Following the announcement of games for the iPod earlier this year, analyst Jesse Tortora of Prudential has released a research note suggesting more game-related products could be imminent for Apple.
According to the note, excerpted on the Apple Insider weblog, Tortora is speculating both about further handheld moves and the possibility of console-like hardware from the company: "The game console device could be morphed out of some combination of the MacMini and iTV, while the handheld player could be developed as an enhancement to a future version of the widescreen iPod."
Jeepers! What next, SEGA relaunching the Dreamcast as a $50 alternative to the already-released offerings from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo? Actually...
Jeepers! What next, SEGA relaunching the Dreamcast as a $50 alternative to the already-released offerings from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo? Actually...[/I]
I think Apple getting into gaming wouldn't really be for readers of EvAv. It would be for the bookworm playing moms and 2nd life playing hipsters. Which would not be a bad thing at all. I wonder if they would use a mouse/kb or some sort of waggle device? Maybe partner with Nintendo?
My god, Apple making a console would make me want to vomit.
It would spend all its time, probrably in hot pink, sitting below my tv glaring at me as if to say "I'm to cool for you to play me! You are not even close to hip enough to have purchased me!"
I would rather they work on encourage PC developers to do simultaneous releases. The hardware not a problem anymore, so they just need to make porting to OSX easier, as well as convince developers it's a viable platform.
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Fuck Microsoft's incompetent and unhelpful product support.
I would rather they work on encourage PC developers to do simultaneous releases. The hardware not a problem anymore, so they just need to make porting to OSX easier, as well as convince developers it's a viable platform.
Ironically, they have done the opposite. Now that mac hardware can dual boot to windows, developers have even LESS of a reason to port to MacOS. Besides, the hardware made very little difference in the past in regards to porting. The fact one platform was small endian and the other big, or that they had completely different instruction sets meant very little. Its the glaring difference in OSs, not to mention the prefered language for Mac programming is almost unsupported outside of MacLand ( ObjC ). The closest thing to making ports to the MacOS easy, I believe are both gone. One was Metrowerks Codewarrior cross platform SDK, the other was MFC.
I would rather they work on encourage PC developers to do simultaneous releases. The hardware not a problem anymore, so they just need to make porting to OSX easier, as well as convince developers it's a viable platform.
Yeah, it would be nice to have a computer that has standard hardware for games, sorta like how the Amiga and Commodore 64 used to be huge for games. Windows is hard to develop for with all the enormous variety of combinations of hardware it runs on.
Jeepers! What next, SEGA relaunching the Dreamcast as a $50 alternative to the already-released offerings from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo? Actually...
I would LOVE it if Apple threw their hat in the ring. Sega making consoles again brings up a lot of nostalgia, but I was never crazy about Sega consoles back then, so I can't see that warm feeling remaining for long.
Ironically, they have done the opposite. Now that mac hardware can dual boot to windows, developers have even LESS of a reason to port to MacOS. Besides, the hardware made very little difference in the past in regards to porting. The fact one platform was small endian and the other big, or that they had completely different instruction sets meant very little. Its the glaring difference in OSs, not to mention the prefered language for Mac programming is almost unsupported outside of MacLand ( ObjC ). The closest thing to making ports to the MacOS easy, I believe are both gone. One was Metrowerks Codewarrior cross platform SDK, the other was MFC.
Yeah, no.
Sorry, but the "They'll just boot XP" thing is pretty much total bunk. Really, this is coming from someone who was bred on the PC and games were the entire reason I cared about computers. Mac users *will not* boot XP unless absolutely necessary.
Do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to stop everything you are doing, shut it all down, wait, etc to go? Why do you think so few people actually switch to Linux? Dual-Booting is just a hassle.
There is one game I will boot XP for, and that is Half-Life 2. Since switching to Mac I've stopped buying PC games other than HL2. There are games to play on the Mac, and we can wait it out for the port for most games.
If games *WERE* such a crutch thing, its unlikely we'd have left XP to begin with (though I have a 360 so that kind of covers things too)
In the past, hardware DID make a difference. Ports generally ran like ass on PowerPC (I have an Intel iMac and 12" PowerBook).
Many games use a surprising amount of assembly too, I know id games always do and I'd be shocked if others didn't either. That takes a lot of time to port. Same for porting SSE to Altivec. The language the game is written in isn't a huge deal - Macs support C, C++, Java, etc all just dandy. A bigger deal is DirectX vs say SDL but that is obvious.
The only thing that hurts Mac gaming is piracy (which has a huge impact when the player base is so small) and DirectX.
But no, I'm saying this as a Mac user who for the the first 12+ years of his using computers was on a PC, DOS, and Windows (and I used to be one of those "Macs suck, they can't play games" people). I've only switched within the past 2 years but I won't look back, and I won't boot XP without the most critical reasons... and I can see myself totally getting rid of it when HL2 hits 360.
Now developers are with similar hardware power, a growing Mac userbase, way more attention to Apple - if anything there is more reason to port to Mac than there was before.
Do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to stop everything you are doing, shut it all down, wait, etc to go? Why do you think so few people actually switch to Linux? Dual-Booting is just a hassle.
