Kikizo’s Adam Doree sat down with Valve boss Gabe Newell and the subject of Apple Mac and gaming came up.
Newell said:
• We tried to have a conversation with Apple for several years, and they never seemed to… well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go “wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming”. And then we’ll say, “OK, here are three things you could do to make that better”, and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow though on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there’s never any follow through on any of the things they say they’re going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms.
• I just don’t think they’ve ever taken gaming seriously. And none of the things developers ask them to do are done. And as a result, there’s no gaming market there to speak of. We’d love it if they would get serious about it. But they never have, and can’t even follow trough on any of their commitments for game developers.
• We’ve seen no evidence that they are able to follow through on even simple programs in the game space. It seems bizarre to me because it’s like one of the biggest things holding them back in the consumer space. If you look at a Macintosh right now, it does a lot of things really well compared to a Vista PC, but there are no games. Why, I don’t know. If I were a Macintosh product manager, it would be pretty high on my list, and a problem to get taken care of, as probably the number one thing holding them back with consumers.
The rest of the interview, focusing on Half-Life 2, Orange Box, and more, here.
Apple.com’s section on games for Apple Mac and iPod: http://www.apple.com/games/
C’mon Apple.. make a SLi system based on the new P85 intel chipset.. give us 2 full size hard drives, a quad core option, and some bad ass VGA card options.
dont wanna go sli? fine.. give us ONE freaking PCIX-16 slot, and one hard drive bay…
PLEASE?!?!?!
It is a niche market.. but GDIT… its IMPORTANT!
He’s 100% right.
Haha. So funny. All you goofs waiting for games on the Mac. Hey, I’m a Mac guy. But I was an Atari 800 guy first, C64 second… I’m mean hey anything’s better than Windows. Unless of course you want to play games and then uh… there’s nothing else.
I sure saved a lot of money building a Q6600 instead of a Quad MacPro. So forget it. You WON’T be getting much as far as games go and you will be getting last years graphics cards even in your Pro level Macs and a bunch of non-upgradable “all in one consumer level iMacs” so that Apple can milk you for all your worth. Because Steve says it’s an all in one world bitch!
But hey you’ve got the best OS. Oh well, I couldn’t pay for it anymore.
I have a funny feeling that Jobs looks down on gaming, if only a little. The Mac is a serious, advanced platform and maybe he thinks games make the computer more like a toy. So he won’t stand in the way of game software, but he’ll be damned if he’ll make change one for the sake of gaming alone.
Just my guess.
100% correct.
This is directly related to the hardware as well. the iMacs have mobile graphics, and the Mac pro’s are not only outdated video cards, but over kill.
where is the midrange workstation/gaming rig??????
Games are one of the MOST if not THE most extreme use of computer hardware. Its wide spread use of games that really push the development of more powerful and faster hardware. Its games that need the extra video horsepower, its games that need the multi core cpu. Games adopt to new faster hardware way faster then the rest of the software world…..maybe apple is afraid of being pushed.
TT: You ain’t EVER gonna get all that.
All you’re gonna get is Steve’s lip service, and Carmack talking about ID latest engine and one game from ID.
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Damn right it’s important. The single most important pusher of technology is games. NOTHING else uses as much computing power and no other single market sells more home computers. An it’s one of the big reasons people didn’t buy Macs in the 1990s.
Why does Newegg etc. exist? Gamers.
But does Apple care? Nope.
Gaming is what boot camp is for. My Mac Pro runs every PC game I throw at it silky smooth. No complaints about it other than having no option to switch between the os x and windows similarly to fast user switching. Besides, I agree that Mac is a serious platform. I use it for work and I play games on XP b/c that’s all XP is good for.
Come to think of it, If my games were on os x, I would be a hell of a lot less productive
to maxink:
Yes people are more productive on Macs. But it’s not because they don’t have an DAMN GAMES. It’s the OS.
And you’re missing the point. People can’t afford Mac Pros. So Apple is not selling computers to a huge segment of the market. You simply cannot explain this. It is impossible to explain. Home computers have always played games. It’s the sinlge biggest reason home computers exist. SO WTF!
