Intel, market share growth ‘hugely beneficial’ to Mac gaming market
The Mac gaming market has been a mixed bag for publishers and Mac users over the last decade. But in an interview with Gamasutra, MacSoft President Peter Tamte reiterated his belief that “the movement to Intel processors will narrow the gap between when a game ships for Windows versus the Macintosh, and this will be hugely beneficial to the Mac market.”
Tamte founded MacSoft before working with Apple as senior director of worldwide consumer marketing and with Bungie Software as executive vice president. He left the Bungie shortly after it was acquired by Microsoft. He founded Destineer in 2000, which publishes game titles through four different labels.
One of those labels is MacSoft, which he bought back from Atari in 2003. MacSoft’s current titles include Age of Empires III, Zoo Tycoon 2, Rise of Nations Gold Edition and Halo. Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs is slated for release in Spring.
When asked to describe the state of the Mac gaming market at this point in time, Tamte said:
Apple’s market share is growing so quickly now that it virtually guarantees prosperity in the Mac market for most big-budget games. The biggest tricks to manage in the Mac market are keeping system requirements down, especially because there are too many machines with Intel-integrated graphics, focusing on content that’s appropriate for the Mac market—because the Mac market responds to certain kinds of content better than others—and distribution, because we need Mac software to get sold through more outlets.
When Apple first announced the switch to Intel processors, some were concerned that the ability to run Windows on a Mac might reduce the amount of games ported from Windows to OS X. Has the ability to play Windows games natively on your Intel Mac via Boot Camp changed your gaming purchases?
#1 Bill says:No. No game is good enough to make me suffer through windoze, even if it’s running on my Mac.
#2 sjmills says:Then why has there been such a drought of decent Mac games? The last decent thing I bought was Call of Duty 2. Before that, there was a steady stream of good shooters, just enough that there was something else to buy when the previous game finally got boring. What about racing games? Total Immersion Racing for lifelike racing and Ford Racing II for arcade racing. That was a long time ago. Since then, nothing. Tried the Star Wars: Empire at War demo. Boring. At least Starcraft 2 has been announced (doesn’t look like much of an update). That will pass some time until another good shooter or racing game comes along.
#3 Ryan says:I never really played any mac games natively, just usually the same game on my Bootcamp partition as its windows version runs much, much smoother than a ported version.
#4 Saum says:What the people pushing for more games on the OS X platform should do is forget about most of the low-end users and aim for the high-performance spec’d computers such as the MacBook Pros,iMacs, and Mac Pros. Development companies should cater directly towards the growing niche market of eSports and attempt to gain support from such developing companies as Sierra.
Supporters should show that the OS X computers can outperform their XP-based cousins and more gamers - who are the youngest “high-rollers” - will “convert.”
New games that are just starting to enter into development and that already have much media attention is what Mac-supporters should be aiming to cater to in the realm of gaming.
The game Severity that has only entered into development and is going to be the first game especially made for competitive gaming and would be the optimum choice for Mac-supporters to push for intel interoperability.
#5 Neil Anderson says:Nowadays, don’t most young people who play games use a Wii, XBox, or other gaming console?
#6 Saum says:Possibly, but the largest segment that is playing in a professional role involves PC games. The monetary rewards far outweigh that of the console market when it comes to LAN competitions. Also, the PC gaming arena is aiming to become a spectator sport.
#7 Si Optik says:Having been a massive fan of games and online gaming for over seven years using a Windows based machine, I’d love Apple to get into the gaming market. I think that with the reliability and power of a Mac, the realms of gaming are endless for Apple to take control of the game based pc platform industry, with Mac potentialy becoming the gamers choice of machine.
Microsoft still have a sector within the gaming industry with their 360 console. Apple seem to be missing the opportunity to take a section of the gaming industry away from Microsoft by supporting game coders developing games for the Mac OS.
I am a music producer who is making the move to Apple, the professionals choice of platform for stable, reliable and powerful application handling. I still have to own a damn Windows based machine so I can continue gaming, come on Apple, make the move - I am.