Interview: "no evidence" Apple understands gaming - Page 4

Yes they are, Mac OS X is just much further along the evolutionary track than windows. PCs and consoles, however have hardware differences that lend themselves to different genres.

Games console hardware lending itself to Games and PCs to other tasks. What genre of game can't you play on a console?

// P.S. As an aside the last two games I bought were PS1 to play on my Powerbook G4: Ah the good old days of CVGS.

Actually, fiddling with sound- and videocard settings is a Windows problem. That's exactly why the Mac could become a very powerful gaming platform. It offers a lot more choice and has considerably more utility than a console, yet doesn't have all the problems Windows is struggling with. That's probably also what Newell had in mind when he said the Mac could own a lot more gaming marketshare, than it does today, if only Apple (read Steve) wanted to.

I don't think it's about can or can't, it's about ease of playability. I'm not convinced that the RTS type of game can be nearly as efficient on a console.

You are hurting my brain by posting this nonsense.

Even if you were totally ignorant of PC hardware, had you actually read the thread, you'd see from my post on page 2 that you get a *good* graphics card for $130 today. Wii and basic accessories cost $300. A 360 costs $350. Want to play online games? $100+ a year for XBox Live, $0 for PC gaming. Way cheaper games on the PC. Do the math.

You'll have to "fiddle" with graphics card drivers (that is, you have to install them) every 2-3 years, when you buy a new computer.
The overwhelming majority of gamers play with integrated sound and do not even have a sound card.

^ +1... Add FPS and Flight Simulators to that list.

It isn't so much that you can't play most genres on consoles, it's that you can't play some of them that well on console. FPS is better on PCs (sorry, Halo-series). And RTS is pretty much a rout for PC over console... a lot fewer RTS games available on consoles, and even when they are available, they tend to suck in their implementation... ask anyone who played Starcraft64 on console vs Starcraft on a PC or Mac. \

Finally of course, there's MMORPGs. Sure, they exist on consoles, but, would you rather play World of Warcraft on PC/Mac, or Final Fantasy XI on a console? Even if you're one of the few who said Final Fantasy, guess what? It's on PC also.

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I don't think that providing adequate support to gaming is really an 'aping Windows thing', it's more of a common-sense thing. Should Apple not do things based on being afraid of looking like they're "aping Windows"? \

The sad thing is, it's not like Apple would have to do all that much... game developers can see that the Mac is a platform on the rise, thus more and more of them want to bring their stuff over to the Mac.

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Its really about the controllers that are and are not available based on the popularity of the genre. Keyboards are rare because TVs, even HD ones, aren't quite as good with text at the usual seating distances.

Flight Sims are such a small segment of gaming these days and most serious ones expect a good $$ layout in joystick, throttle, pedals, etc. vs keyboard and mouse.

A MMORPG for the console would have to be voice oriented vs chat oriented. WoW is pretty close given most folks use voice for raids. Most game mechanics in a MMORPG are simplified anyways that game pad vs keyboard isn't that big a deal. CRPGs do well enough on consoles.

We'll see a 1st tier MMORPG on the console soon enough.

In regards to keyboard / controllers. The problem just isn't the tvs. It's also the environment a tv is used. 9 out of 10 the tv is in a bedroom or living room. How could you possibly use a keyboard / mouse comfortably?

I agree on the flight sims, but it still counts.

I doubt we'll ever see an MMORPG as big as wow though. It would really take something extremely ground breaking. As much spite as I have towards wow, gotta give credit where credit is due. It has wrangled all sorts of gamers... people that have never played games in their life play wow.

Also add anything with mods to that list. A lot of times the original game is just the tip of the ice berg.

Sure. But with the Wii gun games might make a come back given most light guns don't work on flat screens. That's a genre that never was on the PC and on par with the flight sim niche.


You mean in general or on a console? I would agree that it will be a long time before we see another WoW (on either platform) since there the planets aligned with a good francise that wasn't too niche with a developer with both budget, attention to detail and gameplay, a good sense of balance between hardcore and not lose focus on what was important to the franchise in the first place.

Had LucasArts had given BioWare the MMO license rather than Sony and they based it on KOTOR vs the original trilogy then you might have seen a WoW like numbers before WoW. Maybe. Jury is still out whether BioWare can transition from CRPG to MMO gameplay but I'm going to say that they never would have made the focus on crafting or limited the ability to be a Jedi or Sith. Duh.

LOTR is IMHO as limited as SW:G in that its history is fully constrained and you will always know you're a bit player on the larger canvas. It just doesn't suck so its going to be a lot more successful. It would have, IMHO been better set into a later or earlier age than LOTR itself.

Potter doesn't lend itself to a MMO so there aren't any big franchises, either movie or game, that jump out at me. Maybe trek but a military or pseudo military structure is just too hard to make appeal to a wide audience. Everyone wants to be the important bridge crew, not the janitor. Meh...I'm sure I'm missing something obvious.

Vinea

Well, there is pirates of the carribean that is coming out.... but um yah

An interesting rebuttal from MacWorld.

