Some Mac gamers live in a fantasy world
Every time I write an article about a Mac game release these days, there ends up being a flood of posts from readers who bitch about the system requirements, because the game won't play on their G4/400 with RAGE 128 card, or because -- heaven forfend -- Mac OS 8.6 isn't supported.
These gimps are living in a fantasy world, and they either need to buy new hardware to play -- what their PC brethren or doing -- or they just have to get a console and be content with that.
The game market more than any other single market except maybe movie-quality 3D animation and video editing pushes the fuck out of the hardware, folks. I mean, brings it to its knees. You can do gaussian blurs in Photoshop as the day is long, you can reformat text in Microsoft Word, you can recalculate tables in Excel, you can do all those things on slower machines without really suffering TOO much, but if you get behind the curve on game performance, you're screwed. Period.
Don't get me wrong. Some people get it, I mean, really get it. But it's patently obvious to me that a lot of people just don't.
The PlayStation 2 is based around a CPU that clocks at 300MHz. The Xbox's is 733, and it's an Intel chip. The GameCube's is 485MHz. All these systems have graphics processors and other discrete chips, and they're wholly designed as game-specific processing systems, not as general-purpose computers. Expecting to be able to satisfactorily play a game designed for any of these boxes on a general purpose computer whose clock speed is only marginally faster than these other system is patently ridiculous, and it illustrates one of the basic problems in the Mac game space right now.
One of the big benefits that PCs have had for a while now is that they're operating so much faster overall than Macs are, and that gap keeps widening. The Megahertz myth ain't. And dual processors do not a faster game machine make. SMP is pretty much a waste on games. There are a few exceptions where Mac game programmers have been able to put dual processor systems to good use by making the second processor churn data that the first doesn't have to, and they've been able to pick up a few frame per seconds here and there, but it's nothing like the 2:1 ratio you'd intuitively expect.
I have a dual processor 1GHz system with a GeForce4 Ti card. For a Mac game system, this is a kick-ass rig. And it plays games great. But looking at Half-Life 2's demo at E3 on a Dell XPS system with a Radeon 9800, I realized last week just how far away the Mac is from being superlative for gaming. The horror stories I'm hearing from game developers and OEMs alike aren't giving me much hope that things will change very quickly, either.
What is giving me some hope, however, are the rumors I'm hearing about WWDC and what will happen in conjunction with Panther's preview. If the stuff I've heard is even half-true, June ought to be a tremendously exciting month.
Comments
You speak the words my mouth is afraid to say.
Posted by: Brad Oliver | May 20, 2003 02:39 PM
You are accurate in your description of the state of mac gaming. having worked with both PC and Mac, I found the PC market much more on the pulse of what makes a good game tick, most notably the mod scene. Mods are the lifeblood of pc gaming, and the work that mod authors put into a game results in revenue both for the author and the game manufacturer (counter-strike anyone?). The fact is even since the inception of direct x, amature and professional game programmers have have a system tailored to their needs. what the mac needs is to get off their ivory tower when it comes to gaming and push the fuck out of it. and that means courting the indiviual users themselves. Get into what makes it tick, I mean the development communities, not just the developers themselves. The way things are going (with the Half life 2 delay and all) there is a slight possiblity of a port, but I sincerely doubt it.
Posted by: Jay Effe | August 1, 2003 09:27 PM
Hi, I'm another one of those inventors looking for a helping hand in marketing, packaging and manufacturing. I know my games have merit on both the software and board game front. I have a few handmade prototypes. However I want you to think of the game pieces as placeholders. We can use any style of sculpture to enhance the game rules. Just a thought let's use Small Soldiers. More than likely the game will have to go through changes in order to get off the ground. Let me know what you think. This booklet you have is the seedling that will support the series. Over fifty games so far. The games are extreme chess, so help me find that special niche that will get Gridlock Chess off and running. I'm looking for a partner can you help. When you read the game plan know this. Kids catch on instantly and come back for more every time and spend hours figuring out new plans of attack for the next time. I see parlor games as well as online tournaments. I've managed to add new levels to the game of chess without the endless stacking of boards (although that's fun too in cyber space). Look for the added levels the armor gives the men and look for the special fields that others project to defend them selves. Also take note of the mobility of my pieces with the new class of pieces we call the ride ons. Enough said, you are looking at the next court in 3-D chess.
Posted by: Paul Leno | January 13, 2004 01:44 PM