

Apple's games strategy looks beyond consoles and the iMac - ilamont
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/05/07/apples-games-strategy-looks-beyond-consoles-and-imac

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pmjordan
I wouldn't read too much into the updated iMac. As far as I can tell, the
MacBook Pro has been a somewhat better gaming rig than the iMacs for the last
months, which isn't what you'd expect. Really, they're just correcting that
oddity in their product lineup.

The article may well be spot on in its analysis on the mobile devices. I
suspect it will very much come down to how they treat developers. The iPhone
in its current incarnation isn't anywhere near the DS or PSP in terms of price
point. (DS: €150, PSP: €170, iPhone: €1000) The audience for the games is
therefore very different (and presumably smaller) as well. In terms of
hardware, the iPhone is (apparently) roughly equivalent to the PSP but with
better connectivity.

The way to go is to figure out what kinds of games typical iPhone owners play
on their other devices, and develop games to that need.

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erickhill
Game performance, in my experience, has always been hugely lacking on the Mac.
Beyond the sheer lack of game support (for what used to be obvious reasons)
the actual game performance never matched up, at least with 3D graphics games.
The frame rate would almost always suck, and if you didn't have a ridiculously
high-end card (e.g. something for a Mac Pro desktop) you might as well forget
it. You were better off with your Playstation any day. Hate to say that, but
it's true. Plus, oftentimes the most popular games would never get the
updates/patches as quickly as the MS versions, which was annoying.

The Mac was simply never taken seriously as a game platform.

Educational games? Sure. 2D? Fine. 3D? Forget about it.

I currently have a Leopard MBP, so maybe times have changed. But I was burned
too many times in the past. It taught me to stay away from the games rack.

~~~
Tamerlin
Before the G5, macs were also painfully underpowered compared to even standard
windows PC's, and before OSX, there wasn't really much by way of robust, high-
performance 3D libraries or media API's for the mac. Now, Apple has a solid
OS, comparable (i.e. identical) hardware and therefore performance and
features, and also pretty close to a complete analog for DirectX -- not just
for Direct3D, but all sorts of other API's like audio as well.

So now Apple has the technology to offer up a solid gaming platform, so the
question is what are they doing to attract game developers?

I don't know the answer to that -- I'm hoping someone here might.

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andreyf
If you think of the iPhone as a second shot at the Newton, their "second
shots" seem pretty solid...