At least once a day someone ducks into the office of one of my colleagues and makes some comment about the two Macs on his desk. He teaches computer science at a local university and used to run Windows and Linux but now has a TiBook and an iMac. Once each day he listens as someone derides his choice of a “toy machine.”
I ask him what his answer is, and he shrugs and responds, “What’s the point?”
“What’s the point?” I exclaim. “The point is that your Mac ships with Java, Ruby, Python, and Perl. The point is that you can open up a Terminal window and edit using vi or emacs. You can set up sendmail or use lynx. You can enable the Apache Web server that ships with every Mac by checking a check box. That’s the point.”
“I usually tell them that,” he says, “but then they ask me if they can play the latest version of some game on it like they can on a Windows box.”
“Well then,” I reply, “which one is the toy machine?”
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/12/10/osx_java.html
If you want a toy computer, get a Windows box. Real Mac users won’t miss you.
Waaaah. Boo-hoo. No one at Apple is taking gaming seriously. It gives me no reason to buy a Mac. Here, have a big heaping helping of STFU. Games are a pastime. Get over it. Maybe if you got your pasty white asses out in the sun some time and exercised more than your opposable thumbs, you’d realize that.
Oh, and raskol, if you ever got off the gaming chair and out of your mom’s basement and got a real job, perhaps you’d find out that the Mac platform is well worth the investment. The cost isn’t that big when you have a job.
My name was the MDN magic word! YAY!!!!
Raskol sez people can’t afford Mac Pros. Hmm, last time I checked, they were starting at about $2500. Apple advertises for $59 per month. I don’t know what kind of job you have (or don’t have), but that’s pretty affordable to me. Then again, I have a job and don’t sit around playing games all day.
Jimbo,
I’m 37 years old. I’m sitting on a drafting chair not a gaming chair. I’m an architect. And I’m an Apple shareholder.
AND I play computer games. I can’t justify spending $3,000 on a home computer because I have more important responsibilities than to visit this site and argue with tools like you.
So before you stereotype people… oh nevermind I’m talking to people who have nothing better to do.
Nice follow through by Lameo the Interviewer: “OK, here are three things you could do to make that better.”
Umm, what three things? What not let the public know so they can light a fire under someone’s ass at Apple (or laugh if the three things are just sheer ridiculousness)?
Ok, one more, only because I get off on this.
Yep $2,500 and what do you get? A $50 video card a $130 operating system, a low end hard drive, 1GB of RAM that, if it weren’t FB would be fast and only cost $75 and 4 CPUs (that usually don’t do anything unless your rendering) in a fancy aluminum case. Got anymore Wiseass? I don’t care.
Oh, the iPhone is the coolest thing ever made. Not being sarcastic.
@raskol
I am in NO WAY rich and bought my mac pro for less than a top of the line 24″ imac. Of course the OS is responsible for productivity. That is why I use it as a work Machine. Apple will do whatever it wants as far as hardware goes and you have to deal with very limited expandability unless you get the mac pro. If one wishes to to do serious gaming on a mac, the mac pro is the best option out there and boot camp is the only real solution. That was my point.
@raskol
P.S. If you really have better S45t to do at 12:30 am, why are you reading this?
… a Shoeman in our midst.
My experience, before the Mac:
I was a happy Linux user (way more productive than Windows), and one time I felt like trying some games.
I built a new box (I know how to do that), and installed XP (after not using Windows for over 6 years) and what happened was, as soon as I connected it to the Internet, a virus got in.
Not used to that anymore, I learned I had to run system updates, hardware drivers, install an antivirus, clean up the machine, do the spyware thing… I think I spent half a day to have Windows working.
My conclusion: Do you want video games? A gaming console would have been cheaper considering the time invested in having Windows working.
I believe hardcore gamers will disagree with me, and I respect that. But for me, I’d rather buy a console and forget about installations, viruses, restarting, etc.
