How can Apple make gaming better?

[som3on3]

for those who don't know

there is out there a topic for playing nfs and other window games

on your mac

[BobOki]

Emulation in ANY form is NOT a solution, its a temporary bandaid at BEST.

We are talking about a FIX, not just getting by.

Getting by, we have bootcamp, parralells, vmware, and that codeweavers program.

[MacApprentice]

You guys need to see this in a realistic manner. Apple is selling to a nich market, no game company in their sane mind will ever publish every of its games on the Mac. They do port block busters because they appeal to the most Apple Mac owners but that's it. It's basic economy, the best thing is still some form of virtualisation...

[bxsci(macuser)]

You guys need to see this in a realistic manner. Apple is selling to a nich market, no game company in their sane mind will ever publish every of its games on the Mac. They do port block busters because they appeal to the most Apple Mac owners but that's it. It's basic economy, the best thing is still some form of virtualisation...

 

 

agreed - for the time being virtualization will be good

 

and when mac continues its rise we'll see some increase in gaming

[yoda75]

agreed - for the time being virtualization will be good

 

and when mac continues its rise we'll see some increase in gaming

 

In a perfect dream world Apple and Sony would cut a deal. Apple authorizes OSX for the Vaio and Sony releases a laptop graphics card complete with cell GPU + PS3 emulator.

[bxsci(macuser)]

In a perfect dream world Apple and Sony would cut a deal. Apple authorizes OSX for the Vaio and Sony releases a laptop graphics card complete with cell GPU PS3 emulator.

 

and mac compatible blue ray drive

[u1m2]

* They should make GFX upgradable and allow third parties to make those (Maybe an MXM format of some sort) that' a bit of investment but in the end it'll be profitable by both Apple and third parties.

 

This is a MUST if Apple is going to appeal to the gaming market and not just for the iMac or Macbook Pro because the desktop macs lack decent upgrades as well. For example my upgrade cycle is 2 GPU's per Mobo/CPU/Ram combo i.e. I usually buy 2 graphics cards (once a year high-end) before I sell the core of my system (before warranty expires) and upgrade. With Macs the problem is there are no decent upgrades once the system is bought. Quad G5 owners are like two generations behind with their graphics cards although they have kick ass systems that is good enough for anything else. Think of the poor people stuck with Dual G4 systems. The system is good enough for mild PS and some audio/video editing work but they can not upgrade to the best AGP cards out there whereas some guy who paid 500 bucks for an AthlonXP system back in the time can upgrade easily and play the latest games. (X1950XT or 7950GT for example).

How long has it been since the 8800 GTX is released you said ? How much longer will the people with Mac Pro's going to wait for them ??? With the way things are going not many gamers will switch to Macs anytime soon. Doesn't Apple realize that gamers have money and are willing to spend it, haven't we demonstrated already how much we like to buy new stuff even when we don't need them ?

[yoda75]

Apple does want the gamers as you can see from their most recent announcements from EA and ID. Unfortunately up until recently it's been hard for them to justify a full commitment to the Mac plarform from the Game developers due to Macs having such a small market share. Things have changed now and we can be hopeful of a much better selection of games being offered for OSX. The Intel transition has allowed for things like transcider's software that will minimize the work required fro developers to port games to the Mac. With Macs (very slowly but surely) gaining market share, and the R&D required to port games being minimized, I think we will slowly start to see more and more titles available for OSX.

 

In the meantime, there's bootcamp. There is also gaming through virtualization that's about to go mainstream. Either way, just load up TinyXP and install your games and away you go. I'm still happy that now I don't have to keep a seperate PC or gaming console just to play my favourite games.

[vbetts]

Until Apple either makes a deal with Microsoft to lease DX10, or they make a DX10 killer, you will NOT see this os surpass Windows.

 

You're forgetting OpenGL. OpenGL does not have the limitations that DX9 had, or Dx10 right now.

[dark4181]

more games

[teflon]

You're forgetting OpenGL. OpenGL does not have the limitations that DX9 had, or Dx10 right now.

 

um... you realise that OpenGL right now (let alone the version implemented in 10.4) is way way way behind DX10, and wont catch up until (i think) early 2008. so thats one entire year behind Microsoft.

[vbetts]

um... you realise that OpenGL right now (let alone the version implemented in 10.4) is way way way behind DX10, and wont catch up until (i think) early 2008. so thats one entire year behind Microsoft.

 

Open GL 2.0 is supported in 10.4 if I remember right, which another version of it just came out, and open gl 3.0 support is suppose to come this year. Opengl is still contending against DX9, which is all that's important right now since there are no REAL dx10 games that are out now.

[teflon]

yes, but you seem to be suggesting that DX10 has some major drawbacks. the biggest drawback i can think of is that its built into a rubbish OS, which holds it back, especially when it comes to playing games designed for DX9. So its a slow at DX9, but that, and its overall speed can only improve with updates to both drivers and DX10 itself.

 

as you correctly say, OGL 2.0 is in 10.4 (actually its OGL 2.0+ which adds a small number of things from OGL 2.1)

 

as for OGL 3.0, thats quite a way off still. The next version is OGL 2.x codenamed Long Peaks, and is indeed set for later this year, but is quite an extensive rewrite of OGL 2.1 that changes the way that OGL works. OGL 3.0 (Mt Evans) builds on this by adding a load of DX10's functionality to the rewritten API.

