# Why is the Apple game library so pathetic?



## Jreifler (Oct 5, 2006)

Sorry I had to say it. Is it that developers can't justify spending the money to develop for both platforms? It seems to me that my IMAC would be the perfect machine to play some of the newest games coming out. Ah well, there's always the Wii this Xmas.


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## Viro (Oct 5, 2006)

Yes, the developers can't justify programming for more than one platform. The reason is that the Mac game market isn't as large as the Windows market. 

This can be a good thing, as only the better games get ported over, since the porting companies know that they will stand a better chance of selling.


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## fryke (Oct 5, 2006)

Sadly, that's not true either. There's still a lot of garbage being published. :/ Of course a "good game" is in the eye of the beholder.  ... But I agree on the Wii. I personally think it's best to use a separate game console for video games. Not only because those actually _do_ get more titles than your Mac, but also because the games are made to fit the hardware they're going to be played on. In PC/Mac gaming, you'll suddenly find your hardware inadequate a year after you've bought the machine, because game developers seem to have the goal of bringing *ANY* graphics card to the ground as soon as it's on the market for a week.

If you truly want to play games on a Mac, there's an option, of course: You could install Windows XP through BootCamp and play the games in Windows. But then again, I'd prefer the game console option. A Windows license costs about as much as a decent game console, new games cost about the same for the consoles and PC.


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## Viro (Oct 5, 2006)

Ah, but the amount of garbage on the Mac is far far less than the garbage on the PC gaming scene. Most of the indie Mac games are cool though.


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## Jreifler (Oct 10, 2006)

what are some good upcoming mac games to be on the lookout for? In the meantime i've been debating whether I should try World Of Warcraft or Doom 3.


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## Viro (Oct 10, 2006)

World of Warcraft is good. Bloody good.


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## Mario8672 (Oct 24, 2006)

One day every application will be universal ^^


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## Sunnz (Oct 25, 2006)

Lol how "universal"? Have a really really fat binary that supports windows, osx, linux, solaris, BSD - all 32-bit + 64-bit - all in one big huge fat file??

Quite possible with blu-ray.


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## Viro (Oct 25, 2006)

Not to mention the different Linux distros, with all the different versions of libraries they ship with. Of course, you could just make a static linked Linux binary, but that would just bloat up the binary even more


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## ex2bot (Oct 29, 2006)

I finally decided to buy an XBox 360. WOW! I can get my hands on all the greatest new games at 1080i resolution on either my monitor or my projector (which is 1/4 1080p), Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Just Cause, COD 3, Lego Star Wars, Madden 07, Saints Row, Halo 3 and Rainbow 6: Vegas (coming soon!).

I am in gaming heaven!!! The graphics performance is excellent. And my Macs work very well for everything else. I've pretty much given up on Mac gaming.

Doug


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## Timothy Gerges (Nov 2, 2006)

What about smaller games for an G4imac 800? or a powerpc 350 G4? is there anything old and small that will work without lag on these computers?


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## Viro (Nov 3, 2006)

I'm actually slowly giving up on games. Trying to wean myself off them ... Must ... resist ... urge ... to ... buy ... Xbox 360

As for games on older machines, have a look at shareware games. Board games tend to work well. Battle of Wesnoth, a turn based strategy game works brilliantly, and I'm sure it should work on a 350 G4 too. With those machines, pretty much any boxed games that came out in the last 2 years are out of the question.


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## playak (Nov 8, 2006)

ok ive been concern with that as well


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## Timothy Gerges (Nov 12, 2006)

Where can i download free full version games for mac (not demos, i hate demos)


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## mw84 (Nov 12, 2006)

Try versiontracker.com, America's Army is a pretty good game.


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## Viro (Nov 12, 2006)

America's Army has been discontinued for the Mac though .


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## middigit (Nov 22, 2006)

don't suppose i can really comment much in this thread - as far as games go i'm mostly retro as to the type of games i like, things like the freeware doom, quake, marathon - snesx is great if you can get the roms and theres loads of good freeware games actually on the apple games section you just gotta do a good search. the only bought games i have is Myst IV and V, Football Manager 2005, Diablo II, Warcraft III, Quake II, Super Mahjong and Solitaire Till Dawn.


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## f0mu5 (Dec 17, 2006)

There are tonnes of GBA games avalible. I am not sure if it is still around somewhere but CherryROMS used to have a huge selection and it was free to register. 

If you are specific enough i am sure you could find a rom or two on limewire 

obviously only if you owned the original game


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## Yesurbius (Jan 23, 2007)

I'd just like to comment that while the popular games from Windows *DO* get ported over, the ports are not the same quality as the original - the games nearly always run poorer than they do on Windows.   That, and a lot of the features / updates do not work.

I am running a Mac Mini G4 - and am in the process of pricing out either an iMac 20"/24" or a Mac Pro for the simple reason that I can run my games in windows.  I haven't played around with the virtualization software, but I'd imagine it'll run just fine with playing games.  

I remember the old days of Commodore 64, Macintosh, and IBM.  You'd walk into a computer store and see three different shelves - one for each system - and you'd see all the games.  While it'd be nice - the truth is - it is not economically feasible.  The Windows API is drastically different than the Mac or Linux APIs.  While it is true that much of the game content (sounds, video, graphics, game logic (physics, etc) are going to be highly portable - anything having to do with the graphic hardware, operating system, or interface is going to be vastly different.  OpenGL was a great attempt at standardizing much of this, but that was sunk when Microsoft did DirectX.

As far as games on the Mac - World of Warcraft is the only one that I can see worth purchasing specifically for the Mac - because Blizzard does their own code maintenance, and it seriously shows.

As far as consoles are concerned - I have my Wii (broke my Warcrack addiction) and love it, but I like realtime strategy type games as well with the mouse and keyboard - and I'm not going to find those on console systems, with the same playability as I'll find on a computer.


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## monktus (Feb 2, 2007)

mw84 said:


> Try versiontracker.com, America's Army is a pretty good game.



America's Army is quite fun, it also gave me something that no other game has; a little twinge of shame for downloading it in the first place.


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## Yesurbius (Feb 5, 2007)

Quick followup to my previous post ..  Parallels does NOT do DirectX as of yet.   Checked the new beta that is out and DirectX is not on the list ... so ... virtualization for running games is still out - but there is always bootcamp


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