I don't recall if this was posted here, but recently Steam announced it was going to support MacOS.

http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/ ... steam-mac/

Now Razer (who makes my lovely, lovely keyboard and mouse) has also pledged that all future products will have Mac support.

http://press.razerzone.com/content/view/419/101/

Is it possible that soon, a "Mac Gamer" won't be a contradiction in terms or a phrase of scorn?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 569110939#

lol @ vid. The most advanced game I've ever played on a mac was at my uncle's house when I was 15 or so. I've seen my brother play Age of Empires III and Football Manager 2009 on his macbook though, so I guess there are still some games worth a shit on the mac.

As for mac gamers...Macs use intel chipset these days, and I'm told that already makes a huge difference in porting titles and/or developing for both platforms. So I suppose it makes perfect sense for Valve (and others) to jump on the mac gaming market. Valve's portfolio alone could be enough to spark a 'gaming revolution' for the Mac.

Otoh I'm sceptic - isn't the point of people who own macs that they don't play games?* Unless you have the money to spare to buy a mac next to a PC, no gamer in his right mind would buy a mac. But maybe they're gambling on it that PC gamers secretly always wanted a mac but couldn't because of their gaming habit. I find that...unrealistic.


*In my experience, macs are predominantly present in the airhead American trust fund students who spend their day in coffeeshops looking interesting. In Prague in particular this was the case.

Ive always looked at Macs as products for people who believe they are better than the dirty peasant next to them using a PC because they shelled out more dough. If Mac was the dominant system about a few hundred companies would be out of business and tens of thousands of people would be jobless. Why? because there would not be companies like MSI, Gigabyte etc. who sell components and compete with each other, but Mac, everything inside is Mac. Sure some of their components come from certain manufacturers but in the end they use one supplier where as I can choose from tens. Mac is a slaver and windows is a whore. Ill take the whore thank you very much.

I think i posted a Mac version of GTX280 or something in the tech forum some time ago. And Macs use the Core2D processors so they have the necessary grunt to propel games.

The biggest problem with Mac gaming is that MacOS is just a flavor of linux (or freeBSD, I think). Porting a game to MacOS is probably pretty close to porting it to Linux... which is good for Linux. If people actually do linux ports to all the games I give a crap about, I might ditch windows entirely.

What would it take for Microsoft to gift directX and the rest of the code necessary to run games on other OSs? Would it be the end of Windows era or would it just make windows cheaper?

I seriously doubt MS would open up DirectX, not unless Windows was seriously losing marketshare and they wanted to make sure their API didn't lose relevance. I don't think that'll happen any time soon.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3175

Found the thread, it was EVGA GTX285 for macs.

Given the fact that OpenGL is almost dead, I doubt Microsoft will open up DirectX. The only thing I see changing is that even Microsoft is abandoning the PC as a game-platform, so perhaps they don't find Windows-only games necessary anymore. But that still won't be an incentive to help other platforms by opening DirectX (unless perhaps, if the Xbox platform starts loosing big to the Playstation).

Linux advocates have been yelling about the year of linux on the desktop for like a decade. So far, they've been wrong. But if Linux gaming becomes a reality.. well... that's a pretty big jump.

I'd kill for 'real' Mac gaming. Sure I know you can do it now, with a windows emulator, but that defeats the point of having a Mac (i.e. not having windows ) The only games I know of that are on Mac are Sims and Football Manager. Oh, and WoW.

Of course now I'm used to a right mouse button and all that jazz so getting used to actually using a Mac would be weird. But I always loved the one we had at school and my mate had one about 16 years ago with Prince of Persia on it (the proper one, side scrolling and impossible to play hehe).

Then again I'd miss being able to pick and choose my parts and make my pc how I want it to the budget I have, rather than having to save up for that lovely £600 mac only to find out that 3 days before I reach my goal a newer, nicer one comes out at £800.

heh... I hate Apple, but still, I'd be fine with Mac gaming. I wish they'd quit being such walled garden bitches.

If developers would just design their games around Open GL instead of DirectX it would be much easier to port, as I understand it. Wont being doing any mac gaming until

a) all new games are written for both mac and windows
b) Mac video performace matches windows/pc hardware.

I won't do Mac gaming until Apple gets off their high horse and opens up their platform. But yea, I hear you, it doesn't make sense to game on a platform where the same hardware yields worse performance. Hell, I'd almost like to see an O/S dedicated for gaming... boot up into Windows (or whatever) to run your apps, boot into SatisGameOS 2.0 to play games. You strip out all the shit you don't need and I bet the O/S could fly.