Apple Gaming Division?

[mattmack]

Games are everything!

Ok, maybe that's a bit much, but it's closer than you think.

Speaking as a former "hardcore" gamer, games are everything.

If Apple is in the hardware business, then games are everything. You have gamers out there that think that Apples are way too expensive cause they can build a high performance machine for $500. (And they pretty much can.) Course, what they don't tell you is that the HCGamer will turn around and spend $200 on a new video card a year later, another $200 on more ram, bigger faster HD, Better sound card...and the hits keep coming. They end up spending the same amount to drive their hardcore habit.

They buy the games - they buy the hardware to drive the games.

I own a mac now, but that doesn't mean I still don't own a kick ass PC. If I want to game - I have to use my PC. That's just the way it is.

I'm in the computer business so I can justify the purchases, but normal people cannot, and if you want to do "some" gaming - you have to use a PC.

The limited number of games for MAC is unacceptable.

The posters that say that the games released for PC need to be released for the MAC at the same time are correct. That needs to happen, and it needs to happen for years, so that gamers can "trust" Apple.

When it comes to gaming, I have no faith in Apple. None.

I don't even care. I may find it "interesting" that they are releasing games for the apple that came out on the PC, but when it comes down to making a choice - the choice is simple - PC.

PC

Should Apple by a game company?

yes

Should apple build a team to support other game developers

Yes - this should be a MAJOR facet of Apple.

Remember: Gaming is everything.

Sure, gamers who 'buy' games are adults, but they built their habit years ago - as kids.

The poster that thinks he knows as many people who use audio software or video software as he does gamers - isn't running in a reality circle.

Gaming is everything

Alright as another poster put it. If Apple switches the business market they will probably see a market share swing of at least 60% (rough estimate)
If they switch the gaming market I can't see more than a 10% market swing. Gamers are just another niche market like pro audio and other specialized users.

The bottom line is the majority of new hardware sales is more consumer level and business level than hardcore gamers. I haven't seen a market study yet that shows different

 

[AndrewMT]

So Microsoft buying Bungie = Bad.
Apple buying Blizzard = Good.

I see.

Actually, I wish Apple would buy (what's left of) Troika or Interplay... I want a proper Fallout 3!!

Agreed. Too bad most of the guys at Troika have already found jobs at other game studios.

Also, I am tired of Apple unveiling new Pixar-movie based games at Macworld like they are as revolutionary as Half-Life 2. "Now so and so is going to demonstrate The Incredibles for the Mac." Everyone in the audience falls asleep.

 

[BenRoethig]

Alright as another poster put it. If Apple switches the business market they will probably see a market share swing of at least 60% (rough estimate)
If they switch the gaming market I can't see more than a 10% market swing. Gamers are just another niche market like pro audio and other specialized users.

The bottom line is the majority of new hardware sales is more consumer level and business level than hardcore gamers. I haven't seen a market study yet that shows different

But that 10% will bring the casual users with them. Most of the casual users don't make informed decisions on what computers to buy. They rely on the gamers to tell them what to buy.

 

[cgratti]

Wow. Now that would be something. This is one of the few areas where they are actually lacking. Though what kind of games would be Apple-like?

to me its not so much the games.. its making apple computers run the games more efficiently.

When it comes to gaming, sorry to say that PC blows APPLE out of the water, I mean its not even a contest at all....

 

[MacBandit]

to me its not so much the games.. its making apple computers run the games more efficiently.

When it comes to gaming, sorry to say that PC blows APPLE out of the water, I mean its not even a contest at all....

As a lot of graphics tests will show you it's not so much the hardware is lacking though it is some its the game software and OpenGL and the OS that needs work to better allow more efficient ports and more efficient use of what the system has to offer.

 

[mattmack]

But that 10% will bring the casual users with them. Most of the casual users don't make informed decisions on what computers to buy. They rely on the gamers to tell them what to buy.

I will admit that gamers can influence buying decisions, but it is a hard sell that if you switch gamers that the consumer will follow. I am not saying the Gamer is not an important part of the computer market and should be addresses by Apple. I just don't think it is a be all end all market. I consier myself a Mac Gamer which is almost a contradiction in terms

 

[Hugh]

Games sells PCs

Well I shouldn't say everybody that buy a PC wants it to play games. Your right there are those out there, that do buy for other reasons. I'm just says most of the people that I sold to, wanted it for the games, along with every thing else.


-Hugh

I know there are a good # of people who buy because of games but it's hardly the defacto reason for all people. For every person i know who buys with games as the top priority there is a person who buys because they want to edit music, or they are into video, and there are also a ton of people who just mess around on it and don't care enough to buy anything beyond a internet machine/electric typewriter. Gaming can and should be much improved on the mac, and it should help buisness and some market share but it won't be THAT significant of a factor.

