Microsoft-exclusive blockbuster game Titanfall may be Apple-bound, as developer explores Mac port
Newly released shooter "Titanfall," a title upon which Microsoft is pinning big hopes for its new Xbox One gaming console, may not stay exclusive to Microsoft platforms, as the developer behind the game is considering a Mac version as well.
Vince Zampella, co-founder of Respawn Entertainment, was asked this week on Twitter if there's any possibility of Titanfall being ported to Apple's OS X platform. In response, he revealed that Respawn is currently in talks with publisher Aspyr, a company that specializes in porting Windows games to Mac.
The comments from Zampella would seem to signal that Microsoft's exclusivity agreement for Titanfall only covers consoles, and does not extend to Windows as well. Titanfall is out now for Windows PCs, Xbox One, and is coming later this month to Xbox 360, but it will not be available for rival consoles Sony PlayStation 4 or Nintendo Wii U.
With its release this week, some critics have been hailing Titanfall as the first true "system seller" for Microsoft's fledgling Xbox One, which represents the company's third-generation living room gaming console.
Zampella and Jason West were formerly in charge of Infinity Ward, which is responsible for the "Call of Duty" franchise. Call of Duty achieved new heights with the launch of "Modern Warfare," but a few years later Zampella and West had a falling out with publisher Activision, which led them to found Respawn and form an alliance with rival publisher Electronic Arts.
EA's digital games storefront, dubbed Origin, debuted on the Mac last February. Major publishers like EA, Activision and others have taken Apple's notebooks and desktops increasingly seriously as they have continued to chip away at the dominant market share of Microsoft Windows.
Major titles are also available for purchase on Valve's Steam for Mac, including "Half-Life 2," "Portal 2," and "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive."
Vince Zampella, co-founder of Respawn Entertainment, was asked this week on Twitter if there's any possibility of Titanfall being ported to Apple's OS X platform. In response, he revealed that Respawn is currently in talks with publisher Aspyr, a company that specializes in porting Windows games to Mac.
The comments from Zampella would seem to signal that Microsoft's exclusivity agreement for Titanfall only covers consoles, and does not extend to Windows as well. Titanfall is out now for Windows PCs, Xbox One, and is coming later this month to Xbox 360, but it will not be available for rival consoles Sony PlayStation 4 or Nintendo Wii U.
With its release this week, some critics have been hailing Titanfall as the first true "system seller" for Microsoft's fledgling Xbox One, which represents the company's third-generation living room gaming console.
Zampella and Jason West were formerly in charge of Infinity Ward, which is responsible for the "Call of Duty" franchise. Call of Duty achieved new heights with the launch of "Modern Warfare," but a few years later Zampella and West had a falling out with publisher Activision, which led them to found Respawn and form an alliance with rival publisher Electronic Arts.
EA's digital games storefront, dubbed Origin, debuted on the Mac last February. Major publishers like EA, Activision and others have taken Apple's notebooks and desktops increasingly seriously as they have continued to chip away at the dominant market share of Microsoft Windows.
Major titles are also available for purchase on Valve's Steam for Mac, including "Half-Life 2," "Portal 2," and "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive."
Comments
It’s just so pathetic, the “quality” of these new consoles. Inexcusable frame rates, disgustingly low textures… These are machines explicitly DESIGNED FOR GAMES and not only do all other standard computers play the games in higher resolution with better textures and higher frame rates, the NEXT FREAKING IPAD AND IPHONE will have content that is graphically better than them!
At least Nintendo has an experience behind it. By explicitly not caring about the oft-combined generic concept of “graphics”, they combine gameplay, story, and unity of design to wild success.
Sell the console without the Kinect & allow me to use Netflix etc without gold & I'm sold.
No-one wants to fork out for an X-Box when your trusty Mac will play the game. Bring it to Mac and make heaps of Mac users very happy. Who knows, Mac sales might increase just so people can play the game .... Its a possible WIN WIN .... !!!
how is it a stab in the back? Microsoft has the only console that'll have this game, their agreement obviously did not apply to non console systems.
