“The truth is Steve Jobs doesn’t care about games.” *
- John Carmack, 2008.
When you have a company so secretive as Apple, who knows what they’re working on? The latest iDevice, a new online service, a time machine? Sadly all three of those seem more likely than anything to do with games.
For years, the Mac has been considered a laughable platform for games. Hell, the Mac gamer as a statement is still an oxymoron…
I recently arranged an interview with Apple about games. Somewhere things got confused. Apple kept emailing and calling to check about my questions regarding iPhone and iPod games. I answered that iPhone and iPod games were of interest, but my main interest was in Mac games. Bigger titles, interesting titles - things that will arouse the deepest of emotions and evoke the explorer, survivor, pilot in you - whatever.
The Apple interview took place a couple of weeks ago and was a huge let down. The focus was on iPhone and iPod games. When I tried to ask questions about Mac games, I was politely redirected to the iPod. Granted the person I was talking to knew little about the Mac side of things, but it worries me that the interview wasn’t better chosen. I think it’s because there is no one at Apple who can talk to me about games. Kind of weird, right?
Mind you, maybe I should be speaking to Microsoft about games for the Mac? Most of my gaming is done via Boot Camp anyway. I even considered getting a wimpy card for OS X and beefing up to a 4870X2 for PC, because there’s more that I want to play that’s on Windows. But if I did that, then the Mac gamer would kind of be pointless (maybe it is kind of pointless!). Looking at the Microsoft site, you can see that they ‘get games’. Fallout 3 is there. GTA IV. Mass Effect. The works. There is nothing like this at the Apple games site.
GPUs are limited compared to PC offerings. Currently the fastest graphics card you can get in your Mac is a NVIDIA 8800GT or an ATI HD3870. If you have a look at the NVIDIA or ATI website, you’ll see that the current Mac GPUs are well behind what is offered on the PC. The lack of range is a bit of a killer for the hardcore gamer. Depending on how you look at it, the lack of new hardware either gives you stability and reliability (as drivers and cards are fully tested for the platform) or it gives you an awkward situation whereby Macs just can’t compete with the PC and can’t run the most demanding games at high resolutions and high settings. It’s almost as if Macs are the consoles of the PC world. They live for ages, never really die, and age badly.
Now, the myth that Macs cost more is just that - a myth. However one thing that is true about the Mac is that there isn’t the range compared to PCs. If you’re a Mac gamer, you have one choice - the Mac Pro. And the Mac Pro, ladies and gents, is a bit overkill for games. Four graphics card slots? Quad or eight core? FB-DIMMS? Storage space to store the whole sum of human knowledge on? No thanks. Decent dual core, 8GB RAM cap, 4870X2. Marvellous. Pretty box. Mmmm!
I have many questions for Apple about games and without any input from them, everything is just speculation. Will Apple and NVIDIA partner effectively to leverage The Way It’s Meant To Be Played? Will Snow Leopard deliver vast improvements to games performance in OS X? Will the Open GL framework be improved to make it easier to develop games for OS X? Is there a strategy for games for the Mac?
It would be lovely for the Mac to be a decent games platform. I enjoy games immensely. While I think the medium is still ridiculously immature (compare Roadside Picnic and Stalker to the videogame S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - you’ll see what I mean), there are some flashes of brilliance that I love to feel and be part of; discovering the haunted halls of Rapture or picking among the ruins of DC. I’d rather not have to focus on games for a completely different operating system, sneakily pointing out “it’s still on a Mac!”, but hell, I love games. It just so happens I’m a Mac user and I’d love the two to be united.
If the Mac can’t keep up or won’t keep up with games, I’ll be leaving the platform and heading over to (gasp) Windows. I spend most of my time in Boot Camp anyway, why not take the plunge and buy a gaming PC? Buy a Mac Mini for email, a bit of programming and all the rest. I could probably get both for the price of a Mac Pro and still save the world’s economy with the savings.
I don’t want to moan, but there is much to be done.
Apple - you can’t be secret about things forever. You gotta tell us what the hell you’re doing with games. Are you doing anything? I hope you are. I can’t stand anymore of these Apple “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC ads” that just don’t accurately portray the situation. Macs are for fun, right? So where the hell are the games?
* Weirdly reminds me of Kanye West’s “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” freestyle about Hurricane Katrina…
yea if mac would keep up wit the amount of games pc has. I would jump ship and start playing pc games on a mac. I dislike micro soft because they are the ones trying to destory pc gaming. They use game devs to attack the plat form and promote their xbox 360.
Some would argue that the state of Mac gaming, while still far behind PC gaming, has gotten a lot better in recent years with the advent of technology like Cider, with a lot of triple A titles like Spore being released same day.
Macs have the (nominal) support of EA. Macs have the continuing strong support of Blizzard.
The Mac indy gaming community is more vibrant than ever, especially compared to the PC side.