Some amazing mac only game could actually help, people would need to play it and find out about it but lets be honest.. how many people only really own an xbox because of halo.. probably at least half the owners i know.

 

[hmg]

Games are a requirement for a computer.

Depending on who you listen to Apple has anything between 2% and 5% of the "PC" market. So from that maybe 50% (say 2% of the total PC market) are capable of playing modern games.

Why would a game studio (1) bother to release a game for a 2% segment of the market? Or why after actually releasing it (2) bother to spend lots of time optimizing it for this 2% of the market?

Games _DO_ sell systems, yes, audio and video do too but they do not appeal to your average teenager who wants a computer and then certianly not in the same numbers! The average teen, or even adult, user wants internet, games, music ripping (NOT Logic) and DVD copying (NOT Motion or FCPro). Internet is a given, you can even make C64 do that. Games, imho, are the real deal platform sellers. The ratio of people who told me "you idiot, you won't be able to play any games!" when I switched compared to the people who said "Oh, good choice" was about oooh, 10 to 0.

(Microsoft) Office runs on the Mac and is perfectly compatible with the WIndows version (well, I have not had any problems). The only things the Mac misses are enterprise software (you never hear about that!) and games. Games to get Apples into homes and enterprise applications to get Apples into mainstream business.

I'll stop ranting now, but: Apple getting involved with games is a great thing for the Apple user base, both current and future. We want a larger market right?


Have Fun!

 

[slooksterPSV]

GO APPLE!!! and my fave VC company ATI!!!

 

[jeffbax]

There is some really ridiculous stuff being said in this thread.

Buy Valve? You mean the company that is made up of all ex-MS employees who already canned Half-Life 1 and wants to charge porting companies more money than would be worth the trouble trying to profit off of Half-Life 2?

Buy Blizzard? No way.

Nintendo? Please, Nintendo is bigger than all of the above and already denied Microsoft's offer to purchase them for some 25 billion dollars back before Xbox launched. I believe Nintendo has 8 billion in cash just sitting around too, they aren't exactly a small company, and I can't see Apple reasonably buying them or either of the companies having any interest to do such a thing.

And while the consoles going PPC is good, its no guarantee for Apple... I've seen some pretty crappy PC ports of games lately and its not very difficult to port a game to PC from Xbox.

Then you have all the people harping "Gaming is a niche" bla bla bla. Yeah, so is Apple. But I happen to know a whole lot of gamers who would buy a Mac if the framerates didn't suck so bad. I was one of them, but I caved (though I'll probably have a PC sticking around for a while next to my PowerBook)

Apple would do well to keep working to boost game performance. Hopefully one day I'll be able to play UT2004 on my 1.5 GHZ 12" PB with FX 5200 (virtual Geforce 3) as well as I could on my 1.533 GHZ Athlon XP with a Geforce 3 Ti 200.

"Switch" the business market? You mean the market that thrives on the cheap $300 dell POS? Please, good luck on that one. Yeah, trying to lure in the big spending gamer niche is just useless

 

[GFLPraxis]

Hmm Let's see; It gotta hvae network play, It should be for boys and girls and should have stunning graphics. So a MORPG would be a possibility. A racing game maybe, but most likely a stategy or simulation game.

Typically games microsoft also makes (Age of empires, Flight Simulator, etc).
edit: or they could make an adventure.

It would be cool if apple made a development environment like direct X. If they made a complete 3D engine with an included physics engine, auto-fullscreen configuration, user interface creation tool, OpenAL and an *OpenGL 3D File Format* + *editor* (man how I wish for that). Mac games would be spit out like a vulcano. Blitz3D on the PC is such a thing I believe.

Nitpick: Microsoft doesn't make games. Age of Empires was made by Ensemble Studios. Flight Simulator was made by someone else. Halo was made by bungie. They buy the whole studio and have the studio make the sequels and the games, but Microsoft Games division doesn't make very many of the good MS games. Maybe a few racing games....

 

[link92]

Nitpick: Microsoft doesn't make games. Age of Empires was made by Ensemble Studios. Flight Simulator was made by someone else. Halo was made by bungie. They buy the whole studio and have the studio make the sequels and the games, but Microsoft Games division doesn't make very many of the good MS games. Maybe a few racing games....

Do they make Solitaire?

 

[Lacero]

If Apple were to make games, they'd make them so simple to play you'll get so aggravated. I can just see it now. Play Doom 4 with one button mouse.

 

[slooksterPSV]

Do they make Solitaire?

