Hoping for a Mac version right out of the box!

[lostcause]

I think the question has become, not if, but when and how they make a Mac version.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

"We asked if it would possibly be coming to the Mac, an especially timely question given Monday's hot and steamy announcement, but a 2K representative told us, "We can't comment on that right now." Which smells a lot like, "We'd better start work on a Mac version pretty darn quick.""

Very, very interesting. It used to be companies would come out and say that they weren't working on a Mac port, with a more or less polite reference to the (then) small installed base. I guess when Blizzard and Valve both start releasing stuff for Macs, everybody else sits up and listens.

(How would you like to be a member of the Firaxis Civ V team when the boss from 2K comes to your meeting one Monday morning after you have been working on the game for two years and says "Fantastic game, guys, we all really love it. And we're really looking forward to the great Mac port you're going to be releasing at the same time." Now wouldn't that make you want to throw up?)

 

[EmpireOfCats]

Oh, and just to ramp up the pressure on Firaxis a little bit:

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/10/valve-on-mac-piques-interest-from-other-game-developers/

Gas Powered Games, creator of Supreme Commander 2, Kings and Castles, and Dungeon Siege, has said of the Mac: "We, as a developer, will include a Mac platform option in all of our proposals moving forward. We're in 100 percent support of it, absolutely."​

So that's Blizzard, Valve, Telltale, and Gas Powered Games. Somebody is missing from that list, somebody is missing ... oh, and here's the motivational quote:

Chris Taylor, founder of Gas Powered Games, says that porting games over to the Mac is relatively easy since Macs and PCs now have largely identical internal architectures.​

I'm not sure what the "largely" is about -- is there some chip I'm not aware of? I thought the only real difference was the more modern boot procedure of the Macs -- but note the words "relatively easy".

 

[RABicle]

Somebody is missing. You mean EA right? Ubisoft? id? THQ?

 

[civ_king]

Very, very interesting. It used to be companies would come out and say that they weren't working on a Mac port, with a more or less polite reference to the (then) small installed base. I guess when Blizzard and Valve both start releasing stuff for Macs, everybody else sits up and listens.

(How would you like to be a member of the Firaxis Civ V team when the boss from 2K comes to your meeting one Monday morning after you have been working on the game for two years and says "Fantastic game, guys, we all really love it. And we're really looking forward to the great Mac port you're going to be releasing at the same time." Now wouldn't that make you want to throw up?)

err, a lot of games don't take long to make Mac Compatible

 

[the Falcon]

…

 

[Jeckel]

err, a lot of games don't take long to make Mac Compatible

Yes, but that isn't something you want to be told out of the blue, years into development. It's something you want to know from stage one. It may not take long, but it will take longer to retrofit the comparability then it would to put it in there from the beginning.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

Somebody is missing. You mean EA right? Ubisoft? id? THQ?

No, because EA has Mac games, Ubisoft has (some) Mac games, and THQ has (some) Mac games. I guess I was missing id. Oh no, wait, I'm not, am I? They started three years ago for their next generation engine.

So, uh, what exactly is your point?

 

[Steve the Noble]

From the Kotaku preview:

"Civilization V, which appears to be a crafty evolution for the franchise, is set for release on PC this fall. No Mac version is planned for launch, but the producer noted that all Civ games have eventually come out for Apple computers."

http://kotaku.com/5489814/civilization-v-preview-small-changes-big-differences

 

[EmpireOfCats]

Dear Firaxis, the estimates for the February sales of Macs are in (my emphasis):

Mac sales in the month of February were up 43 percent for the month, which followed a similarly strong January increase of 36 percent. In all, Mac sales for the first two months of 2010 are up 39 percent year over year.​

This is why the other kids are releasing games for Macs. Shouldn't some of those new Macs run Civ?

EDIT: Oh, and then there is this part:

Apple of late has consistently delivered blowout quarterly results. During the three-month holiday frame, the company sold a record 3.36 million Macs, helping it to achieve a 50 percent spike in profits. ​

Though I'd like to add that we're getting tired of these Core 2 chips. Steve, bring on the i7!

 

[Chalks]

The Civ franchise feels like quite a nice fit for Macs. It's a shame they're clearly not designing it in a cross platform format from the ground up.

Having said that, Macs are not gaming systems so nobody should be surprised when they encounter problems when using them for this.

 

[conception]

The Civ franchise feels like quite a nice fit for Macs. It's a shame they're clearly not designing it in a cross platform format from the ground up.

Having said that, Macs are not gaming systems so nobody should be surprised when they encounter problems when using them for this.

Macs are not high-powered gaming systems, but as far as stability I've never seen a Mac system crash playing a game that fits into its system requirements while Windows computers seem to have an endless number of hitches in this regard.

 

[Duuk]

Dear Firaxis, the estimates for the February sales of Macs are in (my emphasis):

Mac sales in the month of February were up 43 percent for the month, which followed a similarly strong January increase of 36 percent. In all, Mac sales for the first two months of 2010 are up 39 percent year over year.​

This is why the other kids are releasing games for Macs. Shouldn't some of those new Macs run Civ?

EDIT: Oh, and then there is this part:

Apple of late has consistently delivered blowout quarterly results. During the three-month holiday frame, the company sold a record 3.36 million Macs, helping it to achieve a 50 percent spike in profits. ​

Though I'd like to add that we're getting tired of these Core 2 chips. Steve, bring on the i7!