Now, I got a couple of Mac games (Quake 4, Doom 3, and a Star Wars one) an they worked like a charm. It was a pleasure to use. I don’t mind about how powerful the machine is as long as the game run smoothly. And the Mac can do that.
Just my take on the issue. Doesn’t have to be the absolute right one
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Funny, Valve doesn’t take games seriously either. I hate all of their games.
Yeah sometimes Steve Jobs can be an ass, and his faithful can follow in his shitty ways. Games are awesome. They are like movies that you get to be in. Apple needs to *get over it*, and help these guys out. As a stockholder, I demand it.
I’ve been trying to convert a number of friends to the Mac for years. They’ve all said they would if games came out for the Mac as soon as they did for the PC… 🙁
Apple needs to move quickly into games, I remember at a MacWorld Expo keynote years ago when John Carmack spoke about the potential for games on the Mac, what the F happened??
I guess Jimbo must be very upset with AppleTV – y’know how TV shows are mindless entertainment and all, I’m sure he doesn’t watch them, or maybe he only watches the “good” shows and looks down from his ivory tower at people who watch the “bad” shows. Games, TV shows, Music — it’s all forms of entertainment and escapism. To say one is good but another is bad is ridiculous.
Games? We don’t need no stinkin’ games.
What exactly does Gabe Newell expect Apple to do before the Mac platform is good enough for Valve to support? The hardware has been up to it for ages, support for Open GL has been standard since OS 9, software solutions like Cider make porting easy, the Mac market grew 40% in the last year, etc. Other games developers like Blizzard and now Electronic Arts seem to have no trouble making games for OS X. It sounds to me like Gabe Newell is just making bad excuses. Perhaps he expects Apple to do his job for him.
Well! People who “take gaming seriously” have mostly heavy steroids problems! Wouarf! This game developper really is sort of funny!
Isn’t anyone tired of that Mac Pro case yet? It’s going on five years old now..
The PowerMac G5 was 2003 if I remember correctly… And we’re almost in 2008 now..
This would be a perfect opportunity for M$ to spoof the Apple commercial… “Oh I’ve got games. I’ve got chess!”
I run games just fine on my iMac. I even have a Nintendo 64 controller plugged in via a USB converter. My one year old iMac has enough hardware power to run modern 3d games beautifully, even at high resolution with many times anti alias.
It’s just a matter of rebooting into Windows to play games, and sticking with Mac OS to do anything important.
Um. The high-end gaming community will never buy Macs. Plain and simple. That’s OK – there just aren’t that many of them. The Intarweb echo chamber makes it seem like more, but that’s a known bug in human wetware.
Most people use their machines to DO something. People that have real things to do in life (e.g. job, family) do not have time for serious gaming. You might be able to get away with something small and light, or an occasional campaign. Long, regular play sessions are the equivalent of spending every night at a bar – fine for bachelors and their buddies, but not for the real people that actually make the world continue to tick.
If you are one of those who thinks they work hard, take good care of your family, and still have serious time for games (of any sort, really), you are most likely deluding yourself. The time is coming from somewhere, and it’s hard enough to do just the first two alone. I say this as I sit reading a Mac fan site and replying to people I don’t know at all.
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G Spank – games have a VERY long way to go before they pass the Bruckheimer level of cinematography, IMHO.
The gaming industry has sucked the life out of Microsoft and Sony. They are making zero money, or then losing their ass big, big time. Apple does not want to compete in that market unless they see a way of disrupting how it done.
Bleed you clueless Microsoft assclowns, bleed.
Gaming is overrated.
At least, as a sales-factor for a platform.
Dell bought Alien (or what was their name?).
They may now have some street-cred in the gamez-scene (or maybe not), but did it bring forward their business? Not at all.
The truth is, there is no market for the Gamers’-Mac besides a vocal minority (plus maybe an additional 50% who don’t care posting) who plasters boards like these with “I’d buy a Gaming-Mac” BS.
SJ knows this, and thus wisely stays abstinent from this silly market.
Hey I just realised the title “Apple’s never taken Mac gaming seriously” is an oxymoron.
