[citation][nom]zelannii[/nom]Well, lets take a look: Mac game titles😀nD OnlineWOWCity of Heroes/villiansEverquestDiablo II (and soon III)Starcraft (and soon II)warhammer onlineNeverwinter nights 1 + 2Eve onlineHALODoom 3Command and conquerCall of Duty (all)Civilization seriesAVPFord racingLoTR onlineMedal of Honor seriesSporeQuake 4Age of Empiresmost of Lucas Arts games (and all upcoming ones for PC will be Mac as well)UnrealI could easily go on.....Every upcoming game from EAEvery upcoming game from BlizzardEven TURBINE (aka microsoft) has comitted to releasing every upcoming mass market game for the Mac going forward.Needless to say, this is a lot more than 1% of the gamers out there. (Blizzard confirms 20% of their userbase is Mac users). Why? 2% of PCs come with the graphics capability to run modern PC games. 80% of Macs in the wild can already, and 100% of shipping macs can play most games in at leats low res, with 60% of shipping macs including the most powerful mobile GPU (or better) available now. The Mac user base is actually a MORE attreactive user base for game companies... Mac users typically have more money, have stable hardware, have fewer support calls to game companies over compatabiltiy/performance issues, and more.Oh, and you can always dualboot XP anyway... without needing a second HDD, and without needing to be a PC expert to figure out how (and without loading Linux to be a multi-boot assistant).[/citation]
This is true that more and more games are coming out for Mac. I most of these for both Mac and PC. From my experience, Macs have a LOOONNGG way to go to compete with PC gaming. The games do not provide the same stability as you find on PCs. WoW has twice as many issues with Mac users than they do with PCs. Why is this? When all of your hardware is the same for every system and a there is a known issue with the interaction between the two there is a greater percentage of users affected by the bugs. My oldest PC uses an 512 8800GT (still a great card btw)and it runs circles around the Mac Pro I bought 6 months ago. Side by side viewing shows how badly one of the latest Macs has trouble keeping up with a budget gaming PC built two years ago. This happened for WoW, Warhammer Online, DnD Online, Age of Empires, Call of Duty, and Quake 4. What makes it even more sad is that the PC was running Vista Ultimate.
There is something that Apple and you are forgetting to realize. Devs will realize it soon enough.
There are three basic markets for gamers.
1. Casual Gamers
2. Recreational Gamers
3. Hardcore Gamers
Casual gamers play games that do not require any special hardware at all and tend to partol sites like Popcap for the latest and greatest of Plants Vs. Zombies, Peggle(which I love), and Zuma. Those are leading titles in that market. Any system available today can run them. I have them loaded on a Vostro A90. The majority of these users are women ages 40 and older, also the fastest growing demgraphic of gamers. Housewives and mothers that play games when they get a chance, and chances are they could care less about what they play their games on. They are more concerned with family budgeting, which leaves Mac out of the picture. They want a PC for Facebook, email and web browsing. I highly doubt the majority of the market is going to choose a $1000 Mac or Macbook over a $300 desktop that can play their games or a $300 netbook that does it as well.
Recreational gamers just want to play the games and tend to be males that do not have a large budget or a lot of time to really get into a long session. These users tend to be where the budget gamers are. They are also where are lot of the more tech savvy users. They know what the best hardware is, but they know how to get the most bang out of their buck. Most of these users are you console players. This is the largest market. These users are looking for the cheapest way to have a good balance between graphics and gameplay. (Crytech missed this one completely and Crysis was not that good) With the limited upgrade capacity and extremely high pricing, this leaves the Mac off the radar of Recreational gamers. (It certainly explains the dismal sales of Mac games, even when you consider the numbers difference)
Harcore gamers, the maniacs and crazy people. Hardware manufacturers LOVE these guys. If a new product comes out, it will be in their system in less than a month. Extreme highend hardware is what they want. Thier goal is to squeeze every last drop of graphics and performance out of a game. Sad to say, Macs nor consoles will satisfy these guys. If a title hits multiple platforms, their platform of choice is the PC. IF you ask these guys if it runs Crysis, they will tell you it will Crysis and two instances of WoW at once. Hardware for these guys is just not available for Macs. They have no problem spending $1500 a piece for video cards, $1000 on a processor, money is not an issue, it is performance. And no Mac can perform on this level. Even if Apple did support the latest and greatest hardware, even a 1% loss in performance will keep them away.
Macs have come a long way for gaming. But they are not even halfway there yet.
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