If Mac sales ramped up 43% each and every month for the entire lifespan of a generation of computers (the half-life of all users replacing their computers, which is approximately every 8 years), then in 8 years the Mac would have an 11% market share... assuming that PC sales were flat and Mac sales increased at a 43% pace indefinitely. Now I'll ask you an interesting question: Of the 43% increase, how many were previous Mac owners finally upgrading? How many were gamers? (since that is relevant to any discussion of a PC game) If your "I bought a Mac" demographic is increasing only in the 50-year old women that want a Fisher-Price machine to check email and facebook, then your 43% increase means less than 0 to a game publisher.

Also, percentages are a very, very poor thing to take to a company. Percentages are misleading. "Increased sales by 4000% over previous month" can mean that a person sold 40 units this month and only 1 last month. Give hard numbers, like "2,000,000 Macs are owned by people 14-45 with disposable income that self-identify as gamers." That's a worthwhile sample.

 

[Duuk]

Macs are not high-powered gaming systems, but as far as stability I've never seen a Mac system crash playing a game that fits into its system requirements while Windows computers seem to have an endless number of hitches in this regard.

Reason: Macs function more like a console. There is a single hardware build. Any software written for a Mac that crashes is just bad software, end of story.

A PC has more flexibility. You can self-upgrade your video card, sound card, etc. This means that there are a near-infinite number of potential conflicts. As an example, look at the current mess that nVidia has caused with driver updates. While adding functionality for newer hardware setups, older nVidia cards are borked, and interaction with older software is borked, causing well-written, well-supported software to suddenly Blue Screen. You take the "good" of flexibility with the "bad" of limited possible support. There is *always* going to be someone that has a spiffy setup that the system just isn't prepared for.

 

[Chalks]

Macs are not high-powered gaming systems, but as far as stability I've never seen a Mac system crash playing a game that fits into its system requirements while Windows computers seem to have an endless number of hitches in this regard.

Well, that's what you get when you play only a tiny number of the highest profile games about 6 months after their initial release.

Is this a "Macs are better at games" post? Because really, my PC might crash playing 2% of games on the market, but if I was to replace it with a Mac I could enjoy 80% of games on the market not working at all. I wonder which I would prefer.

 

[conception]

Saying that Macs don't crash isn't necessarily saying they are better. I bought a new PC last week, a desktop, because I like the flexibility it could offer me, as one of the posters above stated. But what is best for me is not right for everyone, and I can clearly understand the ever-increasing percentage of people out there who want a computer system that can run fairly easily pretty much every program out there released for it. And at this point, it isn't going to be Mac's fault if there are still some companies out there being stubborn about releasing their new games for it.

Pc's are better for some, and Macs are better for others. What I think is important to note is that Civ is a game that really caters to those who love to be hardcore players by offering extensive mod-ability and an in-depth game. Yet the reason why Civ is a premier game is because a very large number of casual gamers enjoy the game as well, and on easier difficulties and custom scenarios users don't even have to know about the more in-depth and challenging features of Civ.

Like it or not, the second category of Civ players is flocking to Mac computers because they make the most stable and reliable systems out there and that is what best suits these people. And with more and more games coming out for Mac, its not even about having to sacrifice ability to play games in order to get stability. The only sacrifice being made is by Firaxis in not offering this demographic a product they would buy. Instead, these people will take their disposable income and dispose of it to EA for games like The Sims 3 and Spore.

 

[fromeast2west]

When the discussion starts to involve the % of macs you've got to start looking at how Apple and other companies are measuring their installed base.

Depending on who is doing the counting, the number of 'Macs' shipped is almost always the number of devices running an Apple OS; which includes iPhones and their derivatives (and will probably include the iPad as well).

Just as PC sales and install figures measure business use machines (as do Apple #s), Apple sales numbers include sales to schools; which at least historically has been a large part of Apples business ... and those Macs won't get games installed on them either.

The final proof in the pudding will be actual PC vs. Mac sales when titles are released for both platforms. Given Steam's business model it should be very easy for them to compare the volumes and figure out the ROI on porting the game, which is what it will al come down to for the businesses involved.

 

[EmpireOfCats]

[M]y PC might crash playing 2% of games on the market, but if I was to replace it with a Mac I could enjoy 80% of games on the market not working at all.

If you want a computer just to play games, and play them all the time, and have enough money, you are infinitely better off with a PC, simply because you can keep upgrading part after part. You can't upgrade an iMac or a MacBook at all (except for trivial stuff like hard drives and RAM), and even the MacPro is limited. You'd be a fool to use a Mac as a games-only machine.

If you want a computer to work with and occasionally play a few games, a Mac becomes an option. This is what we olde- uh, mature people tend to do. First, the computer is a serious tool, so the freedom from viruses, the lower "TCO" and non-hassle intergration of our iPods etc. is more important. I probably watch more films on my computer than I play games.

Which also means I'll never play "80 percent" of the games out there anyway. Currently, I play exactly three: Civ IV, Left4Dead, and Diablo 2 (mainly because it runs fine virtualized and I don't have to reboot). I'll take a look at The Passing for Left4Dead 2, but that's about it (L4D2 ruined the franchise). Building a separate computer for gaming won't be worth it until my son is old enough.

 

[Chalks]

EmpireOfCats - I assume that you never complain when games won't run on your Mac. That's fine, you've bought a machine for sensible reasons (I assume your work involves some sort of graphics or audio design) and you've prioritised this functionality over playing games. Macs are great for that.

And as a consequence, you're happy that often there will be games that aren't designed for the platform.

The attitude that irritates me is the one where you get angry Mac owners posting in game forums about there being no immediate Mac release, or no release at all for them. If you bought a Mac with a priority for playing games, then you simply bought the wrong product.

 

[civ_king]

Uh when you fill up your hard drive how hard is it to copy your installed programs? Macs just drag 'n' drop!