 

10.5 will either have Long Peaks or OGL 2.1, but it definitely wont have OGL 3.0, and so it wont have all the functions of DX10, which in turn means that gaming on OSX wont be as pretty as gaming on Vista until OGL gets updated. But seeing as Apple is quite slow in updating its OGL implementation, it could take a long time before we see DX10 effects in OSX.

 

oh, and DX10 functions will be appearing in force towards the end of this year, thanks largely to UE3.

[vbetts]

yes, but you seem to be suggesting that DX10 has some major drawbacks.

 

I shouldn't have said that rofl, :censored2: That was my bad.

[teflon]

haha.. yeah, youre right, DX10 does have major drawbacks... i couldve said that better....

 

lets see now "yes, but youre effectively saying that DX10 is a stinking pile..."

no wait "yes, but DX10 isnt all bad..."

yeah, thatll do.

[bubez]

Native games on the Apple platform run very well. Plus, in my experience, some like CoD2 and W3 run better on mac! But there are limitations that make the Mac platform less attractive that others to game development. First, macs are priced a little higher than their win correspondent. Second, Apple doesn't have a mac designed especially for gaming. The system that is more gaming-like is the Mac Pro that is more than 2000€ (mine, with x1900, CPU 2.66 and other stuff, more than 3000), with less than 1000€ you have a good win pc for gaming. Third, people who bought the mac pro for gaming wants a faster graphics card and at least 6-channel audio.

If Apple will make a Mac for gaming, that would be very interesting for game devs and maybe many games will come for mac.

 

PS: note that ID software John Carmack previewed his next-gen game graphics engine on a Mac... so Mac isn't a bad gaming platform after all...

[thegodfaza]

I have three letters that explain why PC's are better(and prefered) than Macs for gaming.

 

AMD

[equilibriumuk]

There should be more native games (not cider/wine based)

 

I was excited to hear about the new EA mac games coming out, thinking they would be native, but they are only really windows games using a modified version of wine.

 

It's like linux I guess. Why should people be funding and developing a work-around when developers could be coding native games?

 

I'm surprised at the mac game prices aswell. (most are old windows games ported by aspyr/similar)

The only companies that seem to have created proper native mac & windows games (in the same package) are Blizzard & iD Software.

 

More OpenGL games ftw!

[vbetts]

I have three letters that explain why PC's are better(and prefered) than Macs for gaming.

 

AMD

 

 

>_> No, I think Intel is more perfered than AMD right now. Even more, I don't see how an AMD machine can go against the mac pro with 8 cores, 4 gb of memory, and a Geforce 8800 ultra under windows.

[bxsci(macuser)]

if apple had better support for developers - perhaps giving detailed explanations of how to port windows games to macintosh there would be more mac games...

and like people have said, a mac gaming machine would help

[MacX]

I hope Apple puts more effort into gaming cause right not my Apple ass is not impressed by it.

 

If Mac Pro had more graphics cards. OPEN GL needs to get its ass in gear cause DX 10 is kicking ass, expect not many games out yet.. And all Apple needs to do is tell the world they are perpared for that and DEV will follow with it. OS X is number 2 in the world in users. Why not? Games would sell so well!

 

That is all i am saying.

[tank27]

Titles Titles Titles

[equilibriumuk]

OPEN GL needs to get its ass in gear cause DX 10 is kicking ass

is it?

 

Screenshot showing comparison of DX10 with OpenGL 2.1

OpenGL 2.1 looks pretty good to me, especially on the new idsoftware engine.

 

The problem at the moment is so many developers use directx

[alan6288]

I just bought Hoyle Card Games for the mac.

It runs fine on the one computer, but it gets a blank screen on the other.

I think the difference is one has a nvidia 7600 GT and the other is running a 8600 GTS.

Don't know for sure, does anyone have an idea how to correct the problem.

 

Both cards have qi & ce supported.

Thanks

[Paul Dullford]

I think Apple has already vastly increased the gaming potential of their mid- to high-range Mac computers with one product: Boot Camp. Now, iMacs and MacBook Pros can run Windows games natively, which adds a huge number of games to the Mac gaming world. Although this could certainly discourage porting houses, it is terrific for Mac users because it gives them more choice. They can now play the Orange Box without Valve outsourcing it to EA and make it extremely sluggish (as with the PS3), which it won't anyway because they won't support the Mac in any way.

What Apple needs to do is add decent graphics to their baseline MacBook laptops. Please, just don't give us Intel integrated graphics. Even nVIDIA integrated graphics would be better. I myself am suffering from Intel's graphics on a Dell PC, and have to undergo the plight of Portal crashing every 10 minutes or so with a BSoD. That would perhaps provide a better experience for casual gamers (ex. me), who hesitate before buying a cheap Mac because of the graphics.

Then again, this might have a negative (well, mathematically positive) impact on laptop price. Therefore, what Apple should do is provide a line of gaming laptops that can run both OS X and Windows with 256MB or more of VRAM on a discrete graphics card, and market it to professionals as well. Oh wait, that's the MacBook Pro. Never mind.