AppleInsider Comic: Steve Jobs and Gabe Newell talk Half-Life 2
Apple recently met with Valve Software to discuss porting Valve's Half-Life 2 gaming title to the Mac. The two parties failed to reach an agreement, however, as Valve co-founder Gabe Newell reportedly demanded a whopping $1 million advance just to get started. Our Joel Watson takes a behind-the-scenes look at how the negotiations between Newell and Steve Jobs may have played out in this week's AppleInsider comic.
Joel Watson is the creator of the webcomic, HijiNKS Ensue. He'll be crafting new AppleInsider comics on a regular basis and welcomes your suggestions and comments at [email protected].
Last week's AppleInsider comic touched on the whole iPhone hacking/third-party application mess.
Joel Watson is the creator of the webcomic, HijiNKS Ensue. He'll be crafting new AppleInsider comics on a regular basis and welcomes your suggestions and comments at [email protected].
Last week's AppleInsider comic touched on the whole iPhone hacking/third-party application mess.
Comments
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I don't believe Jobs has that much hair on his head any longer.
I agree, I think the head and facial hair growth should be about the same
In regards to the actual One Milllllion Dollars; I don't think that's much to ask for. Considering the popularity of Half-Life I'm sure they will sell well over a million copies for at least $35 bucks or more, that's at least $35 million right there. No to mention that Apple itself has a pretty good history on shady business practices. So why are they so surprised when it's thrown back at them?
A million copies sold on the Mac side is a stretch. It sold 4-5 million copies on the PC side. There's maybe 5% as many Macs out there as there are PCs, and unfortunately a fair amount of those Macs have crappy integrated graphics, with no opportunity to upgrade, i.e. they wouldn't be able to run Half-Life 2, or wouldn't be able to run it well.
So, you do the math. It wouldn't sell anywhere near a million copies on the Mac, though its possible it could still sell well enough to warrant the $1 million dollars.
One thing I'd like to add though is that $1 million dollars isn't really that much money in terms of game budgets anymore. There are games out there with $20-30 million dollar budgets now, after all.
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Valve:
Your OS is incomplete. There is no "easy" way to port our heavily DirectX game to your platform. We need you to add these things to which have no equivalent in your Operating system.
"Hands a list of changes involving months of work and lots of recources"
Apple:
We have several other Game developers that have no problem porting there Software to our platform, or have only required us to make minor alterations. We see no need to make our software easier to port to.
Valve:
Fine. We'll need 1 Million Dollars to do the job you guys should already be doing.
Apple:
We'll pass.
Both probably have legitimate arguments, but both are also probably tight wads and unwilling to compromise.
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blazeoptimus pretty much summed up the reality of the situation.
Apple needs to step up to the plate and make the platform attractive to developers from a development and financial perspective.
Apple needs to step up to the plate and make the platform attractive to developers from a development and financial perspective.
Best post yet!
Sorry, not funny.
blazeoptimus pretty much summed up the reality of the situation.
Apple needs to step up to the plate and make the platform attractive to developers from a development and financial perspective.
Apple certainly doesn't *need* to do squat. You might want them to do it. It might nice if they did it. But they certainly don't need to do it.
1. The vast majority of Mac users are never going to play anything beyond casual games. The only way to change that would be to invest huge resources to make the Mac a more popular game platform. They would even have to make a whole new Mac line. No serious hardcore gamer is even going to consider a platform with the limited upgradeability of the iMac or Mac Mini. The Mac Pro is fine but the expense is prohibitive. The benefits would not come anywhere near justifying the expense of such a strategy.
2. Number two, and far more importantly, Apple is selling almost as Many Macs as they can make already so there is no impetus at all to drastically change the current strategy.
Let's face it "PC" gaming is dead anyway. Dedicated consoles are just too good.
Apple certainly doesn't *need* to do squat. You might want them to do it. It might nice if they did it. But they certainly don't need to do it.
1. The vast majority of Mac users are never going to play anything beyond casual games. The only way to change that would be to invest huge resources to make the Mac a more popular game platform. They would even have to make a whole new Mac line. No serious hardcore gamer is even going to consider a platform with the limited upgradeability of the iMac or Mac Mini. The Mac Pro is fine but the expense is prohibitive. The benefits would not come anywhere near justifying the expense of such a strategy.
