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Will you spend more for Mac native games vs cheaper Windows versions?

Dirtyharry50

Dirtyharry50

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 17, 2012
1,769
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I just ran into this with the current Steam sale. I haven't bought it yet but I had on my own little wish list, Tropico 3 from the Mac App store. The cost there is $30. I know Feral puts a lot of work into bringing a quality release of a game like this to Mac and can understand why it's priced the way it is.

On the other hand, today I can buy Tropico 4 with all DLC on Steam for half that amount of money roughly. The thing is going with Tropico 4 means I have to reboot into Windows 7 to play it. :-(

As a rule, I am just curious how many of you will spend more to play natively and how many will bootcamp, parallels, WINE, etc. to play a cheaper Windows release instead? I'm a little torn here and haven't really made up my mind but I am in this case learning toward Tropico 4 and putting up with the reboot.

This may sound stupid but on some level, I almost feel guilty not buying the Feral release and also dissatisfied with the prospect of having to reboot to play this game when I could just click and play instantly in OS X if I spent more money to do so.

I should add lastly, I am not a wealthy person by any stretch so cost matters but of course you can always make tradeoffs there such as buy less games but stick to native ones, etc.
 
By the way, comparing apples to apples - Tropico 3 is $2.49 on Steam now and being older would probably run just fine in Parallels on this machine so no need to reboot but even if I did need to reboot this is quite a bit cheaper.
 
Nope. The port probably isn't even as good as the native version anyway. Don't bank on my opinion, though. I love my MacBook for what it is and what it's done for me over the past 5.5 years, but I have no brand loyalty.

Best option for the best price always wins in my book.
 
It's rare I buy a game for bootcamp, although it happens. Booting up into Windows has just proven too much of a pain. If the game is ported to the Mac I don't mind paying a premium as long as it's a good port. These days I almost always buy off the Mac App Store as I can download wherever whenever, the games are always properly distributed as packages, and I found the Steam client for Mac, awful.
 
Native ports are expensive, late, run poorly and are often not compatible with PC mods. Also, native Mac ports are rarely updated as often as the PC counterparts. Support for surround sound and GPU is poor in OSX software and hardware wise.

The money you save buying PC versions, especially on sale could make up for the expense of Windows which offers a superior experience for games, especially if you have a Mac Pro.

Gaming on OSX is not an industry worth supporting in the long run as far as I am concerned.
 
I stick to the pc versions because they often work better (as in better ports, less buggy, sometimes they perform better in windows, etc.). Is it a pain in the butt to dual boot? Yep. But it works. The other reason I sometimes dual boot for games is just to keep my mac side less cluttered though...
 
I don't mind paying more for a native Mac port. Especially one that Feral does. They are a class act and always have done a great job with their ports.
 
The only way I'll buy an OSX game is if it's bundled with the PC version on Steam, or in some sort of indie bundle.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer to play them in OSX when possible, but there's no way I'm going to pay a premium price for a sub-par gaming experience.
 
I rather buy a native mac version (Mostly when discounted) since I have no windows pc no more and I dont feel like spare some of my hdd space for bootcamp. It doesn't run that well comparing to the windows machine with same hardware but I saves my restart time and pointless partition.

Being with mac forcing me to play the games on the game consoles separately. However, I still (rarely) bought some discount steam games or windows exclusive tiles for collection.

I'm considering of buying a set of decent Windows pc sometimes in the future but I have no use of another computer machine at the moment, I did most of the stuff on mac already.:confused:
 
Personally I really try hard to NOT buy anything on Steam that doesn't have steam play. I have a dedicated PC (my kids) for gaming (although it's kinda old now); I just want to play on my Mac and thus I try to support anyone who makes a Mac version of a game. I picked up "The Witcher" complete yesterday for $2.50ish, looks good.

BUT earlier they had Bioshock2 for $4.99 (or less) and I really wanted to get it, but it was the PC only version. I understand this because Feral buys the rights to the game on the Mac and thus they are controlled by different companies. BUT if I can buy one for $5 I have a very hard time paying $31 for the same game! If Feral would watch these Steam sales and drop their version on the App store down to say $7 or $8 during the sale; I would DEFINITELY buy it from them instead. BUT the question is, would Feral regain their investment?
 
I don't run games under OSX these days but no, as a rule of thumb I only buy games on Steam. If there's no Steamplay version I won't be playing it on OSX.

(I like all my games in one place)
 
I don't buy/play any game unless it either has a Mac version, or I know it will be able to run with Wineskin. I don't do Windows... so the price difference doesn't really matter.
 
I just bought Batman Arkham City for windows for $10 bucks on steam and the normal price is $29.99. Price for Batman Arkham Asylum on the mac store $39.99 :eek::rolleyes:
 
In my heart I want to support Mac development, but I cannot justify it. I was waiting for Deux Ex for Mac and didn't expect it to be full price. The game is for sale for about 19,95€ for PC and consoles in every shop around me vs. 39,95€ in MAS, so I just bought it for PS3 for a measly 15€. Also I doubt it would run fast enough on my iMac 2010 model. If there was a demo I could have tested it, but I guess not even the PC version had a demo released.

