Big gaming titles ready for Mac OS X

[Samuknow]

Apple unveiled a few popular game titles that will makes their way to the Apple platform.

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Discuss?

[fantomfreq]

Originally Posted by Samuknow

Apple unveiled a few popular game titles that will makes their way to the Apple platform.

The most notable part of these releases are the technology that they'll be using. They'll apparently use TransGaming's Cider, which takes a Windows program and converts them to the Mac equivalent. It'll be interesting to see just how well these programs run on Macs. I'd love to see something like this applied to Linux.

Apart from that, now that EA and id are releasing games for Apple computers maybe other publishers will follow suit.

[Áedán]

Cider is rather like CEDEGA, basically a Win32 emulator. Unsurprisingly, Cider comes from the same stable - TransGaming are also the people being CEDEGA. Unfortunately as emulation is involved, it means a performance decrease. I've seen figures that suggest a 10 to 15% performance loss, but I've not been able to find a definitive source. Couple that with the already lower performance from OS X/drivers anyhow, and it might be a large performance decrease.

Only time (and benchmarks) will show if this is really worth it.

[Samuknow]

The Apple fanboys will be all for this. Whether it is a performance sloth or not. I am curious to see how it comes out.

[aghastpumpkin]

I doubt that Macs will ever be considered gaming machines. There is no reason to play games on one.

[Samuknow]

Originally Posted by aghastpumpkin

I doubt that Macs will ever be considered gaming machines. There is no reason to play games on one.

Why is that?

[aghastpumpkin]

What do you mean?

Can think of a few really good ones?

[Samuknow]

I just wanted you to share why you would say there is no need to game in one. There is a crowd that will not have a PC. Mac only.

Why should they not get the same games?

[Favu]

I think this a good move, and it might even be a precursor to other games becoming available for OSX and maybe even OSX becoming available for roll-your-own hardware

[aghastpumpkin]

Originally Posted by Samuknow

I just wanted you to share why you would say there is no need to game in one. There is a crowd that will not have a PC. Mac only.

Why should they not get the same games?

I just don't think hardly any Mac users are going to think, Aha! Lets by C&C!
If you buy a Mac, you buy it for different purposes. If you wanted to play games, you'd have something else.

I've spoken to a few friends who are Apple fanboys (sigh...) and they all agreed that they don't see the point of this as if they had been gamers, they'd have bought a PC/Console anyways, and that games just don't appeal to them.

[Samuknow]

Originally Posted by aghastpumpkin

I just don't think hardly any Mac users are going to think, Aha! Lets by C&C!
If you buy a Mac, you buy it for different purposes. If you wanted to play games, you'd have something else.

I've spoken to a few friends who are Apple fanboys (sigh...) and they all agreed that they don't see the point of this as if they had been gamers, they'd have bought a PC/Console anyways, and that games just don't appeal to them.

Fair enough....Just stirring the stew so to speak.

[danrok]

I have to agree with monsieur Pumpkin.

Do we need another gaming platform? If I had a Mac, I would just buy a PC or console to play games.

[Favu]

I am a Mac fan, I like the OS and the idea of being able to play my favourite games on a Mac sure maes one more appealing to me. And not everyone wants/can afford a Mac and a PC/Console. And if they can shift some more copies of their games, making them some money.

All in all I don't see it doing anyone any harm and a few even (gasp!) benefit from it.

[Samuknow]

Originally Posted by Favu

I am a Mac fan, I like the OS and the idea of being able to play my favourite games on a Mac sure maes one more appealing to me. And not everyone wants/can afford a Mac and a PC/Console. And if they can shift some more copies of their games, making them some money.

All in all I don't see it doing anyone any harm and a few even (gasp!) benefit from it.

This is exactly what I was thinking. After buying a mac....who could afford a PC/Console?

It would be nice for the Apple crowd to have a machine that does it all as the PC owners have.

[danrok]

Even the most expensive Macs only have mid-range graphics cards. Do they have a PCI-express slot?

If game devs have to cater for yet another platform, they will surely charge more for their games. Jobs isn't going to pay for it!

[Favu]

ROFL.

If games for the mac are unprofitable, they will get axed. I don't think they are going to raise the prices of PC games to fund the Mac versions.

[fantomfreq]

Originally Posted by danrok

Even the most expensive Macs only have mid-range graphics cards. Do they have a PCI-express slot?

If game devs have to cater for yet another platform, they will surely charge more for their games. Jobs isn't going to pay for it!

This is not entirely true. As the top of the line Apple computer, the Mac Pro is intended to be a workstation. However, it does have a few options that make it more appealing to gamers. I purchased one last September as the only Apple I could really game on. Granted, it was a decent bit more expensive than a comparable gaming rig, but an identical Dell computer had a higher price tag.

As it stands my computer has a PCI-E X1900XT (top of the line at the time), two 2.66Ghz Xeons (that 1.33Ghz FSB is nice) and 3 GB of PC-5200 DDR2 memory. When I boot the computer into Windows, it's certainly capable of running whatever games you guys are playing.

[dsio]

Unfortunately, as I recently discovered arsing around with a Macbook (pro?)'s X1600 series card, playing a few OpenGL games including World Of Warcraft and Doom 3, ATI's mac drivers are of about the same standard as their Linux drivers. Nvidia once again is quite reasonable under OSX, but that doesn't help several people I know stuck with ATI chips in their laptops.

[danrok]

Will a Mac book take an external card?

[Samuknow]

http://www.gamespot.com/video/939980...ideo-feature-1

Here is a little more.

Carmack states that this is live game play. Looks pretty good to me.