I'd swap 'Apple' in your statement for 'Steve Jobs', but other then that, I agree.
About a Mac version: Some numbers from (yes) Steam
- Thread starter EmpireOfCats
- Start date
I'd swap 'Apple' in your statement for 'Steve Jobs', but other then that, I agree.
Nah, I think that statement applies very much to Apple in general. I work here in Silicon Valley and interact with Apple people quite a lot. When I was working at Panasonic (which supplies parts to Apple), all the Apple engineers we had to deal with were pretty infamous for being arrogant jerks.
As with any generalization, there are always exceptions, but...
As with any generalization, there are always exceptions, but...
In the US Money=Power and Power=Ego, Apple has massive amounts of Money so follow the logic
There is quite literally a room full of graphic designers on macs behind me who would disagree. They are all very new macs as well.
It's true, Macs are still widely used for graphics design and a lot of video editing/production.
Not so much for games though.
EmpireOfCats
Death to Giant Robots
It's true, Macs are still widely used for graphics design and a lot of video editing/production.
Not so much for games though.
Valve and Blizzard are working on that, with great results, I might add. It would be nice if Firaxis were to wake up and join the party.
Macs account for 5% of the market share in computers, and the percentage of gamers among Mac users is lower than among other computer users. I'm curious how you define "great results."
Is this cherry-picked evidence? Or have you honestly never seen a situation where there was not such a trend? Who knows... Maybe a Mac store opened on campus in 2004, offered generous rebates and improved their sales/marketing strategies very well over the next few years. I've seen Mac stores on campus at other unis, and it doesn't surprise me considering how attractive that target audience is to Mac.
In any case, it seems a bit of a stretch to claim Firaxis are making a big mistake because a heap of people at University of Virginia bought a Mac.
EDIT...
Consider...
What is it, roughly 15million OSX users worldwide?
As of June 2010, there are over 41.7 million Xbox 360 consoles worldwide.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360
As for Windows, just win7 alone has reached in the hundreds of millions, right? Adding XP and Vista I wonder how much that'd be.
ValugaTheLord
Chieftain
It's true, Macs are still widely used for graphics design and a lot of video editing/production.
Not so much for games though.
Only in America!
Who in the right mind would buy a mac for their bussiness in europe?
Computer World, August 2; "Microsoft's Windows 7 reached a major milestone in July, while Apple's Mac OS X lost ground for the fourth straight month, a Web analytics firm Net Applications said Sunday. "
"Meanwhile, Net Applications reported that Apple's OS X recorded its fourth consecutive month of share decline in July, losing nearly two-tenths of a percentage point, the largest single-month drop in over a year and a half.
Since the beginning of 2010, Mac OS X has lost share in five of seven months. It now stands at 5%, the same number as in February 2010 and off the operating system's peak of 5.3% in October 2009, the month Microsoft debuted Windows 7.
Net Applications' numbers don't equate to sales -- two weeks ago Apple reported it sold a record 3.5 million Macs in the second quarter -- but they do show that Windows 7 is fueling an even bigger PC sales boom relative to last year's usage share standings. Windows 7, for example, now powers three times the number of machines than does Mac OS X."
Steam's OS breakdown show similar numbers: Mac OS accounts for almost exactly 5% of users. And this is on Valve's Mac-friendly service, so it does not accurately reflect the total gaming population.
"Meanwhile, Net Applications reported that Apple's OS X recorded its fourth consecutive month of share decline in July, losing nearly two-tenths of a percentage point, the largest single-month drop in over a year and a half.
Since the beginning of 2010, Mac OS X has lost share in five of seven months. It now stands at 5%, the same number as in February 2010 and off the operating system's peak of 5.3% in October 2009, the month Microsoft debuted Windows 7.
Net Applications' numbers don't equate to sales -- two weeks ago Apple reported it sold a record 3.5 million Macs in the second quarter -- but they do show that Windows 7 is fueling an even bigger PC sales boom relative to last year's usage share standings. Windows 7, for example, now powers three times the number of machines than does Mac OS X."
Steam's OS breakdown show similar numbers: Mac OS accounts for almost exactly 5% of users. And this is on Valve's Mac-friendly service, so it does not accurately reflect the total gaming population.
Jerrymander
Epistemologist
EmpireOfCats
Death to Giant Robots
My "great results" just means that StarCraft 2 and the Valve Steam games (those released so far) run perfectly on OS X. I'd like to have this experience with Civ V, too. This would be the last game I would have to dual boot for, and I'm so sick and tired of that, it would simply get played less. Anyway, you might want to read the earlier entries in this thread, because we've been through this all before. The tl;dr version:
1. The "five percent market share" refers to all PCs sold, including those that go to companies that will never, ever see a game in their life (except for Minesweeper). When discussing the target markets for game companies, this number is useless and misleading.
2. Far more interesting are other trends (link shows data from one college where 43 percent of freshmen now use Macs) that are more relevant to the target audience. Blizzard and Valve are both following that trend with their parallel releases of OS X and Windows games (in StarCraft 2, they are on the same DVD). A good manager recognizes trends when they begin (or even before), instead of playing catch-up.
To be fair, Firaxis started off with Civ V in what, 2007? Since then growth rate of Mac sales has been accelerating, so you can see why a manager who wasn't paying too much attention to the market might have said "nah, let's go PC only". The continued silence of Firaxis about an OS X version could mean that they have realized their mistake and are doing something frantic in the back room.