2. Number two, and far more importantly, Apple is selling almost as Many Macs as they can make already so there is no impetus at all to drastically change the current strategy.
Let's face it "PC" gaming is dead anyway. Dedicated consoles are just too good.
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
Sick post.
Let's face it "PC" gaming is dead anyway. Dedicated consoles are just too good.
PC gaming IS likely dead due to consoles but it's not because consoles are 'just too good.' Unfortunately, console users are like people with most technology. 'They' think their RAZR is as good as it gets.
The PS3 might be powerful right now but it's not upgradeable. Therefore, the PC will always be a 'better' gaming machine in terms of performance and graphics. And, it's time we all admitted it, assisted aiming on first person shooters is lame. Cross platform games (PC to X-box) have to be gimped on the console side to ensure those users are not entirely pwned (yes I said pwned). There is nothing NOTHING like actually aiming with a mouse and getting a kill instead of jerk-the-stick, not close enough, jerk, too far, jerk back to the start, firing one inch to the left of, and seeing the enemy go down. Now, if they ever add a mouse, keyboard combo to the PS3, things might change.
As to the comic. Was it the intention of AI to suggest that Steve Jobs really doesn't care about the issue of gaming on the Mac either? Both characters in the strip are shallow and don't really have a clue.
A million copies sold on the Mac side is a stretch. It sold 4-5 million copies on the PC side. There's maybe 5% as many Macs out there as there are PCs, and unfortunately a fair amount of those Macs have crappy integrated graphics, with no opportunity to upgrade, i.e. they wouldn't be able to run Half-Life 2, or wouldn't be able to run it well.
So, you do the math. It wouldn't sell anywhere near a million copies on the Mac, though its possible it could still sell well enough to warrant the $1 million dollars.
One thing I'd like to add though is that $1 million dollars isn't really that much money in terms of game budgets anymore. There are games out there with $20-30 million dollar budgets now, after all.
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Exactly Half-Life 2 could probably only move 200k copies with the current state of mac gaming.
I like the idea of a comic though and look forward to more.
Apple certainly doesn't *need* to do squat. You might want them to do it. It might nice if they did it. But they certainly don't need to do it.
1. The vast majority of Mac users are never going to play anything beyond casual games. The only way to change that would be to invest huge resources to make the Mac a more popular game platform. They would even have to make a whole new Mac line. No serious hardcore gamer is even going to consider a platform with the limited upgradeability of the iMac or Mac Mini. The Mac Pro is fine but the expense is prohibitive. The benefits would not come anywhere near justifying the expense of such a strategy.
2. Number two, and far more importantly, Apple is selling almost as Many Macs as they can make already so there is no impetus at all to drastically change the current strategy.
Let's face it "PC" gaming is dead anyway. Dedicated consoles are just too good.
You make a decent point but that doesn't mean they shouldn't open the market up. So what if they sell a lot of what they already make? With that attitude things like the iPhone wouldn't exist (We already sell a ton of iPods, we don't need a phone). They need to come out with more models and guess what they have been slowly. Things like the mac mini have shown apple is at least interested in testing new buyer demographics.
I still know tons of people with only 1 computer in the home, the only computer they could possibly buy to fit their needs is a mini or an imac and both of those scare a lot people, and I can't blame them. Like you yourself said upgradability is what scares people (including gamers) away. If they just had something like an xMac just that 1 extra model (flame on!
World of Warcraft
Good point.
As to the comic. Was it the intention of AI to suggest that Steve Jobs really doesn't care about the issue of gaming on the Mac either? Both characters in the strip are shallow and don't really have a clue.
Dude... it's a comic, chill. Aren't you just the buzz kill.
(No offense to the guy who made the comic).
These comics are really stupid, obvious, and not funny at all.
(No offense to the guy who made the comic).
Except for that part where you offended him.
I think it's rather ridiculous they were asking Apple for $1 000 000 dollars to port THEIR game to the platform.