Gaming is a non-serious use of time isn’t it?
Anyway, surely a Playstation 3 or a Wii is a far better way to play games and these consoles are not a constant distraction because they are out of your office in your living room with your TV right? They are not sitting there in front of you while you work, beckoning you to waste time when you should be photoshopping or writing letters etc, like a PC rigged for gaming would be.
I’m glad that Apple don’t take games seriously as I get enough distractions with this site thank you very much!!!
The mac platform has never been for gamers. You want games get a PS3 or Xbox. Mac isn’t going to hit the gaming market because the hardware would need upgrading more then twice a year. Serious gamers upgrade their hardware so often it’s not funny…
Mac is not aimed at that market, and probably never will be. Because as soon as Apple lets people put whatever hardware they want in the computer, they stability of the system will end up like windows… Agreed?
We love macs because we know the hardware will work for every OS Apple gives us for the next 3 or 4 years. You buy a Windows and for every service pack you find your computer slowing to a holt. Not to mention all the software that doesn’t run because of hardware compatibility. Honestly, if Windows did what Apple do and sold the OS only their own computers it wouldn’t be half as bad as it currently is.
The bottom line is, Mac is as stable as it is because the hardware is hand picked by Apple and works flawlessly for every OS and application you use. You take away that, and Mac OS will be as shitty as Windows.
It seems that the best way to attract Windoze fanboys to a Mac site is to have a topic about gaming. There is all this nonsense about Macs being behind on graphics cards and lack of expandability and poor gaming performance. Yet it really is all BS.
I know several hundred dedicated high end gamers from those who write games such as Doom to those that compete on a global scale. Here is what I have observed.
1) Dedicated game consoles allow a better gaming experience for these gamers than almost eevery general purpose PC (or Mac) on the market. Even the console CPU’s are purpose built and would likely be rubbish at anothing other than gaming.
2) Graphics benchmarks tend to show performance capabilities that a real gamer cannot hope to achieve. This is because the processing power available in most machines now is way beyond human reaction times. Leading games developers have to introduce ‘slow down’ functions to make their games usable on most modern platforms.
3) While the Windoze platform has thousands of games and the MAC has only hundreds, very few gamers play more than 20 or 30 regulars.
4) Most high end gamers build their own machines with hand selected components. Dell, HP, IBM, Gateway, you name it…. DO NOT BUILD SPECIALIST GAMES MACHINES. They like Apple recognise that it is business and employed people that have the real money and so they build machines that do not require retooling and new drivers at every turn or new development.
5) Of course there are some specialist very high end games machines that are not regular PC or Consoles. However they are used mainly by the military and cost amounts that would make your eyes water and have features that the gamers fan boys could not even dream of.
6) If you take a creful look at the Windoze gamers market, the claim is that they use the latest graphics cards. BS they do… Lets say that a new graphics card with specs that get gamers all hot and sweaty is released. First specialist drivers must be written. M$ wont do that. Then the games themselves need to be modified in some way (most times). Why this latter need. Well to really extract the last ounce of performance from your graphics card you MUST bypass the operating system. This is probably why Apple is less interested in dedicated games machines. The moment you allow developers to go directly to hardware you open the door for viruses and other malware in a way that OSX has resisted for years. This is also the main reason why Windows will always have so much more malware than other OS’s. The single biggest factor behind all the malware on Windows boxes is the games themselves. Not that they are deliverately so, just that the conditions needed for good games match those needed for malware.
So don’t get all hot and sweaty about it. I have no problem finding games I like to play on my Mac, and I have a dedicated console for the high end stuff. In neither case do I have to use Windoze !!!!
Apple has to bring out: an expandable, mid-prized, mid-sized, cubic Mac … !
fenman is 0 correct!
If Apple’s never taken Mac gaming seriously, Microsoft’s never taken PC video editing, photo editing, OS ease of use, security or quality seriously.
Sorry fenman, I meant ONE HUNDRED AND TEN PERCENT correct!