Well considering MS and Apple are competitors this can't be very good news for them. But the fact that the developer is taking advantage of that loophole can only hurt Microsoft's sales
Well considering MS and Apple are competitors this can't be very good news for them. But the fact that the developer is taking advantage of that loophole can only hurt Microsoft's sales
So they should walk away from a completely legal and legitimate sales market with the mac because Microsoft doesn't know how to write exclusivity contracts?
So they should walk away from a completely legal and legitimate sales market with the mac because Microsoft doesn't know how to write exclusivity contracts?
They should at least refrain from calling it an exclusive
Mac may win most battles, but gaming isn't one of them yet.
As if Microsoft will suffer any significant hardship from Mac users having access to one additional title. Windows still outstrips the Mac for gaming library and the hardware flexibility of a Windows machine means you can assemble a machine that gets much better gaming performance at a much better price.
Mac may win most battles, but gaming isn't one of them yet.
yep, Not really competition. Why they not even doing it in-house, having Aspyr do it on contract. It is just a side note.
It’s just so pathetic, the “quality” of these new consoles. Inexcusable frame rates, disgustingly low textures… These are machines explicitly DESIGNED FOR GAMES and not only do all other standard computers play the games in higher resolution with better textures and higher frame rates, the NEXT FREAKING IPAD AND IPHONE will have content that is graphically better than them!
At least Nintendo has an experience behind it. By explicitly not caring about the oft-combined generic concept of “graphics”, they combine gameplay, story, and unity of design to wild success.
While the resolution on the XB1 sits at 792p, the FPS is 60. How is that labeled as "inexcusable frame rates"?
It's a bit of a monster on PC - 49GB install!
I hope you all went for that SSD upgrade.
At least Nintendo has an experience behind it. By explicitly not caring about the oft-combined generic concept of “graphics”, they combine gameplay, story, and unity of design to wild success.
Yes. Much wild success
Yeah, 720p, as opposed to literally every television these days at 1080. Meanwhile, we’re playing at 1440p or even 2880p on our computers.
60 FPS? Not on, oh, every single game released. Under 30 most of the time.
It’s just so pathetic, the “quality” of these new consoles. Inexcusable frame rates, disgustingly low textures… These are machines explicitly DESIGNED FOR GAMES and not only do all other standard computers play the games in higher resolution with better textures and higher frame rates, the NEXT FREAKING IPAD AND IPHONE will have content that is graphically better than them!
The next iPad and iPhone will not offer anything close to the graphical performance of the Xbox One or PlayStation 4.
If anything they might offer graphical performance a little bit above the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
You sure? What ARM set should I be researching here?
Which should be terrifying enough for these guys, if true.
No loophole! You think MS overlooked something so basic? Please, both parties negotiated this sitch.
Link?
It’s just so pathetic, the “quality” of these new consoles. Inexcusable frame rates, disgustingly low textures… These are machines explicitly DESIGNED FOR GAMES and not only do all other standard computers play the games in higher resolution with better textures and higher frame rates, the NEXT FREAKING IPAD AND IPHONE will have content that is graphically better than them!
At least Nintendo has an experience behind it. By explicitly not caring about the oft-combined generic concept of “graphics”, they combine gameplay, story, and unity of design to wild success.
The consoles can never match the PC graphics quality, but it's not that bad. For most of the time, you wouldn't even want to care, partly because the games on consoles are so optimized, and so uncouth on a PC. And though the next generation iPhones will most certainly not surpass the performance, they wold definitely be around half-as-fast, and even that would be foot-in-face for the console manufacturers.
I used to hate consoles until I realized that it was not consoles that stood reprimanded, but the developers' laziness. You see, developers design games for consoles and then port them to PC. This results in poor performance and utilization of hardware, resulting in horrible frames even with a very powerful hardware. Also, nVidia and AMD are constantly releasing new version of their graphics chips which further improves the indolence in game developers, because now they have more powerful hardware to play with, and hence design the game for these instead of refining them to be compatible with the previous generations. This means $$$ for nVidia and AMD.
By the way, the wretched art of money-piling isn't any better defined than the 'exclusivity contracts' ratified by game developers and console manufacturers.