Apple doesn't need to listen to the hard-core gamers, or game developers. Apple continues to expand its market share for Macs. Across the board it has reached some 7%. In the consumer space, I wouldn't be surprised it has hit 10% already, and the number will continue to grow. Three months from now, back-to-school sales will push Mac portable into the stratosphere. All this means that Macs will probably represent one out of every nine computers of the market that is the target demographic of game developers.

Now, if you are a game developer, are you willing to give up one out of every nine dollars you can make? It doesn't matter in the least bit that Mac hardware is (arguably) inferior gaming platform compared to whatever. The bottom line is just that - the bottom line. If it makes them money, they'll develop for a Commodore 64.

I'm wondering if the absolute best graphics are really that important. A game has to be fun. Seeing every drop of blood spatter doesn't make the game any 'funner' for me. IMO game graphics have really gone into the relm of diminishing return. 10X more triangles doesn't do that much for me when you're starting from such a high grade. It isn't like the iMac runs 8bit color.

Look at the Wii. It's outselling just about everything while it's very weak compared to other gaming systems. That's because the games are fun.

There's a game that came out a while ago that had simpler graphics than the state-of-the-art first person shooters, and all of the hard core gamers (and game industry writers who pander to them) scoffed at it's "cartoony" graphics and declared it a failure before it was even released.

A few years later, World of Warcraft has ten million people playing. And the games that were so vastly superior? Where are they now? Hmmmm?

Give me a fun game with adequate graphics over boring but shiny any day.

and why I don't play them anymore. The graphics are really all that's different in modern consoles and games; by and large, gameplay mechanics haven't been terribly innovative this past decade or so (though there are certainly exceptions), since the original Playstation and the PC's of that era (FPS have been virtually the same in this regard since Doom). The last one I took for a spin was Resident Evil 4, and I blew through it without blinking an eye. The Wii is fun, it's different, it's moving things forward, graphics be damned. Not everyone wants to play Grand Theft Auto.

PC gaming is simply not a viable industry anymore, and certainly does not warrant Apple designing their machines around the concept. The latest marquee game in the industry was Crysis, which even bleeding edge PCs cannot play at full feature(it was designed to be future-proof for several years), and it has not produced enough sales to justify its creation as a stand alone game, although the licensing of its engine should bear fruit. There is simply too much pirating in the PC gaming environment. Now they are having to make games that phone home every 10 days to verify their activation. Even MS's big Games for Windows push has failed to gain traction. The idea that Apple would gain anything significant monetarily by courting the gaming market just doesn't hold water.

Amen to that. In my house there's Mac and PC gaming, Wii, PS2, PS3, and a Gamecube and an N64 somewhere.

Some of my fondest gaming memories are from the N64 days, when my daughter and I would play Mario together for hours. It was fun. I mean, it was really fun. And the Wii carries the tradition forward, although lately I've been pre-occupied with GT5 on PS3.

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geoduck wrote:
I'm wondering if the absolute best graphics are really that important. A game has to be fun. Seeing every drop of blood spatter doesn't make the game any 'funner' for me. IMO game graphics have really gone into the relm of diminishing return. 10X more triangles doesn't do that much for me when you're starting from such a high grade. It isn't like the iMac runs 8bit color.

Look at the Wii. It's outselling just about everything while it's very weak compared to other gaming systems. That's because the games are fun.

If a game writer wanted maximum sales for a Mac game it'd have to be written for the most common Macs with Intel video chips. Of course, if they made games that looked good with integrated video they might sell a couple more windows games. That inexpensive windows box suddenly is when you add a performance video card and a RAM upgrade.

He says the imac needs better graphics support, but last I checked, imacs are very comparable to PCs on price and performance. You want better? You pay more and get a tower ... like gamers already do.

He then goes on to "we need more developers." Thanks, brilliant observation. Apple is steadily growing in market share, what better way to attract them then that?

And what EXACTLY is wrong with mac gaming? He's very vague. True, we don't get the variety and early release dates, but is Quake 4 really THAT much better on a vista alienware than an imac?

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geoduck wrote:
Look at the Wii. It's outselling just about everything while it's very weak compared to other gaming systems. That's because the games are fun.

Amen, geoduck! It’s more important for games to be fun than pretty. Just like movies have to have a good plot or the glitzy CGI is all for naught.

My family recently added a 2.4MHz 24� iMac with the maligned ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO graphics driver. It is extraordinary with our bevy of games including Star Wars Battlefront and Knights of the Old Republic, Halo, Civ IV, AOE III, F/A18 Hornet: Operation Iraqi Freedom, and many others I can’t remember (note: all paid for and registered, not pirated like so many PC games). This weekend my 14 and 16 year old sons are hosting a gaming party with friends that are bringing over their PCs for a networked tournament. BTW, our iMac will be the most powerful gaming machine of the bucnh.

The graphics on the iMac seems wholly appropriate for a home computer at its price point. As other have observed, if you want to keep up with the high-end gaming PCs, then you need to shell out the additional wedge and get the Mac Pro that TMO casually dismissed above.

Mac game developers own the PPC Mac market -- which isn't growing. The growing Intel Mac market allows owners to run PC games through virtualization. So, is the market for creating "Mac Games" getting bigger or relatively smaller? Please comment.

Sure Apple doesn't need the gaming market.

But why wouldn't it *want* it? The hardware is sufficient for all but the most graphics intensive games - what's missing is the developers.

Does the Mac need more Mac games, or will people simply run more PC games on their Intel Macs?

"Since games are one area where Windows has a huge advantage of the Mac, Fusion gives Mac users a chance to play the latest Windows games. To run these high-end video games, the latest beta now supports DirectX 9.0, which video games use to create their realistic animation." MacNN Preview of Fusion 2

MacWorld seems to be out of touch with reality.

The iMac is not the problem when playing games on a Mac. iMacs have graphic co processors and so play most games just fine. The trouble is that the other consumer Macs either have no GPU option, the Mac Mini, or for a GPU in a laptop, the cost is at least $2000.

BB