

Mac gaming renaissance coming in 2011, powered by Steam - abraham
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/08/mac-gaming-renaissance-coming-in-2011-powered-by-steam.ars

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ComputerGuru
I posted this to HN forever ago, it's a list of games coming to Mac OS X in
2010 and 2011: [http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/our-list-of-highly-
anticipated...](http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/our-list-of-highly-anticipated-
games-for-os-x/)

Only games scheduled for simultaneous release on both Windows and Mac or Mac-
only releases are included in that list. Games that are being ported to Mac
after being available on Windows or gaming consoles previously are not
included. StarCraft II is the first of the bunch, and there are a _lot_ more
exciting games to look forward to. I think the days of OS X gaming are finally
upon us.

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xsmasher
It seems that Mac games do not have the same performance as PC games, even on
the same hardware. Maybe not surprising with Valve, who is new to the mac
platform, but it is surprising with Blizzard who's been Mac from way back. I
can only assume that it's either an OSX issue or bad drivers.

Either way, hopefully this is the start of a virtuous circle where more games
= better drivers = more gamers = more games.

~~~
sliverstorm
Is it possible OSX just has more overhead? I mean it's not like Valve or
Blizzard write the drivers, Apple does and they've of course been with OSX
from day 1.

I know when I ran Warcraft III on an OSX machine, it felt like a little app in
a window/box, whereas on Windows it's allowed to basically take over the
machine.

~~~
Tamerlin
"Is it possible OSX just has more overhead?"

Most likely, it's because Apple hasn't cared much about 3D performance in the
past -- and even if they did, they'd be behind, because nVidia and ATI can
dedicate entire teams of people specifically to opimizing drivers. Apple
really _can't_ do that, because Apple makes operating systems and consumer
electronics, not graphics processors.

And as the graphics processors get more powerful and evolve toward being ever
more general-purpose, the driver gap between the specialists (ATI, nVidia, and
eventually probably the Larrabee team at Intel) and the likes of Apple will
only grow.

And the case in point -- Microsoft provides reference drivers, nVidia and ATI
provide the real deal... those highly optimized drivers aren't Microsoft's
code.

~~~
azim
Graphics drivers on OSX don't come from Apple. They're written by ATI/Nvidia.
However, for a variety of reasons including larger development teams and end
user upgradeability, Windows drivers just have the cutting edge tech available
first. Just like with Apple, were you to go to Dell.com or HP.com and download
manufacturer certified drivers, you'd find them woefully out of date also.

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houseabsolute
I was hacking around in jME (a game engine for Java) today, and I am pretty
amazed by how much work goes into such software. This is to all appearances
and amateur production which has still received an incredible amount of work.
Comparing what it took to get a bit of code running in that versus j3d made me
realize that a good, cross-platform engine for developing games could be a
serious economic advantage for a developer. And it appears that that is what
Valve is doing here. Very impressive.

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Xixi
The Mac gaming renaissance has been announced every other year for the last 15
years... Macs are at an all time high in the households, that's a huge plus.
But with shitty drivers, and most games written for DirectX, I don't know how
it will turn out.

We will see, but I have low expectations.

~~~
whatusername
As I get older - I'm beginning to really only play the AAA stuff unless I'm
really passionate about something.. And that means Blizzard (who make Mac
games), Valve (Who have ported Source to Mac and are releasing all new games
on Mac), Firaxis (aka Civ V).. The mac can now pretty much cover all of my PC
gaming needs.

~~~
omarqureshi
It's a shame that Firaxis haven't given commitment to Civ V on the Mac .. yet
- [http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/13/gdc-2010-civilization-v-
proba...](http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/13/gdc-2010-civilization-v-probably-mac-
bound-eventually/)

~~~
whatusername
Good thing I don't have a mac. :) I was going on the basis of ComputerGuru's
post here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1587352>

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paolomaffei
Yeaaah... I've got a 2010 MBP 13' and steam there sucks. Everything is slow
and takes ages to load, I had to install windows.

Edit: also not just graphics, for example Europa Universalis III, it took a
couple of minutes to *loadé on my 2004 windows xp PC. Now on this MBP with OsX
it takes like 10 minutes.

~~~
ioquatix
It sounds like the real problem is poor programming - maybe game developers
need to use better algorithms and profile their code.

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ioquatix
I think one big issue with Steam is the fact that it won't work on path-
sensitive installs of Mac OS X, and when I filed a support request the
response was that they (Valve) have no intention of fixing this.

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kaiserama
A note to anyone who wants to play games powered by the Source engine, don't
upgrade to 10.6.4. The graphics performance is very poor. I will bootcamp into
XP just to play source games.

[http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13144...](http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1314406)

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mkramlich
I think we should wait til 2011 to make this conclusion.