The posting does not seem to display percentage symbols correctly here! I’ll try again, here’s a percentage symbol followed by one-one-zero:
0
I agree with some of what you say, except for the fact that major PC makers don’t make specialized gaming machines. You apparently haven’t looked at what’s going on in the PC world in several years. I have no idea where you pulled that “fact” from.
So:
Dell has the XPS line (which was created specifically as a gaming line) AND they bought Alienware, which was a whole computer company dedicated strictly to gamers. Dell has a whole sub-site in their page dedicated strictly to gamers called “goplay” with gaming rigs.
HP has the “Blackbird” PC, which is strictly marketed as a gaming rig. http://h20435.www2.hp.com/
Gateway? Check: http://www.gateway.com/home/gaming.php
Lifes too short for Games, what a wast of time!
I agree, why would anyone do anything that they deem as fun?
Oh, you mean, you personally don’t find games fun? Okay, that’s fine, but many people do… Just like some people enjoy fly fishing, which is a huge waste of time! Oh wait, I guess those people like it…
See how that works?
I so wish people would quit comparing Apple Macintosh to Microsoft Windows. It confuses people when you compare hardware to software.
i would like to know what valve asked from Apple.
i don’t see why Apple should do anything for game developers, the mac works fine the way it is, they just have to write cross platform code.
that interview is not very specific.
i don’t remember Apple ever modifying the OS, or the hardware, for one specific market.
one of the reasons some games could not be ported to the mac was the processor (some library’s, like havoc, a physics engine) use assembly language.
that’s solved now, what else do they want ?
I like games.
Your potential. Our passion.™
Buy a freaking console already.
One of my favorite Mac anecdotes:
PC Guy: dude Macs suck.
Mac Guy: Why you say that?
PC Guy: they are toys….. and there aren’t any games for them.
What is the big deal?
Have to have every single latest game and feel you need a computer to play said games, then spec out/build your own windows box…
Don’t waste your time trying to make Macs something different than what they are now…
Apple is currently enjoying an incredible amount of growth in their Mac line and many many people are switching to Macs. For now the consumer market is speaking and it is saying they agree with Apples direction.
@fenman
1) Wrong. With a fairly simple mode you can turn an X-Box into a fully functional PC running the linux of your choice. Well… from a fairly good selection. Including Ubuntu. The PS2 and 3 actually already run a custom Linus build. Can’t say for sure about the Cell CPU in a PS3, but generally consoles just use a general purpose CPU… because that’s what a CPU is for. It’s the graphics hardware that specific.
2) No… they just (generally) test the maximum number of frames per second which can be achieved under stress. This is not the same as testing the speed the game actually runs at.
3) True enough… but how many of these gamers are there? Clue: a lot. Globally the games industry is bigger than the film industry.
4) Already covered above. But yes… most hardcore gamers do generally build their own. I did. But I never really used it so now it’s being sold. Does it bother me that I can’t really just fire up a game when I feel like it on OSX though? Yes. Note: In this instance, when I say “a game” I mean halflife 2. How’s that for topical?
5) I think you’ll find they dream of them all the time.
6) The company which builds the hardware generally builds the drivers, or they make the hardware confirm to an existing standard. You might want to do a wikipedia search on “opengl” and save us both a lot of time. It gives direct access to the hardware, which is not a problem, since you can’t really infect a GPU with a virus without actually changing the firmware which opengl won’t do. Ironically, Direct X does go though the operating system and that’s what most windows games are written in. Hence the crappy performance of a lot of mac games: they require emulation, but not the ones by id software, since they use opengl and not direct X.
At the risk of getting flamed all the way to hell, these are my credentials for writing this: I have an Honours Degree in Artifical Intelligence and Computer Science, I’m studying for a PhD in Human Computer Interaction, I have one friend who’s semi profesional overclocker (this does exist) who I talk to about hardware quite a bit, and another who works for Rock Star North (the Grand Theft Auto people) who I talk to about games quite a bit.
That is all
I am in no way an online gamer… and that’s what the speed is needed for anyway, right? Fast twitch?