I know Feral and Aspyr need to be paid for their efforts, but a more realistic price for that game would have been 29,95.
 
Well, I wound up buying Tropico 4 with all DLC on Steam for roughly half the price Tropico 3 would have cost me at the App store. Rebooting isn't that big of a deal and actually I am grateful the option exists given all the doors it opens not only in terms of variety but also in terms of affordability.

I hope Mac market share continues to grow and we see more native releases at the same price points as Windows releases. As it is now, it is very hard for me to justify spending much of a premium on a Mac native version when for half or sometimes much less, I can just reboot to play the Windows version.

I am very happy to see so many Steamplay titles on Steam. That rocks. I've taken advantage of some great sales on those during the Steam Summer sale. Speaking of which, Stronghold 3 Gold is Steamplay and on sale today for $13.59. The game did have a terrible launch with tons of bugs and issues but has since gotten 10 patches I think it is. There are a lot of negative posts about it in the Steam forums but there is a few positive ones as well. Anyone have any experience with this game on Mac?
 
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By the way, you've probably noted the recent hype from Aspyr about a fall release of Call of Duty Black OPS. When it releases, I would expect that to sell for $49.99 or so and it seemed from the announcement that DLC will be extra cost.

Today it is on sale for $19.99 on Steam.

It is kinda hard to justify waiting, only to spend $30. more for it, just to avoid a 2 minute reboot.
 
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Dirtyharry50 said:
By the way, you've probably noted the recent hype from Aspyr about a fall release of Call of Duty Black OPS. When it releases, I would expect that to sell for $49.99 or so and it seemed from the announcement that DLC will be extra cost.

Today it is on sale for $19.99 on Steam.

It is kinda hard to justify waiting, only to spend $30. more for it, just to avoid a 2 minute reboot.
Click to expand...

A game like that, I don't see Aspyr not releasing it as a SteamPlay version, since it's vital that players from both PC and Mac side could play together. Imagine if they made the multiplayer Mac-only.

And if they do release it in Steam, I will certainly buy it.
 
I will :). I don't mind paying a little more so that I can play in OS X. I don't buy games ported by Aspyr though, almost every game of theirs I've purchased has been buggy. Never had a problem with Feral or even EA's cider ports, so I don't know what Aspyr does wrong.
 
there are not many games for mac os platform. even though they are so buugy, performance is really sucks. windows OS is still much better than mac os for gaming. unfortunately, mac os doesn't support directX (only openGL). that's why gaming on mac os doesn't work well.
 
archurban said:
there are not many games for mac os platform. even though they are so buugy, performance is really sucks. windows OS is still much better than mac os for gaming. unfortunately, mac os doesn't support directX (only openGL). that's why gaming on mac os doesn't work well.
Click to expand...

OpenGL is not an issue, it's a good open platform that works very well (iOS games are basically all written using OpenGL). Crappy programmers are an issue. But there are quite a few games for the Mac, not nearly as many as the PC but still a good number and the count is growing all the time. Developers need experience, that will come with time.
 
archurban said:
there are not many games for mac os platform. even though they are so buugy, performance is really sucks. windows OS is still much better than mac os for gaming. unfortunately, mac os doesn't support directX (only openGL). that's why gaming on mac os doesn't work well.
Click to expand...
Mac OS X cannot do anything about DirectX. I'm sure Apple would love to have DirectX support, but they do not have a choice. Its MS that keeps DirectX on Windows and Xbox only... thats why Mac, Linux, Android, even Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstations all use OpenGL... its the best thing that exists. DirectX basically doesn't exist for anyone else but MS.
 
The days of native Mac versions of games like Q3A, Carmageddon, and Unreal Tournament are long gone. If a game I wanted to play had a Mac version that offered similar performance to a Windows version I'd gladly pay a bit more for it.
 
I have something around 100 steam games on my steam account, and only about 40 of them are compatible with Mac OS X. I've created wineskin winery wrappers to get certain steam games working, such as burnout paradise (bought it for like $2) and a few others. They do run pretty smoothly, but would run much smoother on windows. I'd buy the windows game, and if they release a mac version on steam, you'll get the game copy for mac too. Happened with GTA 3, SA, and VC.

So basically just use wineskin wrappers (after checking appdb.winehq.org to see if its compatible) or just bootcamp with windows. Thats what I do for the games that have low performance or aren't compatible with wineskin.
 
I prefer to spend more for mac games, simply because I don't use my machine only for gaming. I usually start a game as a break while doing something else. Taking the time to reboot and then having to restart everything is too much trouble.
Plus I tend to avoid games by big publishers. Indie games are usually more interesting and generally have a mac version.

Miharu said:
I was waiting for Deux Ex for Mac and didn't expect it to be full price.
Click to expand...
Actually, in the case of DX:HR, the mac version is cheaper than the PC version on steam (summer sale aside, of course). Keep in mind that the Mac version is actually the augmented edition + all DLC. Even with the summer sale, the total price of the equivalent PC version on steam is 32.84€. Not far from the 39.99€ of the Mac App Store version. The full price on steam is 54.76€.
 
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