04/23/2007, 5:30pm, EDT
Monday, April 23rd
Hardcore gamer makes public plea to Apple
In an open letter to Apple, lifelong gamer and Fileplanet.com blogger 'Fargo' has made a public plea for vastly improved game support under Mac OS X. "There is only one reason I still have a Windows PC: games," Fargo wrote. "It's not that the Mac gaming shelf is devoid of life -- any system that plays Civ IV gets a thumbs-up in my book -- but for a serious gamer the PC continues to be where it's at." The blogger goes on to detail gaming history on the Mac platform, and offers some suggestions for the Cupertino-based company to attract hardcore gamers "in droves." "I know it's humiliating, but for once you've got to look at what Microsoft is doing and copy it. Those guys are scared of you -- and they know that games are the one and only thing that has prevented you from hitting the Tipping Point years ago."
"A whole division at Microsoft is devoted to developing game technology -- like DirectX or the Microsoft XNA developer's toolkit," Fargo explained. "Microsoft buys up development studios and publishes triple-A games with regularity. Microsoft knows that games are the key to getting people to adopt hardware: how is Microsoft attacking the American living room? Through a game console. How did they make sure that game console was a household name? They bought Bungie and brought Halo on board. Man, Halo was supposed to be a Mac game. They shanked you."
The blogger suggests pumping a sizable sum of revenue into gaming by acquiring some companies for exclusive content. "Make sure that next Spore-like event appears on the Mac first," he suggests. Fargo points to the fact that hardcore gamers cycle through hardware frequently, and since Microsoft's Windows Vista launch many users need to upgrade their systems anyway before installing Vista.
"Does anyone actually want to upgrade to Vista? It's been met with a collective yawn," the blogger quipped. "Had you been aggressive in the gaming space four years ago, those gamers might've been migrating to Mac OS X right now in droves."
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Dare I suggest Apple may be trying to take a higher road...?
The answer is BootCamp but we need osX on the PC if we want to be on the game developers radar. And 10.5 will be the PC version, it has to be. =:/
I don't buy this idea that Apple should go after "hard-core gamers." The Nintendo Wii has shown everyone that "mom-friendly" systems make more money.
1) make it as easy as possible for developers to port existing games to OSX with an emphasis on performance, by developing or acquiring the best porting tools and environments.
2) develop unique technologies that drive the development of Mac-first, Mac-only games (the upcoming Leopard iChat API can be part of that)
Is OpenGL competitive with the DirectDraw component of DirectX10? Do the other components of DirectX have competitive equivalents in the Mac OS?
If the technology is lacking in the Mac OS, it would be advisable to resolve that first before going all out with a business/marketing attack.