An independent look at games for Mac
The biggest news for Mac gaming this year?
Valve’s announcement is making waves in Mac gaming. I can already see developers eyeing the platform like a mighty fine lady in a bar. Maybe Valve could start a new platform-agnostic games development movement? The Mac is suddenly a viable gaming platform (when the hell did that happen?), and anything is possible.
Let’s have a closer look at the details of Steam for Mac and what it could potentially mean for the future of Mac gaming.
A roundtable! This time Brice, Luis and Russell talk BioShock for Mac.
Against a dark sky with the news that eight out of ten Mac owners also own a PC and that many users game via Boot Camp, what does this mean for Mac gaming?
The three brave Mac gamers, collectively known as BLR, tackle this great question and more, deviating somewhat to consider Meatloaf, but getting back on track with intimate gaming (ooo!), the price of convenience and why there really needs to be a Mac gaming community.
Onward!
Continue reading ‘BioShock Roundtable: the price of convenience’
A Mac is an ecosystem. Apple hardware is designed to run Mac OS X. Mac OS X is designed to run on Apple hardware. This is the source of Apple’s stability and reliability. It’s what makes Apple different from other hardware vendors. No messing around with drivers for graphics cards, network cards, sound cards. No incompatibilities or hardware issues. It just works. This is also Apple’s business model, which they try and protect. Of course, this isn’t a golden solution. By limiting the hardware to a subset of what’s out there, there’s a limited range of products. Sometimes this hardware is slow to change, or quite unique and unlike anything on the market, which gives rise to the perception that Macs are over priced.
I’d argue that the main benefit (if you can discount the hardware/software relationship) is Mac OS X. Based on that, what if you could run Mac OS X on generic hardware? Would you buy a Mac? What if running Mac OS X on generic hardware could be reliable? Would it be worth it or would it invalidate the purpose of a Mac and Mac OS X?
Peter Cohen and Chris Holt from Macworld have posted a simplistic look at Mac gaming in 2009:
Circumstances can change very quickly in the world of gaming. This time last year, for example, you didn’t hear from too many game developers when it came to their iPhone plans—there wasn’t even an SDK to plan for 12 months ago. And yet, mobile gaming turned out to be all the rage in 2008. Some would say that just proves attempting to predict where a market is headed is a foolhardy proposition. We say we’re just the fools to undertake the job.
I don’t mean to be a finicky arse here, but the article basically states that there’ll be more of some things and less of others. Not exactly an in depth prediction.
“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…
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