October 29th, 1999

[8:00 AM] 3dfx Plays Coy, Hints At Possible Future Mac Support

3dfx broke the Voodoo silence on Tuesday, commenting on the demise of Mactell. Mactell, a G3 upgrade, video card, and FireWire peripheral manufacturer, shut their doors on Monday. Mactell was in the final stages of developing a Voodoo3 card with Mac optimized drivers. 3dfx, the manufacturer of the Voodoo product line, currently has unsupported beta Mac drivers that allow a Mac user to purchase a PC branded Voodoo3 card, and run it on their Mac. The company is also now hinting that more Mac support may be in the works. According to 3dfx:

We are sad to hear that Mactell has closed its doors and will no longer be supplying products to the Mac market. It is unfortunate that business conditions did not allow them to continue operating, as we know many Mac users were waiting for the EvilEye Voodoo3 product that was scheduled to be released in the near future. We believe this product would have had a very positive impact on the Mac market, raising the standard for 3D graphics on the platform.

Now, more than ever, 3dfx is showing its support for the Mac platform. We are committed to delivering the fastest, highest performance graphics controllers that Mac users have ever seen, the same way as we've always done on the Mac and other CPU's. The Mac is growing as a game platform and anywhere there's gaming going on, there's a market for 3dfx's superior performance. That's not to say that other Macintosh segments won't also be the beneficiary. Design, Publishing and Authoring professionals won't mind having blazing 2D performance available to them in their work along with the ability to blast away at their favorite game when they finish.

We're going to make sure that our technology is available to Mac users in reasonable timeframes and at fair market prices. We don't see Mac users as second class citizens - we think they want and deserve the same levels of performance available to users of other platforms, and that's really what we're dedicated to.

Whether we do that by going directly to the end-user with our own retail product or by selling our components to Mac specialists is something we continually reassess. In the end 3dfx is going to assure users that they will benefit from high performance graphics on their Macs - and that's what really matters.

You can download Mac drivers right now for a PC branded Voodoo3 card. You can find more information at the 3dfx site.

The Mac Observer Spin: With Mactell out of the picture and no other Voodoo3 cards announced for the Mac, 3dfx holds the potential to help further propel the Mac into gaming equality with the Wintel market. This announcement, was a very cleverly coy statement that managed to pay tribute to Mactell, hint at Mac support, and still not commit to anything. Our take is that the company will come forward with supported (and possibly marketed) Mac products by the end of this year (holiday season), or the beginning of the next year. Think MACWORLD.

We hope that our guessing is correct as 3dfx has become such a powerhouse in the gaming world. Their support for the Mac could lead to making the Mac a more credible gaming machine in the eyes of gamers. Should that happen, the Mac gaming market could pick up some of that momentum that seems to have sagged in recent weeks.

In any event, we welcome this statement from 3dfx as a sign of hope for future Mac products.

3dfx