I do enjoy casual games. David’s Absolute games are great and I’m also a fan of Solitaire Until Dawn X, among others.
The real point, however, is Core Image and Core Animation. More and more of the computer’s work is being loaded onto the back of the graphics card for everything visual going on with the computer. Without great graphics cards, what should be the work of the graphics card is piled on the back of the CPU.
That’s why Dashboard clogs up my iMac and I don’t get the ripple effect. That’s why I can’t get decent performance with apps that use Core Image’s filters. Everything on such apps, which are meant for real-time rendering, takes a year and a day to render.
That’s why Apple should be taking the gaming sector seriously. If not for games, then for the best performance for the money.
I am thrilled that the starting price for the new iMac is $1199, and comes with a Super-Drive instead of a Combo-Drive. But beyond that, the 20″ 2.4, the 24″ 2.4, and the 24″ 2.8 top model iMac all come with the same ATI graphics card. Even if one never games, Apple’s starting out with graphics cards to match the multi-core CPUs should be an example Apple sets for excellence.
Instead of comparing similarly equipped Apple/Dell/HP,etc. to show the Apple is on the same level price_wise, I would love to show PC users either how much more Mac they can get with the same amount of money… or how much less expensive the comparably equipped Mac is next to the Windows PC, without having to defend Apple for not producing junk $500 commodity machines.
I’m no financial expert, but I’m sure Apple would not be sacrificing too much profit margin to gain not only “mindshare” but the perception of “MUCH MORE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK” mindshare which would sway a lot of consumers clinging to Windows.
In other words, the way Apple’s high end machines outprice the competition should be practiced across the board on all of Apple’s Mac computers.
As Rod Serling used to say, “Case in point…”
I play Tropico2 just fine on my Core2Duo iMac.
And FreeCiv.
And SimuTrans.
And Age of Mythology.
And StarCraft.
Point being, there are quite a few games out there, but they tend to be “thinking” games, not FPS like Halo or Half-Life. It just depends on what your idea of a “game” is as to whether you feel that you are being served by Apple. If I want to play an EA Sports title or an FPS, I have a console for that. But if I want to kill 12 hours straight on a cold Iowa January night, then I’ve got my Mac humming in the corner beckoning me.
Apple was burned by Bungie after they put a lot of time and Money into helping them Then just after Apple finished doing a lot of work for Bungie’s Halo, Bungie let MS buy them and Halo was released on XBox first even though the MAC Version was almost done even before they started working on the xBox version. Gamer designers want Apple to make a bunch of changes for them but, their not willing to give Apple anything, not even a commitment to release any game for the Mac. If game designers what Apple to get serious about games, then they should suck-it up and get serious about developing games for the Mac.
An exclusive first on Mac release of a really hot I need to play that game now title would be a good place to start. Committing and then following through on a few of the hot game titles would be good too. Getting Mac and PC versions out at the same time would be good too. Mac sure the Mac version of the game titles are functionally equivalent or better then the PC Version of the same game.
If Game developers will prove they are serious then Apple will get serious too.
I hate to say it, but he’s right. For some reason Apple doesn’t see gaming as critical to its market share adoption. But it is. Just look at what drives most pc hardware development? Hopefully they will wise up one day and see that lack of gaming support is a vital thing that keeps a large portion of the market share from moving to a Mac.
@Nick
Okay, you disagree with me and wave your ‘credentials’ around like they ought to make us respect you more. I too have credentials as does everybody else to differing degrees.
Well lets take a few points. I know you can turn an XBox into a PC, can’t run Windows on it – just Linux. Well you have to mod the XBox so that like modding anything else and doesn’t count in the context of an off-the-shelf box.
As for testing frames per second – you clearly have not been involved extensively in hardware benchmarking. When you have built at least 3 computers on the World’s fastest 500 supercomputers list – then I will listen to you as an equal on benchmarking.
Yes there are a lot of hardcore gamers out there but they constitute a very small minority of the overall market. Clue business accounts for more than 50 percent of total installed base of computers. Educational establishments for another 10 to 15 percent. and regular home users for the majority of the remainder – these are people who balance their budgets, make postcards from holiday snaps, download music and send emails. Yes many also play games but are not hardcore gamers.
