About a Mac version: Some numbers from (yes) Steam

[EmpireOfCats]

A while ago there was a thread here about a Mac version of Civ V out of the box that the admins seem to have deleted. A large part of the discussion was about Firaxis' expected sales. We can revisit that discussion again now, because Valve has released some first data from Steam for the Mac (picked up at Ars Technica), and says:

[A]lready more than eleven percent of all Steam purchases are for the Mac

There is a bunch of stuff to remember when looking at that figure. On the one hand, there is going to be a lot of pent-up demand for Mac games which Valve as first-to-market is cashing in on. On the other hand, with all due respect to Killing Floor and such, what has been released so far for the Mac are not exactly the top games. Valve hasn't even begun to ship its own big sellers such as Left 4 Dead or the HalfLife series (Portal is being given away for free and shouldn't count towards the sales). Valve's "already" must be them hoping that this is just the beginning.

Obviously, I think this figure of more than eleven percent is a good indicator that it would be worth Firaxis' while to release a full Mac version -- and not some pathetically buggy "port" by a third party a year later like they did with Civ IV. Also, I see my arguments confirmed: That PC market share is a bad indicator for game companies, because it includes company computer that will never see a game; that Mac sales to private consumers have grown to the point where they translate to a small but serious demand for games; that Mac users on average have more disposable income.

Valve says it is going to make the Mac numbers part of its regular hardware survey, so we'll be able to see if that elven precent holds.

While we're at it, there are some more interesting tidbits in the linked articles that people are going to talk about here anyway, so here's my 0.02 euros: Mac graphics are a lot slower: This is a known problem, and the next update of OS X is rumored to bring some major speed-ups. Valve seems confident this problem will go away, but be assured that for now it is very real. Macs are five times less likely to crash than Windows computers: Well, duh. This is what Apple is selling, the "it just works" part; also, Apple controls both hard- and software, OS X has an open-source core from the Unix family that has been battle-tested for decades, and there is no "mandatory additional" third-party software like AV to foul up the system. I'm surprised the difference isn't greater. Two thirds of all Mac users are running Steam on a laptop: Laptop sales are where growth is for all operating systems on this level, which is why publishers (including Firaxis with Civ V, if I've paid attention) are looking for sane hardware specs. That's good.

Remember, Firaxis: All it needs to be able to do is run on my i5 MacBook Pro. Natively, please.

 

[Skwink]

I already play civ 4 on my Macbook, but I hate game prices on a mac, compared to a pc. I would love a mac version at launch.

 

[matthewthegreat]

I don't care about Mac version. I want a Linux version

 

[dogdoo]

Macs are the most reliable computers I have ever used, PCs just crash all the time. I'm sorry but thats what happened when I played on a PC. Maybe the storage system that handles all the folders or something is too large, I dont know because I'm not a computer expert. But I think there is a real difference in what PCs and Macs should be used for. PCs are for business, Macs are for recreation and home.

 

[arstal]

A while ago there was a thread here about a Mac version of Civ V out of the box that the admins seem to have deleted. A large part of the discussion was about Firaxis' expected sales. We can revisit that discussion again now, because Valve has released some first data from Steam for the Mac (picked up at Ars Technica), and says:

[A]lready more than eleven percent of all Steam purchases are for the Mac

There is a bunch of stuff to remember when looking at that figure. On the one hand, there is going to be a lot of pent-up demand for Mac games which Valve as first-to-market is cashing in on. On the other hand, with all due respect to Killing Floor and such, what has been released so far for the Mac are not exactly the top games. Valve hasn't even begun to ship its own big sellers such as Left 4 Dead or the HalfLife series (Portal is being given away for free and shouldn't count towards the sales). Valve's "already" must be them hoping that this is just the beginning.

Remember, Firaxis: All it needs to be able to do is run on my i5 MacBook Pro. Natively, please.

Valve wasn't first to market. Gamersgate has been doing Mac for at least 18 months now.

Valve is first to market on their own stuff though.

Sane specs are coming in for business reasons. It's a lot harder to sell copies of games when most people can't run it well.

 

[tom2050]

Macs are reliable I must admit... and they have the advantage of not near as many virus and malware because they don't consist of any major considerable portion of the market share; therefore they are not aimed at to any extent by malicious individuals. For gaming, as was mentioned, Mac either has to wait for a bad port or not get the game at all. So as far as recreation, Mac is not 1st for gaming, but it is perhaps for photo albums.

Only time my PC has ever crashed to a BSOD is when a memory chip went bad (and perhaps another time from a strange Windows issue) in the last several years. Microsoft releases patches on a daily basis for Windows to fix all of it's flaws.

@dogdoo: Mac's have tiny little HDD's? It's common to have at least a 320 or 500GB nowadays even in substandard systems.

 

[deanej]

Most crashes on PCs are due to memory issues (which haven't been caused by Windows itself since the 9x line died), hardware incompatibility, or badly written/incompatible software. I have an XP computer that started getting random BSODs the moment a SecuROM-infected game was installed on it.

BTW, PCs don't require third-party AV since Microsoft Security Essentials was released. It's still a separate download though.

 

[Skwink]

Oh boy this is going to turn into a war soon! My compaq died with in 3 years, but my old iMac G4 is still working after 9 years. I envy the fact that windows does more games though....

