Apple's Bootcamp and the future of Mac Gaming

[onwig]

apple have gone and done it http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/04/05/bootcamp/index.php

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

and on a personal note.. i can't quite believe i got this in first before civic, BFG, ethion or myst...

[BFG]

HOLY SHIT WIGGY YOU BEAT ME TO IT!!

So this fall when i finally get my intel tower i can load up BF2 and HL2 and loose my job, my GF, the ability to socialize, and a resistance to sunlight... cool um..

So does this really spell a death knell for the mac gaming industry? How can the likes of Aspyr compete?

Would you prefer to play the games you want (say like Ghost Recon 3) at the speeds you would expect, but on a horrible OS, or would you prefer to be only able to play a handful of the games you want, at sub par speeds on the best OS in the world?

[Macuber]

Remember BFG.. the bottom line is where you will get support for this accomplishment. Not from Apple..nor Microsoft.

[Ethion]

It mostly goes down to the graphics drivers, when it comes to games.

Even Evill said that the mac gaming community is dead.

But we have to remember, this is going to take a while to have any effect, really. I can't really go on explaining it, but it's nothing that's going to happened over night.

Some site is probably going to some new benches the following days, and we will see what happends.

[(SiX)Sheixhundt]

Woooot...

And a Big Ole Middle Finger Dee-luxe to the smarmy little shit who sarcastically enlightenend me to the 'fact" that Running Windows was NEVER the intent of the new Intel-macs...and that i just didnt know what i was talking about.

*cough* - Oh Reaallly??

You know who you are. eat it.

[BFG]

rofl shiex, i can't remember who it was but it looks like that statment backfired...

although, i don't think it really was the main intent of the intel macs (did apple honestly think, hey if we make intel macs then eveyone can run windows instead?) - more so an answer the the clamoring of people who want the ability - and the impressive hacking achievements of those few at www.onmac.com

question remains though, is this the death bed of mac gaming?

[Civrock]

w00t, a friend of mine just tried a few Windows games (Quake 4 and CS:S) and they all run with GREAT performance and FPS! All hardware is supported, there's 80MB of drivers included. I can't wait to get an Intel-Tower soon and play GhR3!

But of course, XP for (unreleased) games and OSX for everything else. I certainly won't start surfing around in XP and catch some viruses etc.

And the headlines soon: "So far biggest and strongest virus for Windows discovered - Mac OS X"

["Sixhits"]

Apple has released beta software dubbed "Boot Camp" to help owners of intel Macs load and boot Windows XP.

http://www.macosrumors.com/

http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/

Stock jumped 5 points off this announcement. 

I think this is the biggest single move Apple has ever made.  Yes, that is a bold statement but of think of what this means for the future strength of the mac.

1) It's a huge safety net for prospective crossover or switch buyers.  Apple has now removed the most powerful reason to avoiding switching to the mac.  In all honesty, it's no longer really a switch. 

2) It let's Apple directly compete with pc manufactures, while keeping Apple's core business safe. There is only room fro growth.  Their brand is already strong; now it's taking those loser PC manufactures like Dell head on.  I smell the righeous retribution of Jobs on someone's ass... 

3) Gaming.  Apple  - like almost all pc manufactures - is going to offer gaming rigs.  I think they will do especially well in the high end gamer side of the business because they have brand apeal and excellent, top shelf manchines.  Call me crazy, but I think gaming will drive a lot of switch overs.  It's going to drive mine.  I'm now going to buy a MacBook when the gaming rig comes out. Plus, with Apple making their own windows drivers we can expect them to be excellent.  This could be a "killer app" for Apple and gamers.  Performance performance performance. 

3) Apple makes better computers to begin with. 

Woot woot, Apple.

[Civrock]

http://www.mactechnews.de/index.php?function=2&id=145

In German, but good enough.

[:MoD:Shade]

Mac Porting houses are dead.

I don't see this as a bad thing at all.  You read peoples responses to topics like these and it's all "Now I can finally play CS, Halflife" and all the new games so you know that this is what we've wanted, games which finally run at a proper speed. 

Aspyr, Macsoft ect. can now focus instead of porting to producing their own games.  Both of which have already done this.

This is a very good thing for me considering the Engineering department at my college required a Windows computer, now I can just get a MacBook Pro instead!

["Sixhits"]

This is great news.

Grrr... beaten to it...

I think mac gaming houses are dead.  I think mac ports are dead.  But the Mac as a gaming system is not.  It'll continue to be a niche. 

I'm hopeful that Apple will deilver some excellent gaming rigs.  There's no reason they can't end up competing with companies like Voodoo or Alienware.  Apple sure does charge enough money for their machines...

[BTs_Mysterio]

Besides the funny "Word to the Wise" side bar section on the Public Beta site, there is also a direct mention to Mac OSX Leopard. This might just be there re-enforcing rumors that Leopard will support virtualization of Windows inside of OSX.

Overall, Apple can only benefit from this as people will have a computer that can run windows (better than most PCs, and reportedly faster) and the ability to run the exclusive (by legality) OSX. I doubt we will see any major software companies (Adobe/etc) dropping mac over this, maybe the Game companies will finally just die like they should of when we started getting tripe ports like RvS and AA.

I wonder if they are planning a CSM addition via a later firmware updater. Oh, so exciting. (I'll post benchmarks when I see some).

Edit: http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/04/20060405144257.shtml
(CSM was added)

[(SiX)Sheixhundt]

God Bless the free market.
See?...socialism would have had us scrap macs in the first place so we'd all have to manage our workloads on 1 gig dell laptops...you know..so it would have been fair to EVERYONE.

Feel a little bad for Narf tho...APPLE DUN STOLE YO THUNDAH FOO!
Unless he was an insider all along..which wouldnt surprise me..

OR, he was kidnapped and drugged, and brain-extracted On Steve's Orders, his intellectual content downloaded to Ipod and distributed wirelessly directly to the medulla oblongata's of the manacled team of fifty slave-labor coder-bots feverishly working for the last 18 days straight to get this all written and packaged to LOOK as though it were intended all along.

And if all those Porting houses thought there was Little profit in Mac gaming to give us the ports in the first place..theyre about to find out what NO PROFIT feels like..

SUCKAS!

[Ethion]

http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ID=13177

IMG got some comments from Game Devs..

And they see it as a good thing it seems.

[BTs_Mysterio]

They sound desperate under their calm replies. Glenda sounded the most "off" by bashing Windows.

[Ethion]

Battlefield 2 on Mac

http://web.mac.com/richardpride/iWeb/Site/BattleField2%20-%20Intel%20iMac.html

Glenda usually sounds "off".

[Civrock]

w0000t, I'm still in shock, in a VERY positive way.

[BTs_Mysterio]

I would bet BareFeats will have done dual boot tests soon. Interesting how Apple had the drivers ready for the ATI, I wonder if they planned this all along and were waiting for someone to hack it before they did it themselves.

[BFG]

much better responce than i expected, but they are right; if this means that the mac market grows significantly and people still buy mac games (and the porting houses survive) then perhaps they can take on porting bigger projects..

Its simple, if someone ports a game like Ghost Recon 3 or Halflife2 to mac and it runs as well as or nearly as well as on windows, well im going to do everything i can to avoid booting up windows. In fact given the choice im sure we all would.

["Sixhits"]

I may be mistaken, but I remember reading something (and now it get vague ) about Apple and Intel working to create a set of code that will work on both OS X and XP.  Anyone else see something like that?