Electronic Arts Delivers OS X Games 97
pete314 wrote to say that "Electronic Arts had broken its WWDC promise to launch games for OS X on the same day as the Windows version." Thankfully, the company has come through, with four new titles now available for order: Battlefield 2142, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Need for Speed Carbon, and Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars . Thanks to mr100percent for the update.
Re:Run it under VMware or Parallels. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shock, horror (Score:3, Insightful)
As of today, Mac-only games are still a tiny, nearly irrelevant market. That's okay. We Mac users don't mind. We just want the same games on our (superior) OS, too. And this is happening: as one big name releases for the Mac, that makes it more likely that more big names will, and then relatively smaller ones, and then smaller ones.
Also, enough with the bootcamp drivel. I don't want to reboot to play games. If a given game is not offered for Macs (or Linux), I'll deal without it. I have a Wii for that. If you want my money, make it available for Mac. I paid for Coda, I paid for Parallels, and yes, I paid for Civ4. I'll pay for a Mac game I want, but want or not, I'm not paying for a game for which I have to reboot my computer in order to play.
It's really that simple.
Re:Boot Camp? (Score:3, Insightful)
It has nothing to do with RAM. 1GB is plenty for Half Life 2. It's not longer a new game by a long shot.
Apple has a Way to Go (Score:5, Insightful)
PC gaming in general is usually more of a fight than I'm willing to put up, though. It's come a long way from having to make special boot disks to squeeze every bit of RAM out of DOS, but it seems like on a fairly regular basis a game will come out that doesn't like your hardware or driver levels and upgrading those breaks everything else on the system. That's more work than I'm willing to put in to a game, especially if it's one I've paid $50 - $60 for.
The difference between theory and practice.... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's still emulation. FreeBSD's Linux and SCO emulation works that way, handling the system calls directly. Meanwhile both VMware and Parallels include specialized drivers and libraries that bypass the hardware emulation when possible. The difference is not so great as you imply.
In theory, yes, WINE could be faster.
But the difference between theory and practice in practice is greater than the difference between theory and pracice in theory.
Re:As a Mac gamer... (Score:3, Insightful)
You are about 9 years out of date. Diablo II for Mac came out about two weeks after the Windows version, quite a shock at MacWorld 2000. The D2 expansion, Warcraft III and its expansion, and World of Warcraft and its expansion have shipped simultaneously. IIRC the simultaneous ships coincided with Blizzard moving from outside contractors to internal Mac development.
Again, your are many years out of date. I believe from the D2 expansion forward, the simultaneous ships, there has been only one retail SKU - a Windows/Mac hybrid box. For the older titles only the Mac boxes/SKUs were hybrid, Windows boxes/SKUs may be Windows only (their master disc predating the Mac version). Finally, the disparate pricing was often done by the retailer, if you tried to buy from the publisher's website the prices were the same. I've noticed local stores discounting a popular title as a loss leader on numerous occasions. Works great for me since I can usually wait a month or three.