 

[peter grimes]

The Forum Moderators very rarely delete threads - if you can't find it, it's likely that your user controls are set to only show threads that have been active in the last [x] months.

 

[chongli]

but I hate game prices on a mac, compared to a pc.

With Steam you buy the PC version and get the Mac version included for free (and vice-versa).

 

[Rebel44]

With Steam you buy the PC version and get the Mac version included for free (and vice-versa).

Only if publisher allow it.

All games with Steam Play logo work this way.

 

[ori]

it wasn't deleted - I moved it to computer talk after it went away from civ5 and degenerated into a mac vs. pc debate that was barely on-topic in Computer Talk and definitely had nothing to do with the game

 

[Rubbaduck]

The thing with gaming on a mac is that most of them carry sub-par graphics chips and as such aren't very well suited to gaming. AFAIK only the iMacs, Macpros and the top specced Macbook pros have any sort of repsectable graphics muscle behind them, since they don't really have use for it due to a lack of games, and the loop goes on.

Another concern is the lack of DirectX support, which for some reason not known to me is more often than not preferred over OpenGL by devs. I think this choice is the thing that will decide whether or not it's going to be 'properly' released for Macs.

 

[civ_king]

Macs are reliable I must admit... and they have the advantage of not near as many virus and malware because they don't consist of any major considerable portion of the market share; therefore they are not aimed at to any extent by malicious individuals. For gaming, as was mentioned, Mac either has to wait for a bad port or not get the game at all. So as far as recreation, Mac is not 1st for gaming, but it is perhaps for photo albums.

Only time my PC has ever crashed to a BSOD is when a memory chip went bad (and perhaps another time from a strange Windows issue) in the last several years. Microsoft releases patches on a daily basis for Windows to fix all of it's flaws.

@dogdoo: Mac's have tiny little HDD's? It's common to have at least a 320 or 500GB nowadays even in substandard systems.

There are no "viruses" for OS X, and the Mac Pro can hold 8TB HDD (soon to be 12TB) and my old super low end (as low as they make them) has 120GB (waiting for SSDs to come dowcome down)

The Forum Moderators very rarely delete threads - if you can't find it, it's likely that your user controls are set to only show threads that have been active in the last [x] months.

computer talk

The thing with gaming on a mac is that most of them carry sub-par graphics chips and as such aren't very well suited to gaming. AFAIK only the iMacs, Mac Pros and the top specced Macbook Pros have any sort of respectable graphics muscle behind them, since they don't really have use for it due to a lack of games, and the loop goes on.

Another concern is the lack of DirectX support, which for some reason not known to me is more often than not preferred over OpenGL by devs. I think this choice is the thing that will decide whether or not it's going to be 'properly' released for Macs.

The NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M is satisfactory, DirectX is a proprietary development by Microsoft

 

[roberteriksson]

I would buy this game instantly if they release if for Mac, steam or no steam or whatever they do to it

 

[Chalks]

There are no "viruses" for OS X

People who spout this do not understand what they are saying.

There are few viruses for OS X because nobody can be bothered to target them at the moment. Research suggests that Macs may have security issues to a similar degree as PCs.

You could get a virus tomorrow, and the only thing that's making that unlikely is the very thing you're trying to destroy - the obscurity of the platform.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Really? In my experience the Mac has always been more secure.

Macs are in fact a smaller share of the market about 11% last time I checked, but A) The Mac share of the market is growing while the Windows share is shrinking, B) Most of those Windows machines will never see a video game of any kind so the Mac share of the gaming market is much higher.

It has already been seen that many companies are releasing their games simultaneously for Mac and Windows.

XP machines are not bad.
I hate Vista and Windows 7 with a passion.
"The following programs have prevented your computer from shutting down: Shutdown manager"
"Your computer is running slowly, you may want to close some of the following programs: Windows explorer."
As the joke goes "You seem to have a trojan called the Windows kernel"

 

[Chalks]

Really? In my experience the Mac has always been more secure.

How are you measuring that?

Security is not about how often you get infected, it's about how easy it is to infect you.

I doubt you have the personal experience to judge that.

 

[Zaimejs]

Yipeee... a mac vs. PC thread. What forum is complete without this?

I would jump on board to buy the Mac version. I just bought the Mac version of Civ IV Complete via Steam even though I own the PC version already. I just love being able to play on my iMac. It is slower. It is clunkier and buggier, but it plays on the Mac. That's what is important.

Make an iPad and iPod and iPhone vs. of Civ V to rule them all. I still play Civ IV on my phone now and then... it's not really Civ IV, but it is fun.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

There are few viruses for OS X because nobody can be bothered to target them at the moment.

Dude, that's a link to a trojan that infected people who were a) criminals (using pirated software) and b) dumb as dirt (downloading stuff from unknown people on the Internet). Serves them right, but not to be compared to the situation with Windows computers, where innocent and careful people can infect their computers. As far as Google can tell, there are no (as in zero) viruses for Snow Leopard.

In the end, I don't care why there are no viruses, I'm just happy there are none, and I am very grateful to Microsoft for making sure that Windows 7 supports 8 out of 10 viruses so that their fruit stays low-hanging.

But we can discussion this all over the net. Let's stick to the question of an OS X port of Civ V -- the important things in life. I've submitted a question to the Steam FAQ that is in the works, so we'll see.