But to say thats why Valve isnt on this platform is a load of horse-hockey, as far as Im concerned. Valves absence on the Macintosh ultimately has very little to do with Apples gaming strategy, and everything to do with money.

Valve has certainly been approached by Mac game publishers in the past who want to see Half-Life 2 and Valves core engine technology come to the Macintosh. And Valve has either rebuffed those advances outright or asked for such an absurd amount of money that no Mac game publisher with an ounce of senseor any hope of making a profitwould ever say yes.

Valve, like Id and Epic, licenses its game-engine technology to other developers. So its not just a case of Valve Softwares games not being on the Mac its a case of every other developer who uses that technology not being able to bring their game to the Mac, either.

Id and Epic both work with Mac game publishers (Aspyr Media and MacSoft, respectively) to bring their titles to the Macintosh.Id Software co-founder John Carmack has been known to talk with Steve Jobs in the past, and has certainly used his influence to make sure that Apples efforts developing OpenGL as Mac OS Xs core graphics technology dont go to waste. Whats more, Id relies on the brain trust of Aspyrs own internal game development studio to make sure that its games are well optimized for Mac OS X. Epic employs a very resourceful and enormously talented developer named Ryan Gordon who handles much of its Mac and Linux conversions.

Whats more, have a gander at Blizzard Entertainment, makers of the enormously popular game World of Warcraft. For years, Blizzard has kept Mac and PC development happening simultaneously, employing a small but talented group of Mac programmers who work on their games and keep them up to date, making sure to expose new Apple technology whenever its available. Blizzard demonstrated World of Warcraft working as a Universal binary the same week that Apple introduced Intel-based Macs in January, 2006, for example, and was one of the first companies to employ support for multithreaded OpenGL, which boosts 3-D graphics performance on multicore Intel Macs.

So what makes Valve special? The answer: Nothing.

The problem with the comparison between Valve GOING to Apple and Blizzard being on apple boils down to one thing: Software Design.

From the start for every project Blizzard KNOWS they are releasing on the mac. They plan on this from the very beginning. This is not the case with 95% of the software developers out there. They create games on Windows because Windows has an incredibly attractive gaming API. They don't necessarily think about the mac until after their title has shipped or during development. If it's during development it's too late unless they go back to the design stages (which works in a waterfall / spiral methodology).

IMO if there were better software engineers out there instead of computer programmers, it wouldn't be as difficult for gaming companies to do simult. releases.

Except that being multiplatform or not is a management and not an engineering decision.

If you know you're Windows only you can leverage a DX only engine or develop specifically for DX. Otherwise you need to look at cross platform engines that have their own set of tradeoffs or use OpenGL or build your own abstraction layer (better to just buy an engine eh?).

But that initial decision is a business one.

IMHO software engineers vs programmers is overrated. I say that with a Masters in Software Engineering. Give me an uber-coder any day of the week vs a SEI CMM Level 5 Six Sigma Black Belt "software engineer".

Hero based, good enough software FTW.

Assuming good management anyway. Then we can argue about agile PM methods vs PMBOK/PRINCE2 methods at the project management level.

Above that level, well, sometimes you have Steve Jobs, sometimes you have Jack Welch but mostly you have Kenneth Lay...

This is exactly what the article says. Half Life was originally planned for the Mac. The reason it did not make it to the Mac was a management choice not an engineering one.

I think you might be underestimating how much existing talent and investment in code counts. If you have a shop that is DirectX only or OpenGL only, with a complete engine and toolchains, it's going to be a very big deal to switch to work across frameworks or just the other framework. Even though management has the final word in whether it's done, it's engineering that tells management what it's going to cost.

Valve would not have to deal with DirectX and OpenGL. That is the reason they license the game engine to another company who does all of that work.

I'm not underestimating that...I'm just saying that its a decision you make from a business perspective as a company. It's not something that having "software engineers" vs good "programmers" will have much impact on.

A "good" software engineer or a "good" programmer would both have made a decision on engine/middleware/graphics API based in part on target platforms. If the target platform is PC only there's little reason to pick OpenGL over D3D and many reasons to pick D3D over OpenGL.

Granted that if all things were equal both would pick a multi-platform solution but all things are never equal.

It's certainly easier if you are starting from a clean slate but you can't let your current expertise and workflow keep you from switching to the best of breed technology when the benfits outweight the costs. Even if it causes some turnover in staff and breakage in process flow.

He knows his 1" mac book pro would have to be a 2" mac book pro to handle the heat issues.
I would really like better video cards thou.

I think the 8600 mobile is a perfect card for laptops. It is 128bit, but come on guys. It doesn't use much battery, it isn't as hot as the 7600 and does a half way decent job at graphics. Laptop wise I'm pretty happy with apple.

It's the desktop line up that needs a serious eye thrown at it.

The 8600M is a fine card indeed. Apple could have gone for 512MB VRAM, but that's about it.
The MBP is currently the only Mac where there's really little to complain about, even for gaming.
The Mac Pro needs a serious update in graphics card choices and the iMac needs an option for a stronger GPU.
Mac mini and MacBook are totally left in the dust, they need to be redesigned from the ground up (PCB-wise, enclosures are fine).