As a matter of fact... they probably stole the code from someone else lol, so I can't say yes to that. Linux had the first Mine Sweeper game (I think, not sure on that one) so they stole that lol. I dunno... I don't think Microsoft has ever made a game. I just think they have divisions that create the games... 1 sec. Lemme look under about in Solitaire About...

Wes Cherry of Microsoft created it. Probably theifted the code from someone (I know theifted isn't a word but yeah).

OMG I'm fighting for Linux here, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH scary.

 

[porthos]

IMHO, They should buy UbiSoft.

Currently EA is trying to increase its stake in the French publisher, and Ubi's execs are looking for ways to prevent a takeover by EA. Ubi grew 23% last year, and even so the price tag seems not too steep. A couple of hundred mil USD's. Apple could afford them for sure.

UbiSoft are one of top 3 games publishers in the world.

That would give them access to all platforms, technology and partnerships with some of the leading game developers and engine developers in the world. Theoretically at least.

Of course they would not be able to stop Ubi from publishing on Xbox, PS2, PC, Xbox 2, PS3, PSP, DS, etc etc etc. But it would add OS X as a platform.

Again, theoretically.

well those are my two cents

/p

 

[porthos]

Nitpick: Microsoft doesn't make games. Age of Empires was made by Ensemble Studios. Flight Simulator was made by someone else. Halo was made by bungie. They buy the whole studio and have the studio make the sequels and the games, but Microsoft Games division doesn't make very many of the good MS games. Maybe a few racing games....

Thats not true. Microsoft does develop games inhouse.

I guess its a matter how you view it really. MS has its engineers, producers, designers, etc etc that work inside dev teams doing the first party titles.

/p

 

[porthos]

Besides, the bottom line is that Apple OS X needs a library to match Direct X. They already have alot of it, but currently its not as user friendly for developers as Direct X is. Yes open gl is all good and dandy and powerful etc, but its still not as powerful in terms of developer support, prefabs, shaders, etc.

This is key to get devs to do games on OS X in my view.

/p

 

[melgross]

The key

Besides, the bottom line is that Apple OS X needs a library to match Direct X. They already have alot of it, but currently its not as user friendly for developers as Direct X is. Yes open gl is all good and dandy and powerful etc, but its still not as powerful in terms of developer support, prefabs, shaders, etc.

This is key to get devs to do games on OS X in my view.

/p

The key is to get more people buying Apple computers in the first place.

Developers aren't going to spend the money these days to develop for Apple even if they have the best gaming platform around, if they are stuck at 4% or less of the market.

They are in business to make money. In the old days it didn't cost that much to develop a game. Today it can cost tens of millions. In order to have a game developed as well, and at the same time, there needs to be a gaming platform such as the one that Doom is written in, for the Mac as well.

Unfortunately there isn't one. There's not likely to be one either until Apple's marketshare rises considerably. It's too bad, but there it is.

 

[Lynxpro]

Besides, the bottom line is that Apple OS X needs a library to match Direct X. They already have alot of it, but currently its not as user friendly for developers as Direct X is. Yes open gl is all good and dandy and powerful etc, but its still not as powerful in terms of developer support, prefabs, shaders, etc.
This is key to get devs to do games on OS X in my view.
/p

There's got to be something left of the work done at Apple that later spearheaded Microsoft's DirectX. I'm no expert on Apple, but wasn't the project called "Sprockets"? Isn't that what Alex St. John worked on before Microsoft lured him away? Sure, its non-OSX, but there has to be something that could be used as a template.

3dfx was working on some new gaming API to take the place of GLide before Nvidia acquired them. Can't remember if it was open sourced or not... Perhaps if its thought to be the best thing in using a microkernal for the OS for performance, then perhaps using a micro version of OpenGL (similar to the GLide approach) is the thing to do on the Mac platform...

 

[Lynxpro]

Three words for the Mac platform's first new gaming exclusive: Duke Nukem Forever.

Heh...

 

[crpchristian]

while appreciating and understanding all the 'games' talk, there is the issue of this being more about motion graphics/3d packages. They can be very gpu/opengl dependent with things such as particle effects and vecotor paint yadda yadda. Apple DOES make software in this category already so it could be more about enhancing what they alrady have vs. starting something new.

 

[porthos]

The key is to get more people buying Apple computers in the first place.

Developers aren't going to spend the money these days to develop for Apple even if they have the best gaming platform around, if they are stuck at 4% or less of the market.

They are in business to make money. In the old days it didn't cost that much to develop a game. Today it can cost tens of millions. In order to have a game developed as well, and at the same time, there needs to be a gaming platform such as the one that Doom is written in, for the Mac as well.

Unfortunately there isn't one. There's not likely to be one either until Apple's marketshare rises considerably. It's too bad, but there it is.

