OS X Mac Games Store

[Dr. McKay]

The system profiler in the Mac Games Store app is sometimes way off the mark.
Yesterday I checked out Endless Space, which requires a 2Ghz Core2duo processor. I've got an i7 in my MBA, running at 1.7Ghz. Of course, the MGS app said that my computer wouldn't be able to run the game. I'm pretty certain that my i7 way faster than a 2Ghz C2D...

Now, I wouldn't buy this game on MGS because it'll only run on Steam. Nevertheless, you could be missing out on lots of games if you actually believe what the system profiler tells you...

 

[Frigidman]

Yesterday I checked out Endless Space, which requires a 2Ghz Core2duo processor. I've got an i7 in my MBA, running at 1.7Ghz. Of course, the MGS app said that my computer wouldn't be able to run the game. I'm pretty certain that my i7 way faster than a 2Ghz C2D.

Hello Dr McKay!

We are looking into this problem you have reported. The system checker does take cores into account. For example my i7 has 8 (HT), at 2.2ghz. When I looked at a game that said it needs 2.4ghz with min cores of 2... I got all green checkmarks. Just because I didn't see the problem, does not mean there is not a problem.

I wish to open a dialog with you to find out why you experience this bug. Either there may be a bug in the way your mac is reporting its specs, or a bug in the app sending the specs, or something else horrible going on.

However for us to track it down we need just one helpful step from you:

Launch the MacGameStore App, and go to the Help Menu. Select "Mac Game Store Feedback" and then copy paste your above message into the field and submit it. This will greatly help us track this down.

We make every effort to stomp and plug bugs. So please feel free to report those bugs to us directly in the future! We are only here to help make the app a better tool for you.

Thanks!

 

[Dr. McKay]

Hello Dr McKay!

We are looking into this problem you have reported. The system checker does take cores into account. For example my i7 has 8 (HT), at 2.2ghz. When I looked at a game that said it needs 2.4ghz with min cores of 2... I got all green checkmarks. Just because I didn't see the problem, does not mean there is not a problem.

I wish to open a dialog with you to find out why you experience this bug. Either there may be a bug in the way your mac is reporting its specs, or a bug in the app sending the specs, or something else horrible going on.

However for us to track it down we need just one helpful step from you:

Launch the MacGameStore App, and go to the Help Menu. Select "Mac Game Store Feedback" and then copy paste your above message into the field and submit it. This will greatly help us track this down.

We make every effort to stomp and plug bugs. So please feel free to report those bugs to us directly in the future! We are only here to help make the app a better tool for you.

Thanks!

Thx for the feedback.
I will look into that tonight. I previously owned a quad core i5 iMac (2.7Ghz, 16Gb of RAM, AMD 6770HD so obviously, green checkmarks all the way ), which I sold because I needed a laptop. My Macbook Air has a dual-core i7 processor running at 1.7 ghz with 8Gb of RAM and Intel HD5000 integrated graphics.

As a Mac user, I actually prefer buying games through eiter the Mac Games Store or Apple's Mac App Store because I feel Steam to be a rather clunky and resource-hungry app. I end up buying the cheapest version most of the time, though, being the cheapskate that I am.

I will send the feedback via the Game Store app.

 

[Frigidman]

Thanks for helping out!

We did discover that Endless Space was incorrectly setup, and adjusted its number from 0 to 2. We are now deciding what the system should do when cores are listed as 'any' (or 0='unknown' to the code side of things).

Generally speaking, if the publishing staff submits the game with cores set to '0', we don't know if they just didn't fill it in, or truly are saying "Any". And if it is "Any", that means a 1 core cpu is fine so long as the Ghz is >= than the min Ghz. This would then further mean any dual or quad core cpu will be fine regardless what the Ghz is set at.

Its a combined and sometimes complicated issue. And yes as you pointed out... the sys reqs checker is only as good as the data provided. If a game has a bunch of "Any" listed... its really a question if the publishing staff bothered to fill in what the game truly needs, or the game can actually run on anything!

It's an ongoing system we keep tweaking and improving on

 

[Dr. McKay]

It's an ongoing system we keep tweaking and improving on

Will try to give as much feedback as I can...

 

[Dr. McKay]

Just started up Mac Games store. There was an update and apparently, it's already been fixed. Thx !

I'll keep you posted if anything else turns up !

 

[Frigidman]

Quite a few new changes behind the scenes, and some up front ones, with that update. There are some bigger things coming that require some foundation changes pushed out little by little first

Also, the system checker had a small tweak to its cpu compare. You might start seeing more green checkmarks on your Airbook for games now.

CPU's are a weird beast to cover due to the multi-processing. Also some games just flat out do not take advantage of multi-cores, and they truly just need raw mhz on one core. But, those are rare these days.

Hard to cover every single combination of situations in the world. But we are trying!