Originally posted by Atrigo I bought this 27" iMac in 2010, still going strong. I do bootcamp SWTOR, but all other MMO's I play have a Mac client or I don't play. I'll be giving ESO some time and money just because they developed a Mac client. The graphics are amazing on this machine and I can set all my graphics settings on high and get perfect performance. my specs, 2.93 I7 chip. 4 Gigs DDR3 Radeon 5750. Runs like a champ. ESO looks stellar and so far has played well for Beta. And my Nostromo and Deathadder work very well with too.
Try going to Cyrodiil with 100 players on the screen.
Also, 30 FPS is no "perfect performance".
Damn macboys are even more blind than I thought. I guess it's easy when you don't have any reference. Radeon 5750 lol...
thats my point. I have a 4 year old iMac with those specs and hardware and yet I have not found an MMO I can't play. I would say my iMac would out perform a 4 year old PC with the same exact specs.
"Can play" is a wide statement. I am quite sure I "could not play" ESO with that iMac of yours, but guess we all have our own standards.
Keep in mind the yearly salaries alone would be well over 600k for a team of 10 people. I haven't even thrown in anything like taxes yet. Also, they have to make a decent profit, just making enough money to cover expenses is not good at all.
Blizzard has always been crossplatform for PC/Mac ever since Warcraft 1, Orcs and Humans
i dont know whats involved but there are many crossplatform games on Steam
I thought the reason why Mac's aren't supported that well, was pretty much the same reason Linux PC's aren't supported that much, which is numbers, there just aren't that many of them
I don't really see Directx dominating the future of gaming for much longer, alternatives are cropping up now and to hardware manufacturers (of gpu's) directx is just one of several platforms that is supported.
I thought the reason why Mac's aren't supported that well, was pretty much the same reason Linux PC's aren't supported that much, which is numbers, there just aren't that many of them
I don't really see Directx dominating the future of gaming for much longer, alternatives are cropping up now and to hardware manufacturers (of gpu's) directx is just one of several platforms that is supported.
The reason was, the developers kits from MS are so much cheaper than from Apple (that was one). The other reason was the Direct X API allows the software to direct connect to the hardware and on a MAC there are several abstraction layers so this is not possible. Also is the fact that Open GL on a MAC is not to the most recent version and OPEN GL (most recent) is still way behind Direct X.
If the video card manufacturers make API's, then there will be more splitting in the game industry and it will make it harder to make a unified game.
I thought the reason why Mac's aren't supported that well, was pretty much the same reason Linux PC's aren't supported that much, which is numbers, there just aren't that many of them
I don't really see Directx dominating the future of gaming for much longer, alternatives are cropping up now and to hardware manufacturers (of gpu's) directx is just one of several platforms that is supported.
That used to be true. Porting to Mac is easier with the switch to x86.
But they lost the accelerated PPC architecture. Now a Mac is the same hardware wise but still has the same problem of gamer marketshare. The cost of porting is overshadowed by the lack of gamers on Mac's.
What you end up with is a system 2x the cost with no software advantages that is less upgradable.
Linux has been a gaming failure mainly because of xserver and a lack of a standard interface for non kernel drivers. Every kernel update breaks shit.
Keep in mind the yearly salaries alone would be well over 600k for a team of 10 people. I haven't even thrown in anything like taxes yet. Also, they have to make a decent profit, just making enough money to cover expenses is not good at all.
Blizzard has always been crossplatform for PC/Mac ever since Warcraft 1, Orcs and Humans
i dont know whats involved but there are many crossplatform games on Steam
A large portion of Mac "MMOs" on that list are browser based timesinks/moneygrabs and can run on any machine they're the games you see advertised on all the websites with the random almost nude animated chick. The other side on the steam list is either huge publishers that can afford to take the loss on making it compatible for a Mac or Indie developers that just want to get their name out there (or they're startups that are run by hipsters that use Macs anyways and want to force its use upon the rest of the world). For the Indie developers I'd actually research to see which of them are still in business and which were just some random dudes making games in a basement for the hell of it instead of an actual company.