That is true. Average development budget for a triple a (AAA) title is 16-25 mil USD. However, games do drive hardware sales to a certain (perhaps great) extent. If Apple had an environment to ease creation on the platform it could justify paralell development to the PC.

But it really boils down to how easy it is for Apple to ensure distribution of their games. Currently games that have come out on the mac have been ports of "outdated" pc games. Gamers will never have an incentive to buy a mac if they have to wait a year for the latest games.

If apple would sink its teeth into a publisher such as Ubi they could ensure that triple A titles would get developed on the mac at the same time. But of course, they'd also need the development API's to be rock solid for the publisher to be able to justify dev on the OSX in paralell.

Ok here is a thought. What about Epic, with their upcoming Unreal 3 engine. Now, that is an interesting thought. If apple would grab a stake in the developer, they theoretically should have access to a great engine that many developers will use in creation of their games at the same time as its developed for the PC or the consoles.

Now, since the Unreal engine to the most degree allows the developer to be oblivious of the hardware and core libraries it should not add too much overhead in adding the platform. Naturally, adding a platform to the SKU's will always increase overhead in terms of testing, marketing and on the development side, overall thought process in how to approach the core design values, etc.

Well.. just ranting there. But bottom line guys, if Apple is to increase their market share, they need to think mass market right? And games are a huge part in the mass market incentive to buy hardware.

/p

 

[mattmack]

But bottom line guys, if Apple is to increase their market share, they need to think mass market right? And games are a huge part in the mass market incentive to buy hardware.

/p

Everyone who has this opinion thinks that it is a simple equation get a big name developer=more hardware sales because games=sales. I still have yet to see a market study that states that people buy computers based soley on a game. People might buy a computer because they see the number of titles available for a platform or the sheer number of programs available for an operating system or because of a savy (sp?) salesperson telling them the mount of different titles they can download.

The bottom line is that until the average computer consumer looks critically at the computer they are buying and the os they use it is still a plain marketing game and Apple is doing a pretty good job in marketing products like the ipod.

Marketing products like the ipod for both platforms is good because it gives people a taste of what things are like on a mac. Thereby making them a little more open to buying a mac.

Don't get me wrong I am an Apple user and I play games exclusivley on a mac, but just getting one or two titles is not going to swing a market. It is a long and slow process which games are justone cog in a big wheel

 

[beatle888]

X Box games tend to get ported to and from PCs, why not set up a strategic alliance with Sony and port PS2 / PS3 games to OS X, not to any M$ platforms?

Or just go and buy Blizzard, as they are IMLTHO great at everything they turn their hand to...

sorta liked the idea but sony has to still play nice with MS. sony makes too much from MS to make a move like that...i would think. maybe apple should by sony...no, no nevermind. your idea wouldnt work unless businesses are cool with helping with one hand while attacking with the other.

 

[melgross]

buy, buy, buy

That is true. Average development budget for a triple a (AAA) title is 16-25 mil USD. However, games do drive hardware sales to a certain (perhaps great) extent. If Apple had an environment to ease creation on the platform it could justify paralell development to the PC.

But it really boils down to how easy it is for Apple to ensure distribution of their games. Currently games that have come out on the mac have been ports of "outdated" pc games. Gamers will never have an incentive to buy a mac if they have to wait a year for the latest games.

If apple would sink its teeth into a publisher such as Ubi they could ensure that triple A titles would get developed on the mac at the same time. But of course, they'd also need the development API's to be rock solid for the publisher to be able to justify dev on the OSX in paralell.

Ok here is a thought. What about Epic, with their upcoming Unreal 3 engine. Now, that is an interesting thought. If apple would grab a stake in the developer, they theoretically should have access to a great engine that many developers will use in creation of their games at the same time as its developed for the PC or the consoles.

Now, since the Unreal engine to the most degree allows the developer to be oblivious of the hardware and core libraries it should not add too much overhead in adding the platform. Naturally, adding a platform to the SKU's will always increase overhead in terms of testing, marketing and on the development side, overall thought process in how to approach the core design values, etc.

Well.. just ranting there. But bottom line guys, if Apple is to increase their market share, they need to think mass market right? And games are a huge part in the mass market incentive to buy hardware.

/p

I think that Apple makes a lot of mistakes when it comes to software companies. When MS couldn't get into 3D, they bought Softimage.

It's also not unknown to pay a developer to do work for the platform. This would be cheap for Apple to do, with $7 billion in the bank.

I thought that they should have bought Painter, Poser, and Bryce from Corel when they sold them, and I've been saying for over two years now that they should buy Macromedia.

Well, we know what happened. Apple seems to be only willing to spend small amounts of money for a company.

Hell, they could buy EA, if they wanted to.

I don't know why they don't.