As for your response to point 4 – you have just demonstrated that you are NOT a hardcore gamer because you built a specialised machine and then did not really use it.
Apple provides and certifies a greater proportion of the drivers for their machines than M$. You claim that a graphic card cannot get a virus. Well the first virus that could physically damage a machine was written for a graphics card and multi-sunc monitor combo – it reprogrammed the flyback and scan rates resulting in a monitor burnout within 30 seconds. There are at least another dozen or so graphic card specific viruses. Not many I grant but they do exist. You also suggest Wikipedia as an authoritative source of information – yet Wikipedia corrects 10’s of thousands of entries every year after being proved wrong. I have even corrected some of them as you no doubt have also. Also I do not know how much performance optimising for advanced graphics cards you have done but opengl while good is not that good and if you need to go into the bleeding edge you need to code at Assembler and microcode level, something I have been doing for over 30 years now. Such customised performance can outstrip opengl by at least an order of magnitude however it does run the risk of leaving the back door open.
As for credentials I have 6 degrees including 2 PhD’s and a Masters, have presented papers at 11 international forums and chaired 1 and hold 27 patents. With photographic recall I program in 85 computer languages and speak 6 human languages. In your impending PhD you may be referencing work on Semiotics, a science rarely applied to gaming. Go back and read those references again.
One final comment – the specialist gamers boxes put out by mainstream manufacturers are variations on their regular desktop ranges. They do not have purpose built components – merely a game optimised selection of components. In addition Apple currently has about 49 percent of Microsoft’s market capitalisation and a greater market cap than all other PC desktop manufacturers than IBM. It really looks as though not building specialist gamers machines is hurting them.
He is not completely correct.
The original Doom was created on the NeXTStep. Hint hint that is what OS X really is. That is why alll your AppKit classes start with “NS” in XCode. So, high quality games can be made for the Mac using Macs. Many high quality PC and XBox games were first made on a Mac or a one of it’s relatives. The original PS/2 and Sega Saturn development kits required the use of gcc…the native compiler on the Mac. If this guy wants to tell us that Apple has to make the porting from Windoze to Mac more transparent…that is one thing. But to insinuate the tools aren’t there is a whole other story.
Remember WoW the #1 video game ever…Runs on Macs. Blizzard is making a hefty profit each month This guy is blaming Jobs because Sierra don’t know how to program.
Just my $0.02
@fenman
Just going to quickly replay to each point (being a little unproductive today).
Thank you.
My point was that it is not specialised “console only” processor. The X-Box 360 uses the same PPC processors that macs used to, in fact.
Er… I thought we were talking about benchmarking in the context of games, are we not? I meant graphics benchmarks. If I want to benchmark a CPU I would use super pi.
Point conceded.
I never said I was a hardcore gamer… although I realise I might have implied. At one point I possibly was. I get out a lot more now.
How many games actually bypass opengl or dx and use assembler?
Those are some serious credentials. Much respect. I’m going to take the quality of your English as a sign that you’re not making it up.
While I’m at it:
@Ray
gcc is the gnu c compiler. It’s completely generic and runs under any unix like environment (and windows if you need it to)… Despite GNU being short for GNU’s Not Unix.
“I just don’t think they’ve ever taken gaming seriously. And none of the things developers ask them to do are done. And as a result, there’s no gaming market there to speak of.”
its funny the companies that do make games for the Mac seem to have no trouble with it, and in fact a few private talks with guys at blizzard confirm they like writing for the Mac better.
so, is it Apples fault, but companies like Blizzard are just smarter than the guys at Valve, or is it just that companies like Valve don’t bother to make the games?
either way, it is hard seeing how companies like Valve are not at least partly to blame.
nice try, but if you want games on the platform try WRITING THEM YOU LAZY FARGING BASTAGES.