I wasn't aware that light guns were incompatible with flat panels, which I'm not sure what the problem would be except maybe LCD response time. I did see a light gun stock for the Wii, but I don't remember much between the NES and Wii.

Oh come on, you don't remember SuperScope 16?????? That was fun.... for about 30 minutes. hehe.



I don't think there would be any problem running a gun on a computer, cept for the fact you are usually only 3-4 feet away from the screen.

I would be extreamly happy if apple waited until nvida released the g98s and then stuck a quadro fx 5700 in the mac pro.

My my my, the truth comes out...

http://www.insidemacgames.com/featur...log.php?ID=111

Well I for one think Steve's opinions are correct most of the time. We have tried this both ways.

Apple went through a period when they did not trust steve. It was called 1986-1997. THEN, Apple went back under Steve's guidance. That period was 1998-2007. Any questions? I'll take the Steve route for $1000.

In all fairness, the period when they didn't trust Steve started because he was plotting to backstab the CEO that he hired. That's hardly the behavior of anyone trying to present themselves as trustworthy. And the entire 80's was generally a great time for Apple, that's when they got a lot of the money that they bled in the late 90's.

Apple is working on the game dept...

So far they have signed big names like:

Blizzard
EA
id

Trust me, Valve will come around soon. The potential market for Steam on Macs is vast.

At least for games, there'd be no point to go 512MB. The only way you break the 256MB VRAM barrier is with large textures and resolutions, and once you up the graphic quality that high, 8600M's own throughput isn't enough to handle it.

Any evidence? They didn't even bother to post their usual gaming benchmarks on iMac webpages at last update.
... has always released their stuff on the Mac, likely because all their games have very light hardware requirements - still, everything runs 30% slower or so on the Mac
... now wraps years-old games in an emulation layer and calls it "Mac software", doesn't cost them anything

... has a culture of making software that is extremely cross-platform to begin with, so Mac support along with all the other platforms that have the necessary frameworks and middleware is also free for id
Not until Apple releases a lot of new hardware.

I don't think anyone has signed anything.

Only three players, and one of them uses a Windows emulation layer on their new titles. They pretty much had Blizzard all along.


Not so much when probably most Macs sold to consumers have integrated Intel graphics.

EA has been rehashing the same stuff for years, they're become a bit of a joke in the console and PC market, but as long as people continue to buy Madden, they really don't have many reasons to change.

If Apple wanted to begin being taken seriously as a player, they would have to dump the Intel GMA 950 - it's garbage for anything new, my Toshiba has an ATI x1200 IGP, and even though it's better than the 950, it sucks for anything new. An updated Macbook with the GMA x3100 would be a start.

So Apple has effectively limited their market to machines that cost over $2000, and most gamers know how to build their own computers, and a PC can be built with a Nvidia 8800 for around $1000, with a C2D, a couple gigs of RAM, etc.

An expandable mid-tower for around $1200-1500 would help Apple compete in that area.

Also a premium notebook like the Macbook should have an 8400G or GS in there. It may be entry level for the Mac but it's not by any means an entry level machine.

Good point, and I agree.

While I understand how Apple has higher profit margins, and they stress thinner designs and whatnot over typical PC's, specs wise, the current Macbook isn't the greatest - I mean the cheapest MB doesn't even have a DVD burner, and the GMA 950 has been around for 3-4 years now, both Intel, Nvidia, and ATI have better IGP chipsets out now that would run circles around it. If I compare the Macbook to another Windows laptop, based on the specs, it should really be a $600 laptop.

I wanted to get a Macbook at the start of the semester, but I had to put my money else where, but I still needed a laptop, so I bought a Windows laptop. For less than $800, my Toshiba has 2 GB of RAM, a 200 GB HD, an ATI x1200 IGP, a dvd burner, xD/SD/MS card reader, and a webcam, 4-pin Firewire, and 4 USB ports, and a little over 6 pounds. While it uses an AMD dual-core chip, it been more than fast enough. Even Vista Home Premium and drivers have not been an issue (some program issues with my Java compiler), but Office 2007 and Photoshop CS3 run great with it.

Absolutely brilliant. You forgot about the diesel generator and the punchcard/8"/5 1/4"/3 1/2" floppy/tape drive and liquid nitrogen cooling and 43 optical bays and 82 fans and heatsyncs on every chip, though.

Most computers sold (PC and Mac) have Intel integrated graphics. Last I saw 70% of laptops sold have IG and around 60% of desktops.

I'm also under the impression that most computers are sold with an Intel GMA 9xx graphics processors.

I think when you spend all your free time in the [Il]and of make believe[/I] you start thinking that everyone must have some souped-up video processor and that despite the multitude of online gamers out there it really doesn't begin to compare to the the number of computers being sold worldwide.

I'm quite happy with my MacBook's Intel GMA 950 graphics processor as I am not a gamer. With my 2GHz C2D w/ 4MB L2 Cache & 2GB RAM I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

They're for low end customers.