You can’t expect primetime support for what is essentially a niche platform. For the market share Apple commands, I think it gets a pretty good slice of the gaming pie.
I expect Apple to at least have some sort of strategy for games.
While I agree with you about Cider, it has not delivered the explosion in games or even the performance level that Transgaming said it would. BF2142 is still unplayable on most machines and it seems (for the moment at least) that Transgaming are focusing on bringing more casual and older titles to the platform.
I’m not saying that there should automatically be more Mac games. I’m aware that the Mac is still (incorrectly) perceived as a “creative platform” and has a smaller market share. However, there needs to be some form of roadmap for games on the Mac. I’m not going to buy another Mac until I see some form of input or advancement from Apple on this.
Many people I’ve talked to in the industry, from a variety of companies, have commented on the reduction of AAA titles over the years. Whether or not Snow Leopard can change this remains to be seen. There needs to be top down change for games to become a priority on the Mac.
Interesting that you don’t mention consoles at all here.
Microsoft: Losing a fortune on gaming. The 360 has cost them billions it can never win back before it us replaced. Same for the original Xbox. No obvious way to make real money from Windows games either.
Sony: PS3 is a huge money pit too. It may take years to finally become profitable as the competition this generation is far greater than the PS2 faced. PSP has been eaten alive by the DS, and now likely iPod touch and iPhone too. Good job they, like MS, make money from other products entirely.
Nintendo: they alone are a success. Primarily through first party titles they have no desire to share with anyone else. The Wii is doing great, despite being laughed at by the FPS crowd. The DS continues their historic near monopoly in handhelds, until right now with the iPod iPhone 2.0 release. Nintendo are an integrated hardware and software firm with less third party support (or need for it) than Sony or MS. Remind you of anyone?
Apple has its eyes set on Nintendo’s handheld empire. This is simultaneous with their assault on RIM for enterprise smartphones. Apple could well win both. This is where the money is at. And it’s therefore no wonder that they have nothing to say about gaming on the Mac. Like the PC gaming world, it’s no business. Why be bleeding cash like Sony or MS when you can be thriving like Nintendo?
I don’t mention consoles because they’re a different kettle of fish. A guy from NVIDIA told me he wouldn’t be surprised if Apple made a console and announced it to the surprise of everyone…
It’s interesting that you mention that Microsoft don’t make money on games for Windows. To be honest, I don’t know if they do or don’t. But I’ll make an educated guess that having games on Windows provides benefits and sales, perhaps not directly, but more as a halo effect.
Correct me if I’m wrong - but are not a lot of game publisher anyway moving towards gaming on consoles? At least there they still can earn money.
On a PC, there are so many problems to solve: First, there is piracy of games (a lot of kiddies just download the game, instead of buying it), then there is support costs (every gaming PC is different, load a couple of games on it and you can be sure you will end up with conflicting drivers of all sort). Further only “hardcore” gamer (in the positive sense!) are buying those high-end machines, so the market is not so big over all.
So gaming on a PC is dead, gaming on a console is the future anyway.
Now let’s see what consoles are out there: The conventional (hooked up to TV, etc) and mobile (PSP, Nintendo, iPhone, etc)
So I think Apple is not bad positioned, as the iPhone/iPod Touch seem to transform to gaming machines - it’s so easy to get them (just download them, no cartridges, memory cards, discs or so) and the market is huge. Apple is releasing hardware updates frequently (at least I hope so) - compared to a PSP, which basically has “stalled” and is already a bit out-dated…
Hello Alex
don’t paint that picture to dark – I do remember Macworld 2000. Jeah Bungie was up there demoing HALO for the Mac. Remember? Boy was I exited. Now - they’re on HALO 3, they lost the Brand and are now independent again. I do hope they come back. Would be cool.
I think the FPS Market should be viewed different from the broader Game market.
In my opinion we are through the crysis. Look at Blizzard, Cyder (just for helping in the transition), and my favorite OpenCL. The devs will love it…
Alex
@ kusmi
“Correct me if I’m wrong - but are not a lot of game publisher anyway moving towards gaming on consoles? At least there they still can earn money…So gaming on a PC is dead, gaming on a console is the future anyway.”
According to RPS, you’re wrong!
Read this recent report:
“RPS: And so far you’ve been gathering data, including the Horizons report, a report for your members which states that PC gaming software accounts for $10bn worth of the gaming industry in 2007. NPD’s retail report puts the entire industry in 2007 at around $18bn. That means that PC games software is half the industry in cash terms? Is that correct?
Stude: It’s more than half. The NPD and other reports always include console hardware, and it was our approach with our Horizons reports to announce software and hardware separately. PC hardware is about $43bn, when you add that on top of PC gaming software it’s huge. We knew it was a big market - we know the subscription, casual, free-to-play people were out there, and we wanted to record that. What we didn’t like was a retail-focused report like the NPD one saying that the market was heading in a certain direction, when we knew otherwise. Retail, as a percent of the market, is only 30% of PC gaming software. NPD aren’t measuring the majority of PC gaming software sales.”