@ Ray
Starting to sound really pedantic here, but:
You’re right, Sierra don’t know how to program. They’re a publisher. Valve on the other hand, really do. It’s hard legitimately fault them in that area.
I think that you are 100% dead wrong. First, the issue isn’t confined to the hard-core gaming community, but the the entire computing community. While only a limited number of people play games full-time, almost everyone with a computer either has or wants to play a game at one time or another. I know maybe two dozen people who would buy Macs in a heartbeat if only they ran whatever their favorite game might be. Indeed, my own kids have really never used any computer other than a Mac (that’s all we have at home and all they have at their schools) are begging me to get a Windows machine to use just for gaming. The market for Mac games, whatever the size, is clearly there. The fact that Apple is so rigid that it deliberately choses to frustrate it is an example of the rigid mentality that has always been part of the Apple culture, but is only flourishing recently. It is the same mindset that thinks it is OK to turn someone’s iPhone into a brick and then refuse to fix it even if the owner is willing to pay for an out-of-warranty repair.
@ “@Me”
How old’s your Mac? Set up BootCamp with Windows XP for your kids, then.
Is it Apple or is it the other way around? It seems funny that a company like Valve with some real money making games like half life and half life 2 would make an excuse like Apple is not serious about games. Mac Central has a story that I think puts some light on this story and really puts Valve in that position more than Apple.
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/gameroom/2007/10/valve/index.php
It asks the question about how all other PC games are ported successfully by other companies like ID and ASPYR. As it turns out Valve just maybe to GREEDY and that may be the only reason they have for not porting there games and blaming Apple.
Like I’ve said for a long time, games are for subhuman, knuckle-dragging, thoughtless, brain-dead zombies whose only urge is to kill or have no lives. Go on and play your games, gamers, and then brag about how awesome your specialty set-up is which was obsolete the second you bought it. Wow! You can get 50 FPS on KillEmOrDieTrying V: The Return! My gosh. Grow up already.
Games drive this, games drive that. If you’re going to argue that games are so important, you might as well argue that porn is more important still. After all, isn’t that why most people get online?
Seriously, folks. So if the end justifies the means, then where are all the dedicated porn machines? Why not cater to the mindless killing machines known as gamers? Why not support their under-developed social habits? Why not reward social isolation and amassing pointless factoids?
See, the whole gaming subculture is comprised of freaks, idiots, people who can’t reason, and folks living in their parent’s basement. I can understand why Apple wouldn’t want to cater to that audience. Even writing about it makes me feel icky and slimy.
MDN Miss: If you packed all the world’s hardcore gamers into a steel cube 1 mile x 1 mile x 1 mile, no-one would miss them, least of all their trophy girlfriends.
I’ve got a handful of really fun, kickass games for my mac, even some older ones I wish I could boot up again on my new iMac. I also have halflife 2 for Windows which I play on my iMac using Codeweavers Crossover which means I don’t need to install Windows. It works just fine with all settings at highest. If the occasional game comes out only for Windows, I’ll still play it on my iMac and be quite happy.
Honestly. There is a huge market for gamers. Huge. Multi-billion dollar industry. Apple could do nothing but win customers by helping games come to their platform. I can’t tell you how many people I have talked to who say they can’t get a Mac because there are no games for it (even though there are a handful of wonderful ones). They don’t want to dual-boot. They want to sit down and game.
This is what I hear people saying:
Macs can’t work in the office because the business world won’t let them.
Macs can’t work on the other end of the spectrum in the gaming world because there are no games for them.
@sn
Of course we tried that. I have two Core2 Duo Macbook Pros, one MacBook and one Mini. One Pro has BootCamp and one has Parallels. Both of them have problems with the games we tried, either due to video issues or USB issues (plug in special controllers and they don’t work). BootCamp is better than Parallels, but there are still issues. I don’t play games (at least I haven’t since Infocom went out of business) so I forget what the problem titles were, but there were a number of them. Guitar Hero II may have been one.
@BustingTheSkullsOfIdiots
If you could produce a shred of actual evidence, you might have a point. (ie you would have to prove that ALL gamers are as you describe them)