Apple Gaming Division?

[King Shrek]

A good idea would be making mac officially and natively compatible with nintendo game cube (that has a ppc and an ati graphic card...).

I don't think Nintendo would ever allow this. As you may not have already heard, Nintendo recently announced that their next system, Revolution, will be backwards compatible with Gamecube games, so making Gamecube games compatible with the Mac would undermine Nintendo's ability to sell Revolution systems as well as Gamecubes. No dice cumberbund.

 

[Viro]

Don't all console manufacturers sell consoles at a loss in order to recoup the loss via game sales? If this is the case with the Gamecube and the Revolution, I see no reason why it would be detrimental for Nintendo to allow Macs to play. Surely the games will still be sold, and this time you're actually widening the market.

Then again, you lose the benefits of a console in the first place, i.e. the standard hardware.

 

[Cat]

Don't all console manufacturers sell consoles at a loss in order to recoup the loss via game sales?

So, you mean, like, games are too expensive? Like _artificially_ high prices? NO WAY!!!1!1!!11 ...

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

No, he means that the consoles are sold at a loss to the company that made them, and they recoup their losses through game sales. In short, it costs Microsoft more to make the Xbox than it does to buy one, so they don't make a profit off of the console itself. They then license companies to produce games for the console, and on a $50 game, Microsoft makes about $5. With a game like Halo, that translates into millions of dollars, which can then cover the cost of the console.

I see no reason why it would be detrimental for Nintendo to allow Macs to play. Surely the games will still be sold, and this time you're actually widening the market.

Yeah, but then (for example), Nintendo only makes money from the game, and not from the console... if they keep it closed like it is now, they make a little money from the sale of the console, and a little more with the sale of the game. Without having to purchase the console to play the game, they only make money from the game sale -- that's why it would be detrimental! Even though they don't make a profit from the console, it still generates revenue for them.

 

[King Shrek]

I don't think Nintendo would ever allow this. As you may not have already heard, Nintendo recently announced that their next system, Revolution, will be backwards compatible with Gamecube games, so making Gamecube games compatible with the Mac would undermine Nintendo's ability to sell Revolution systems as well as Gamecubes. No dice cumberbund.

Also, not to forget that the Revolution system will probably sell for much less money than Apple can ever sell the Mac Mini for, which means that it would be cheaper to just buy a Revolution to play Gamecube games than to buy a Mac to play Gamecube games. This obviously wouldn't help Apple sell more Macs at all.

 

[Reality]

Thanks, that helps. Another question (and honestly, I'm not trying to cause trouble), what would a second-party developer be?

I'm assuming first-party is the company in question. Why do we jump to third-party when discussing anyone but the primary company?

A second party developer is a company (in this case a game studio) who's makes exclusive content for the people they are 2nd Party to. That's pretty much their job. In Nintendo's case, they use to own a portion of a company called Rare.

How a studio becomes a second party is pretty simple. First they approach the company they want to develop exclusively for (Lets say Nintendo), contracts are made, parts of the company becomes official property of Nintendo. So everything they make is now supervised by Nintendo. They decide what games that 2nd Party will make and what games they will not be making anymore. In some cases, Nintendo could even sale their portions of the company to someone else, like M$. They did such a thing with the company Rare.
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Now a big big big feature of the Revolution isn't just Gamecube compatibility, but the ability to down load and play games from all Nintendo's past consoles.

 

[Lycander]

About playing Revolution games on a Mac... ahem, memory card? Controller? Other peripherals? It is really worth it to create a bridge for all those devices?

 

[Pengu]

who needs a memory card when you have a hard disk? there are several usb adapters to plug in PS2 and XBOX controllers. or just use a native USB controller.

what else do you want to plug in?

 

[Lycander]

who needs a memory card when you have a hard disk?

For the same reason (portable) memory cards were conceived in the first place... take it to a friends house. But you're right, where there's a will there's a way.

 

[Pengu]

exactly: usb flash drive. SD/MMC/MS/etc card. phone memory.