Its not the easiest thing, but its far from a PITA. I dual boot XP/Vista right now at work, and run a handful of other OSs in VMWare. I dunno... you just kinda get used to it. Besides, dual booting isnt really required that much anymore. There is Mac software that allows you to boot XP into Mac OS. Granted, you need a fairly beefy machine.
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In the past, hardware DID make a difference. Ports generally ran like ass on PowerPC (I have an Intel iMac and 12" PowerBook).
That just boils down to the amount of effort the programmer put into the port. For example, Photoshop runs just fine on both windows and mac.
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Many games use a surprising amount of assembly too, I know id games always do and I'd be shocked if others didn't either. That takes a lot of time to port. Same for porting SSE to Altivec. The language the game is written in isn't a huge deal - Macs support C, C++, Java, etc all just dandy. A bigger deal is DirectX vs say SDL but that is obvious.
Assembly is a dying breed. Very little of a game is in assembly. Not even close to 1% of the code base. Besides its not actually that hard to port. Look at the fact iD games are available on the mac for validation of that fact. That said, yes DirectX is a factor. But if a dev wants to go multiplatform, they can always use openGL.
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The only thing that hurts Mac gaming is piracy (which has a huge impact when the player base is so small) and DirectX.
Not true, the biggest thing that hurts Mac gaming is the lack of install base, followed closely by the lack of presence in retail.
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Now developers are with similar hardware power, a growing Mac userbase, way more attention to Apple - if anything there is more reason to port to Mac than there was before.
Like what? Frankly, as much as people like to shit on Windows for encroaching on other peoples markets, Apple is by far worse at this. You make a popular piece of software on the Mac, and next OS release, there will be an "i" version of it from Apple. Apples history with 3rd party developers has been terrible. Plus, they are still less then 5% of the population base. In this day and age, Linux is a more viable target for ports.
I think Apple getting into gaming wouldn't really be for readers of EvAv. It would be for the bookworm playing moms and 2nd life playing hipsters. Which would not be a bad thing at all. I wonder if they would use a mouse/kb or some sort of waggle device? Maybe partner with Nintendo?
My first thought reading the news post was that Apple was going to release a portable to go against the DS. I dunno if the portable market is crowded, but it seems like no one can give Nintendo a run for it's money so far. Maybe Apple can.
Apple does UI software better than MicroSoft. (Apple's system software leaves a bit to be desired, imo. "ditto" command, anyone?) Apple already has an online store. This could be interesting.
The whole basis of these assumptions probably is Apple's move to nVidia chips in their next-gen iPods later this year. It would make sense for Apple to make at least some of its iPod games in-house, but going from that to making the leap of assumption that they are working on another console is kinda silly. Yes, I said Appple working on another console...
how soon we forget.
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"You shutup, and it wouldn't hurt my feelings if you died or if your mother was eaten by a bear or something." - TheFlyingOrc
What fucking dreamworld does this guy live in where Apple is going to make a game console? Apple. A company that has quite happily forsaken PC gaming for more than a decade, including the golden era where everyone and their mother was making a mint, and now they're going to make a console? Because they stuck Bejeweled on the iPod. Jesus, these guys.
edit: wow, wtf is that thing?
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Linux more viable? There is no commercial linux presence at all. Please, no. You are wrong. A REGULAR PERSON will not dual boot. They will use native software.
Photoshop? Photoshop is not a game. Photoshop is not written in DirectX. Assembly, while obviously games are not written in them entirely, still plays a big part - especially bleeding edge engines and games. Yeah, ID games hit Mac, and Doom 3 runs like poorly grated ass on a PowerPC Mac except for the beefiest G5 setup relative to the Intel version. PC developers can put the effort into using assembly, where Mac devs will generally use the regular C/C++ code to do the function they were given.
As for running XP within Mac OS - there is no hardware video support, and its slow as dirt relative to OS X itself. Virtualization isn't now and will likely never be satisfying for games. And yes, dual booting is an enormous pain in the ass.
Mac users generally leave their main apps running 24/7, and never shut their computer off to begin with. Its a different paradigm but thats how it works. Windows users might be less hesitant because they are used to rebooting and having their apps and workspaces completely close. I'm sorry, but you are just wrong here - no normal Mac user will regularly boot Windows just for games.
And yeah, I think I'd shit a brick if Apple bothered doing anything related to games other than including a few weak ones in a set top box like they do with iPod or include Big Bang Board games in OS X.
Apple does UI software better than MicroSoft. (Apple's system software leaves a bit to be desired, imo. "ditto" command, anyone?) Apple already has an online store. This could be interesting.
I dont know where this idea comes from. Maybe its my upbringing, but I dont find Mac OSX to be really any better then Vista or even XP in terms of usability. Infact, I rate Vista higher. Next comes to software. On my PC, I use Quicktime and iTunes quite regularly, and I despise the interface to both. Quicktime has been shit since it came out, and itunes, while not near as bad, really isnt great.
Apple makes prettier and perhaps simpler UIs, but in no way does that mean better.
Mac users generally leave their main apps running 24/7, and never shut their computer off to begin with. Its a different paradigm but thats how it works. Windows users might be less hesitant because they are used to rebooting and having their apps and workspaces completely close. I'm sorry, but you are just wrong here - no normal Mac user will regularly boot Windows just for games.
Well that's fine, because they don't buy games either, so it's win-win.
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