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/11/23/pcga-president-randy-stude-talks-methodology/
Remember that much of the talk in the press is from companies like Sony or Microsoft who want their consoles to be the future of gaming. You have to read between the lines.
Valve for instance have never claimed that PC gaming is dying and think it’s absolute balls that it could be dying! Just look at the popularity of Steam! Their innovative platform for games manages to prevent a huge amount of piracy, remain cost effective and is advancing the way gaming is played (Google Steam Cloud).
Alex, great article, especially the part about the Apple representative constantly trying to talk about iPhone games made me laugh out loud.
In my opinion, the current state of Mac gaming isn’t too bad: Both Feral and Transgaming are doing well in delivering a wide range of family friendly games, which cater to broad audiences. And the Indie scene is alive and kicking (Hothead, 2D Boy, Freeverse, etc.).
Of course, those are more “casual” and niche type of games, but I guess that’s exactly the target group Apple’s consumer machines are aimed for. They don’t have any interest in delivering high-end gamer hardware (or software) for the relatively small group of hardcore-gamers.
There’s a good reason the DS and Wii are so succesful: Casual, family gaming is simply a much bigger market. If Apple would introduce a “Mac Games Arcade” or “Steam”-like AppStore for the Mac, gaming could be much bigger on OS X, but I think it would be in a Nintendo-kind of way.
@ Jan
First of all, Transgaming just basically “emulates” a Windoze game on a Mac so it isn’t actually a “Mac game”, it’s just a Windoze game with a Mac wrapper on it (the same s#&t in a different wrapper?)
Second, Mac OS X is a very powerfull OS, much more powerfull than Windoze. Mac OS X is built on strong foundations such as Core Image and Core Audio which are Industry-class and makes Mac OS X a very suitable OS for gaming. The only problem is that if Jobs doesn’t encourage and help developers (such as Valve or EA), the gaming on a Mac is a no-go.
Third, you pointed out a good point with DS and Wii gaming but you missed another point: DS is small and portable which makes it suitable for casual gaming (small-chat in my terms). No one is going to use a 24″ iMac to play Mario (such as me). Wii is just a revolutionary way to “game”, unlike any other platform. If Apple made something like “Mac Games Arcade”, it would only be a joke subject for Windoze users, possibly gamers (and in all possibility would be a joke subject for Mac users too, like me). A 24″ iMac with 2.33 GHz CPU and an Nvidia 7600 GPU would be a stupid overkill for playing “Bejeweled: Mac Edition”.
I read somewhere an article on Valve’s developers’ talks with Apple to bring Half-Life 2 to OS X. They stated that Apple has no though whatsoever of supporting gaming on OS X. As I recently installed Windoze through Boot Camp only to play Half-Life 2 (no joke) I was exposed to ugly GUI and a buggy OS. Why do I even use such a bad OS when I have one of the worlds most powerfull OS’s sitting in the right next partition of my HDD?
In my opinion, Jobs should really start encouraging developers to build for Mac, then and only then, Mac’s marketshare would skyrocket. Users like me use Boot Camp only to play games, otherwise I’m on OS X 24/7. Because of this dilemma, I am even considering purchasing a gaming computer solely for gaming purposes. When real gaming hits Macs, I am abandoning Windoze for good.
@ A. Emre Unal
Cider does not emulate. It wraps games up, but there is no emulation. Transgaming would hunt you down and kill you for saying that!
Also, saying that all the Core technologies are industry class is a bit of an odd description. They’re not used on any other platform and not used by any games developers (other than ones for the Mac, and I couldn’t name one that uses them - but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist!).
And really, it doesn’t matter if Mac OS X uses the fastest, most reliable and powerful technologies around, as long as no one uses them! So you’re right on that front. Apple needs to take lead and at least attempt to coax developers to the platform.
Let’s see these fantastic technologies used!
@ Alex
First of all, thanks for the reply.
You are right about Cider wrapping up games but a game wrapped with Cider isn’t actually a genuine Mac game, is it? For me, whatever is not genuinely written for Mac is just an emulation. (Let Transgaming’s assassins come
)
Yes, Core techs aren’t used by any other platform but they still are much more advanced than sound.dll (or whatever is used for sound things on a Windoze PC). And yes, they aren’t used by games yet but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used, right? They are a bit overkill for Windows Messenger or Mail.app as I use Boot Camp for gaming.
All I can say is: GO GO JOBS!
@ A. Emre Unal
You’re right, they’re not true Mac games. They’re not native ports, they sort of exist - at least on OS X - between operating systems. In my experience haven’t really delivered on the performance front.
I’ll second that: go go Jobs!