Game developers also know that nearly all PC gamers (not meaning Windows specifically, but as opposed to consoles) have a Windows system, precisely because that's what the games run on.
Bingo. Of course Valve's SteamBox is aiming to change this.
So besides ESO,WoW, GW2, EVE, and LOTRO (that I can think of off the top of my head) there are no other AAA MMO's that you can play on the Mac. While I have tried all of those games, I don't really like them all that much, except i did play WoW for a couple years. It's so nice to be able to play a game i actually like on my 2012 Macbook Pro. I can run the game on Medium settings and get 30+ FPS and the game runs great and still looks pretty damn good on medium settings. There's nothing better than laying in bed and playing some ESO while watching TV in the background. I wish more AAA MMO's would adapt to making their games run on the mac.
I know some will say, well macs aren't made for gaming etc. but mac has actually gotten better with putting much better graphic cards in their machines and they're more capable of playing games these days.
It's not the hardware that makes macs problematic. Apple is notorious for imposing limitations on their software, to dictate what people can and can't do.
Programmers have to work around this more than they generally have to on a PC. Furthermore, most gamers do not strictly use macs, and prefer PCs. As a result, it's generally viewed as a massive resource sink to devote resources to a mac client. This is a generalization, and changes from game to game, though.
Mac does have some really nice machines, but they are just not designed with gaming in mind. Macs are typically used for design / graphics / production / etc. Not gaming.
Comments
"Can play" is a wide statement. I am quite sure I "could not play" ESO with that iMac of yours, but guess we all have our own standards.
Blizzard has always been crossplatform for PC/Mac ever since Warcraft 1, Orcs and Humans
i dont know whats involved but there are many crossplatform games on Steam
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=mac&category1=998&category2=2
Mac compatible mmos (i assume most or all have PC versions too)
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/show/mac
EQ2 fan sites
I thought the reason why Mac's aren't supported that well, was pretty much the same reason Linux PC's aren't supported that much, which is numbers, there just aren't that many of them
I don't really see Directx dominating the future of gaming for much longer, alternatives are cropping up now and to hardware manufacturers (of gpu's) directx is just one of several platforms that is supported.
The reason was, the developers kits from MS are so much cheaper than from Apple (that was one). The other reason was the Direct X API allows the software to direct connect to the hardware and on a MAC there are several abstraction layers so this is not possible. Also is the fact that Open GL on a MAC is not to the most recent version and OPEN GL (most recent) is still way behind Direct X.
If the video card manufacturers make API's, then there will be more splitting in the game industry and it will make it harder to make a unified game.
That used to be true. Porting to Mac is easier with the switch to x86.
But they lost the accelerated PPC architecture. Now a Mac is the same hardware wise but still has the same problem of gamer marketshare. The cost of porting is overshadowed by the lack of gamers on Mac's.
What you end up with is a system 2x the cost with no software advantages that is less upgradable.
Linux has been a gaming failure mainly because of xserver and a lack of a standard interface for non kernel drivers. Every kernel update breaks shit.
A large portion of Mac "MMOs" on that list are browser based timesinks/moneygrabs and can run on any machine they're the games you see advertised on all the websites with the random almost nude animated chick. The other side on the steam list is either huge publishers that can afford to take the loss on making it compatible for a Mac or Indie developers that just want to get their name out there (or they're startups that are run by hipsters that use Macs anyways and want to force its use upon the rest of the world). For the Indie developers I'd actually research to see which of them are still in business and which were just some random dudes making games in a basement for the hell of it instead of an actual company.
Bingo. Of course Valve's SteamBox is aiming to change this.
Quiz is indeed correct but there are other valid points that have been brought up.
It's not the hardware that makes macs problematic. Apple is notorious for imposing limitations on their software, to dictate what people can and can't do.
Programmers have to work around this more than they generally have to on a PC. Furthermore, most gamers do not strictly use macs, and prefer PCs. As a result, it's generally viewed as a massive resource sink to devote resources to a mac client. This is a generalization, and changes from game to game, though.
Mac does have some really nice machines, but they are just not designed with gaming in mind. Macs are typically used for design / graphics / production / etc. Not gaming.