMOs (a huge chuck of gaming $$ now) to produce a mac-compatible client. I’d love for City of Heroes to have a native mac version.
Hopefully Apple will come up with somthing soon to address the deficiency in native game development.
I love Apple and Mac, but I feel embarrased at the complete fanboyish attitude and lack of general rationality shown by these fans. Windoze sucks, but if there is one place that beats the Mac it is gaming.
If you want more games developed for the Mac, start buying them. Publishers will then have the incentive and $ to develop. Yes, Apple should help developers as well.
I’m a casual gamer and play flash games online. There’s a large variety of very entertaining single and internet connected games that are all good enough for me. I can do this on a Mac or PC with an internet connection. Supposedly, there are MANY casual gamers. I would support Apple including fun, casual games on all of their hardware. Find fantastic developers and port them if you have to. Chess will never be as easy to play as solitare or mindsweeper.
If i wanted to play more games, it would either be something like a Warcraft or i’d buy a console. I’ve no desire for games like Warcraft so I’d buy a Nintendo Wii or DS instead and pay for games.
Yes, i’d actually spend $ to buy console hardware but it’s also about the experience: the seemless experience of a game made for a console that i can enjoy on a screen larger than my computer monitor.
Yes APPL, please wake up..
We need better GPUs in the MacBookPros, and we need an affordable tower with good graphics.. make the GMac.. PLEASE!?!?
Apple,
Just work your magic with studios to get the game titles on PC and Mac, simultaneously. None of these year-later Mac releases.
And have the Mac version’s quality at least be on par with its PC counterpart. No lame half-assed ports…
I’d love to see a Mac-only blockbuster, but we need to get some more market share before a studio wold make a serious effort.
Does anybody know what the real numbers are for Apple to make any money on this? Why do it otherwise?
Sorry to get personal, but the gamers that I know are students of mine who don’t get to sleep till 4 in the morning, and aren’t interested in anything else, especially coming to school. Most of them think they will be game developers when they grow up. Is there a market for more game developers than there will be game buyers?
Someone get some numbers, otherwise this conversation is a waste of good electrons.
Next get a mac ad.
PC. (in halo gear) So I’ve been up all night playing with my crew on the net. We just ambushed team wookies hq. Sucks to be a Mac, bet you wish you could play Halo.
Mac: Actually PC…one sec. (He Fades away)(He re appears in bussiness garb with halo gear on top) I’m a member of team Wookie. I just used Mac OSX lepord to emulate games running with DirectX 10. And I actually, I’m on team wookie. Wait…your not team Trekkie are you?
PC: Umm..no way…
Mac: Oh, here comes VulcanPCthrilla…(he shoots)…
PC: MAN!!!!
Mac: Wow, so Mac’s are even better at halo. And PC’s like Treck over Wars.
PC: (Attempts Vulcon grip)
Mac: Dude.
PC> control alt delete, CONTROL ALT DELETE!!!
Mac: it’s…option actually..and…you have to hit control option escape to…nevermind.
I find it difficult to assess just how large of a market cites “gaming compatibility” as a serious factor when purchasing a computer. At first glance, the tendency is to say that such a market is a very small fraction of the overall computer market. After all, most average Joes who buy computers to surf the internet and send emails to their friends don’t care much about games at all.
However, their kids do.
This is both a problem and a solution for Apple. Some kids are going to care about being able to play games, and some kids are going to know about Apple and are going to want one of their computers regardless of whether it can play games natively. Teenagers and adults aged 20-30 will be the reason why Apple gains significant share in the next few years. And the primary reason why this is, is because gaming is shifting towards consoles. These young people (including myself) want things to work properly. They don’t put up with garbage products, especially in the tech space, like their parents do because they don’t know any better. This applies to computers running Windows more than anything else. So watch them all switch in hoards in the next few years. I’m in University now, and of my friends that own laptops of their own, the majority now own Macbooks. This is huge for Apple. These people will stick with the Macintosh now, because “It just works”. Apple’s long-term usability strategy will now begin to pay off, because these young people finally have enough sense to demand that products “just work”.
I’m buying more AAPL, because as far as I can see, the sky is the limit.
–mAc
I miss you, Bungie… The Bungie of old, anyway… The Bungie that put out games like Marathon, Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity. The Bungie that was dedicated to gaming on the Mac platform. Not the Bungie that sold out to Microsoft so it could make more money. I miss the old Bungie software… :'(