"We want to be the best gaming platform in the world"

[Karvel]

I was watching the 1999 Macworld keynote here and about 1 hour 18 minutes in he said this:

We recommitted Apple to games 9 months ago and we've been working really hard on this. As a matter of fact, one of the things we did was we got the best and most respected authors of the best games together to beat us up. And we let them, and we listened to them. And we're really trying to take their advice and implement it. And I think we're doing a pretty good job. You've seen some of it in the Power Mac G3, you've seen some of it in OpenGL. And the gaming community has really responded. Now we want to be the best gaming platform in the world.

Personally I don't care so much about graphics/games but reading MacRumors for the past few years it seems as if Apple seems to have gone away from this "goal"? I remember reading a couple of times here that Steve personally dislikes gaming on computers (that it 'wastes time')?

 

[zap2]

I'd say they want to...but don't want to put in all the effort it takes.


They'd love it, if it just happened.


But that quote is from 1999, companies change, and Apple has changes a TON. To hold them to quote from almost ten years ago, in a industry like computers, just isn't fair.

 

[Eraserhead]

Consoles are much bigger now than then to be honest.

 

[beezer]

Games would boom their market dramatically. But as mentioned, their goal has changed. Only the higher end Mac's can play last years released 3D intensive games.

iPod firmware is much more important.

 

[clevin]

I don't see how it works, other than windows game wrap, not many producers want to spend significantly more effort for 3% market (consider most macs aren't suitable for modern 3D games)....

best way of getting more games, IMHO, is license OSX to 3rd party PC makers, which, I don't see SJ-the-self-centered-king would do such a thing. That might indeed be technical reasons behind it as well.

 

[zap2]

I don't see how it works, other than windows game wrap, not many producers want to spend significantly more effort for 3% market (consider most macs aren't suitable for modern 3D games)....

6% market share

 

[Silencio]

In January 1999, Apple started shipping the first generation B&W G3 towers with the then-most-powerful video card on the market, the ATI Rage 128. Apple threw their lot in with OpenGL as their 3D API of choice, back when there was actually competition in the market as to which API would prevail (remember 3dfx and Glide, anyone?). Quake 3 Arena debuted as a public beta on the Mac platform first. That must've been the high point of Mac gaming right there.

Unfortunately Microsoft got everyone to adopt DirectX and didn't bring it to the Mac. Game over. Literally.

 

[clevin]

6% market share

6% is mostly US #

 

[gkarris]

In January 1999, Apple started shipping the first generation B&W G3 towers with the then-most-powerful video card on the market, the ATI Rage 128. Apple threw their lot in with OpenGL as their 3D API of choice, back when there was actually competition in the market as to which API would prevail (remember 3dfx and Glide, anyone?). Quake 3 Arena debuted as a public beta on the Mac platform first. That must've been the high point of Mac gaming right there.

Unfortunately Microsoft got everyone to adopt DirectX and didn't bring it to the Mac. Game over. Literally.

Meanwhile, Apple went to Intel's. So now just boot into Windows and use DirectX there....

If you can't beat'em....

 

[akm3]

Watch what is happening with the iPhone / iPod Touch SDK. There is a very obvious plan to leverage that as a mobile gaming platform. This will add OSX back into a 'legitimate' gaming platform, and it WILL be a huge success. The AppStore is going to make Apple a ton of money. And once iPhone is free from AT&T, I believe it will grow like wildfire.

Gaming on the desktop though, is a diminishing segment that has been largely supplanted by console gaming. This market shift makes full OSX gaming less relevant than it was in 1999.

 

[Karvel]

In January 1999, Apple started shipping the first generation B&W G3 towers with the then-most-powerful video card on the market, the ATI Rage 128. Apple threw their lot in with OpenGL as their 3D API of choice, back when there was actually competition in the market as to which API would prevail (remember 3dfx and Glide, anyone?). Quake 3 Arena debuted as a public beta on the Mac platform first. That must've been the high point of Mac gaming right there.

Unfortunately Microsoft got everyone to adopt DirectX and didn't bring it to the Mac. Game over. Literally.

Wow I never knew it happened as that!! So most PC games exist as DirectX only and have to be converted to OpenGL for Mac? Even if they were all OpenGL wouldn't they still have to be 'translated' to work on Macs?

 

[psingh01]

They have never really bothered. Every now and then they have a nice quote at WWDC but the effort isn't really there. The biggest step in gaming for Macs was switching to Intel and creating bootcamp.

 

[iFizz]

From a financial and market-share point of view, this is still probably a goal.

Two things:
1) Consoles (Wii, PS3, XBOX360) are where it's at right now. Even PC game sales are lagging these days.
2) Developers have never had an incentive to develop for Mac. More on this below.

Until developers have a real demand (from gamers) for games on the Mac, they won't invest in the Macs and programmers with Cocoa experience. In order to develop for Mac you need OSX (on a Mac) so you can run XCode and you need code monkeys with Cocoa experience. This is an expense, an investment. Unless there is a STRONG demand for Mac games (not Cider ports), no company with make this investment.
Here's the good news:
iPhone development will drive PC developers to create iPhone version of their mobile apps and mobile games. It's been all over the news recently about how many developers and Fortune 500 companies have registered their iPhone SDKs. In order to develop for the iPhone, these companies will need 2 things:
1) Macs (to run XCode and to test the apps on)
2) Programmers with Cocoa experience

They will HAVE to make a big investment to develop for the iPhone. So why stop there? If they are smart they will use their new Macs and Cocoa-trained code monkeys to continue developing on the OSX platform.
It will take months (maybe a year or two), but we should see more PC developers (game developers too!) releasing Mac versions of their products.
Fingers crossed.