I certainly hope so. The port of Civ IV to the Mac was pure crap -- I ended up buying the PC version, too -- and it does look silly to release something on Steam in September 2010 and not have a Mac version.
So is one statistic from one class (i.e. freshmen) from one university from one country. Useless.
EmpireOfCats
Death to Giant Robots
Well, unless you happen to be the guy selling those Macs in Virginia (or not selling those Windows computers), and the guy across the street from campus suddenly trying to sell PC games to Mac users.
Pure statistics are a wonderful science, but in the real world, you don't sit around waiting for the numbers to add up. Doctors have something called "intent to treat" that means if you only can heal one person out of ten with a new drug, you don't really care what the result of a larger, more precise trial would be (unless there are special factors, of course). In business, you look for "trends" to give you the jump on the competition before those numbers are good enough for a hard statistic.
In this case, you might want to take a look at the growth rate of Mac sales in the last years, too -- about a 33 percent increase per quarter, if I remember correctly. I'm calling a trend here, and so are Valve and Blizzard, and, oh yeah, as is the stock market. Apple is now worth more than Microsoft (though that might have changed again by now).
You are of course free to call bull, as Firaxis seems to be doing. We'll know in a few months or years who was right.
Considering the popularity of products like the ipod and iphone, it doesn't surprise me Apple are very profitable. I didn't try to claim otherwise, btw. Does that mean game developers should put the effort into prioritising an OSX release for a game when OSX has a small market share? It doesn't seem to me that the popularity of the iphone and ipod makes the answer to the question just asked obvious.
By the way, can you please cite your source with the 33% per quarter figure? What is the increase per quarter for non-Mac sales? One would guess that in general the sales of computers is rising, so it would be only natural for some of the Mac figure to be from that.
So I don't feel like I'm calling bull on anything. I'm just saying I don't see a case for Firaxis making a big mistake here. Windows can be installed on a Mac, so people with a Mac who want to play civ5 still can, provided they have the necessary hardware.
By the way, can you please cite your source with the 33% per quarter figure? What is the increase per quarter for non-Mac sales? One would guess that in general the sales of computers is rising, so it would be only natural for some of the Mac figure to be from that.
So I don't feel like I'm calling bull on anything. I'm just saying I don't see a case for Firaxis making a big mistake here. Windows can be installed on a Mac, so people with a Mac who want to play civ5 still can, provided they have the necessary hardware.
EmpireOfCats
Death to Giant Robots
http://www.neowin.net/news/apple-q2-2010-earnings-mac-sales-up-33-and-iphone-up-131
For example.
I guess we'll just have to wait. Now excuse me for a few hours while I go play StarCraft 2 on my Mac ...
Tarkhan
King
Apple lost me during Vista.
If theres one thing I absolutely hate, it's hostile advertising. Instead of spending all those millions on those annoying "I'm a mac, and i'm a PC" ads slamming Vista (even if it was a terrible OS) they should have promoted the benefits of OS X.
If theres one thing I absolutely hate, it's hostile advertising. Instead of spending all those millions on those annoying "I'm a mac, and i'm a PC" ads slamming Vista (even if it was a terrible OS) they should have promoted the benefits of OS X.
EdCase
Defender of the Faithless
With all the back and fro, why not just check Steam's statistics and post them
Windows XP 32 bit 32.73% -0.26%
Windows 7 64 bit 28.24% +1.59%
Windows Vista 32 bit 13.71% -0.30%
Windows 7 12.42% +0.35%
Windows Vista 64 bit 6.72% -0.03%
MacOS 10.6.3 64 bit 4.30% -1.01%
MacOS 10.5.8 64 bit 0.77% -0.26%
Windows XP 64 bit 0.56% 0.00%
Windows 2003 64 bit 0.31% -0.01%
Other 0.23% +0.05%
That's for July. Those numbers are what they are. Which means "crappy" Vista outmasses OSX by itself.
Steam obviously is not the entirety of the market for games (well maybe for OSX, I don't know) but it is a sure indicator that Mac made a very minor splash rather than a deep impact.
It's a market worth capturing, I guess. But you run on intel chips now boys..So developers know if you want a game badly enough...you can run Windows.
Windows XP 32 bit 32.73% -0.26%
Windows 7 64 bit 28.24% +1.59%
Windows Vista 32 bit 13.71% -0.30%
Windows 7 12.42% +0.35%
Windows Vista 64 bit 6.72% -0.03%
MacOS 10.6.3 64 bit 4.30% -1.01%
MacOS 10.5.8 64 bit 0.77% -0.26%
Windows XP 64 bit 0.56% 0.00%
Windows 2003 64 bit 0.31% -0.01%
Other 0.23% +0.05%
That's for July. Those numbers are what they are. Which means "crappy" Vista outmasses OSX by itself.
Steam obviously is not the entirety of the market for games (well maybe for OSX, I don't know) but it is a sure indicator that Mac made a very minor splash rather than a deep impact.
It's a market worth capturing, I guess. But you run on intel chips now boys..So developers know if you want a game badly enough...you can run Windows.
Your argument itself is rather "crappy", when you consider how long Steam has been available for Windows compared to OSX. We're talking years versus months.
I'm curious though, Steam doesn't track 10.6.4, or at least your post doesn't show the stats for 10.6.4. Could the decrease in .3 users because they upgraded to .4?
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