| Apple officially announced that three game developers were not only coming back to the Mac, but that all three would be releasing simultaneous Mac/PC releases. Simultaneous Mac/PC releases have been virtually unheard of for many years except from Mac stalwart Bungie.
The three new games being touted by Apple are Madden NFL 2000, TRIBES II and Star Wars Episode I: Pod Racer. While this is actually not new news, the fact that Apple is promoting them in this way, especially at E3, shows their commitment to the Mac gaming market. A good thing indeed.
This is the press release from Apple:
Apple Computer, Inc. today announced that the developers of highly anticipated computer games such as Madden NFL 2000, TRIBES II and Star Wars Episode I: Pod Racer are releasing simultaneous Macintosh and Windows versions of their titles. This follows Apple's announcement earlier this week that over 3,100 new or updated Macintosh software titles have been announced during the past 12 months.
"We really care about getting great games on the Mac," said Steve Jobs, Apple's interim CEO. "And, with the strong success of our consumer iMacs and prosumer PowerMac G3s, we have a lot of game-hungry customers."
The acceleration of game development for the Macintosh platform has been rapid in the last year with Apple's adoption of technologies important to gamers, such as fast ATI graphics accelerators and OpenGL 3D software. This effort has prompted Sierra Studios, for example, to bring the award-winning action-packed game, Half-Life, to the Macintosh this fall and the Company has made a commitment to release future game titles for the Mac and PCs at the same time.
"Apple has surprised the gaming community with powerful hardware and software technologies that make multi-platform development of 3D games for the Mac simple and a lot more economical," said David Grenewetzki, president of Sierra On-Line. "Supporting standards such as OpenGL, making good use of their own QuickTime, and building in powerful graphics cards into their systems motivates us to offer the best features of games like Half-Life to the Mac customer."
Other companies expected to announce or ship simultaneous releases of their game titles at E3 are: Deer Avenger II/Simon & Shuster, Diablo II/Blizzard Entertainment, Fly!/Gathering of Developers, Oni/Bungie Software, Quake 3: Arena/Id Software, Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Fallen/Simon & Shuster and Star Wars: The Gungan Frontier/Lucas Learning. Many of these titles are being demonstrated throughout E3 and Apple's latest products including iMac, Power MacintoshG3 and PowerBooks, are being showcased at the Apple booth (Number 4001, Petree Hall).
The Mac Observer Spin: As the title suggested, this is another of our ongoing series discussing signs that the Mac is back. Why is the release of three games so important to the Mac market? After all, the Mac is just used by publishers and graphic artists, right?
Well of course that is not the case, especially now with machines like the iMac blazing consumer territory untrod by Apple in many years. But this goes even deeper.
Games are important to the Mac market because it is what drives the vast majority of kid computer desires. Kids drive parents choices, especially with parents that have never owned a computer before. Many parents assume correctly that their kids know more about computers than they do. They often turn to their kids to make the choice of which computer to buy, certainly at least whether to get a Windows box or a Mac. Until relatively recently, that choice for many kids was (rightly) Windows. We say rightly because very few games were coming to the Mac.
For much of the last year, that trend has been reversing as more Mac developers began announcing renewed Mac support. Now, we have Apple officially announcing three developers coming back or entering the Mac market and doing more than making Mac games, making them simultaneous releases with the PC version. This could only happen if the developers and publishers of the games in question were convinced they could make money with these releases. A healthy Mac market is what those publishers see.
Steve Jobs announced shortly after taking over the iCEO position that Apple was again committed to Mac gaming. That commitment is paying off.
In the meanwhile, we have to once again pay tribute to Bungie. Bungie was making Mac only games that were the equal or superior to anything in the PC market when most Mac developers were scrambling to develop for the PC. They also publish their own games, another virtually unknown concept for game developers from any platform. They have shown that great Mac gaming can happen from the ground up and that we should not be satisfied with simple ports. It is our opinion that Mac users and even Apple owe much to Bungie.
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