What is your opinion on gaming on a Mac.
I am only on Mac because this is for School and Gaming and the school would only hook up a mac to the internet. But Mac users still deserve a chance.
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1st point is almost fair but i wont argue with it
2nd point they still make up a loyal portion of the gaming market
3rd point i have seen developers hard at work in the past and it is certainly complicated but would it not be worth putting in more effort for more people to enjoy your product?
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The issue with that second point is this:
Let's say a dev team and their publisher are trying to decide what platforms to develop their PC game on. For the sake of argument, let's just say that the number of potential buyers on OSX is 20% (which is way above their actual operating system market share, and we're going to ignore Linux for now), or an increase of 25% if you look at just Windows as the baseline (going from 80 to 100 is an increase of 25%). In order for it to be financially worthwhile, they need to be able to create the Mac port without increasing their budget by more than 25%. If they can't manage that, the publisher will probably nix the whole idea because they don't want to chase after diminishing returns.
Now, how much developing for two platforms instead of one costs can range anywhere from no added cost to more than double, depending on their existing codebase, the language(s) it's written in, the familiarity the team has with cross-platform development, what engine/tools they have licensed, QA testing, and so on. Often, the math does not work out in the port's favor, especially if they didn't plan for it right from the very start. Sometimes a separate company will get permission to do the porting work in cases where it's possible for the game to be ported without a total rewrite, but that's not always an option.
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Developing for Mac can be difficult for most developers
are you a developer? if yes, please explain what you think is so difficult.
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No, but developers have previous stated that their reasons which you can look up.
If you want a brief summary: DirectX doesn't exist on Mac, Programs developed for Intel can't transfer to PowerPC processor (-2005), Mac peripheral limitations, Shareholders.
I should clarify, developing for Mac exclusively for gaming is difficult. Programming general is better since Mac is UNIX based.
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yeah, thought so. ^^
We don't really need to talk about PowerPC compatibility, right? This is a thing of the past. We also don't discuss DOS compatibility in modern games. The sheer fact you bring this up tells me, you don't really have a lot of arguments. ;)
DX is irrelevant if you develop your software platform-independent from the beginning (=>OpenGL/Vulcan). Many engines (including the most popular ones, Unity and Unreal Engine 4) are multi-platform anyway. From what I've read, there is minimal effort needed to support both D3D and OpenGL. All you need to do is develop for all platforms right away. Of course, if you have a finished game for Windows with lots of windows-specific stuff, then it can be quite a lot of work to port it to MAC or Linux. but that's really your own fault as developer then.
How is programming for MAC better than programming for Windows?
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I haven't actually counted, but it seems to me that Mac gets more games than Linux lately, or Mac gets them first. With MacOS being BSD based, which has a binary compatibility layer that allows it to run Linux binaries, I figured it would make more sense to develop for or port to Linux first.
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You have a point. I was just having a rant partly. I have 183 games majority being indie games only available for windows. I can only play 65 of the games i own.
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I can see why for all the great things that windows can do they are virus vectors and vulnerable.
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While that is true if your smart windows machines can be quite reliable. I am stuck with a Mac because the school only uses Mac
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In my eyes Mac is a gimmick more than it is an actually useful thing. Hipsters and designers buys them to be able to turn the logo your way while they spend 2/3 of their life sitting at local coffee shop. I only know of one person who owns a mac and has ever played a video game...that game was CoD so hardly a game anyway.
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There are many Mac gamers around. You would be surprised. I am going to ignore the gimmick comment because i am not starting a flame war as a new user of this site.
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among professionals (for instance audio and video production) MACs are very common, and for good reasons.
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My general view on the subject is that if a user has a mac and wants to game he/she should be able without limitation
On a personal view i would never buy a mac for many reasons some are :
1) The kind of work i personally do on a computer make no difference if you do it on a mac or a pc so i wont ever take it into considaration when i buy a new computer . Plus i do believe a mac for serius work is far superior from a pc
2) The pricing for a mac is rediculous if you consider gaming . I am sure that a game that runs on mac and pc on utra setting would have no differences in the naked eye or fps but the pc that runs that game on ultra with no probs lets say costs 1000 while the mac would cost 2000 if not more. So as far as gaming watch a movie surf the internet mac is overpriced by much
3) I dont like apple and the limitations they force to users and developers . For an example some time ago i heard that a developer would have to change a few symols in a game just cause apple didnt like them. Thats a lot of extra programming for a developer considering they first programme for a pc then for a mac so if they do all the work and crash on a policy wall its dishearting for them to redevelop in the future. Now i have to say i dont like any kind of censorship from countries and companies that want to decide for me what i should see or how i should see it, I dont have to deal with any of that luckily but just the idea makes me furius i rather censor things for my myself only while other people around me would choose to see them
Any way to close my post for a pc gamer out there that just love the mac i hope things will get easier in the near future i really do i cant see it happening easily at the current point tho
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back in ye olden days, games would be developed on any system and then ported from platform to platform
But, as wintel dominance came into force AND the complexity of games increased, games development concentrated in the dominant platform. And for developers, after creating a game in Windows, it became more profitable to start development on the next game than to port to other platforms.
As an example, let's say it takes 100 hours to develop a game, and 33 hours porting it to a mac. Windows would sell 80 copies, and mac would sell 20 copies.
Scenario 1 (numbers are cumulative)
100 hours: game 1 created for windows - 80 sales
133 hours: game 1 ported to mac - 100 sales
233 hours: game 2 created for windows - 180 sales
266 hours: game 2 ported to mac - 200 sales
366 hours: game 3 created for windows - 280 sales
400 hours: game 3 ported to mac - 300 sales
Scenario 2:
100 hours: game 1 created for windows - 80 sales
200 hours: game 2 created for windows - 160 sales
300 hours: game 3 created for windows - 240 sales
400 hours: game 4 created for windows: 320 sales
So, in the above hypothetical, by only focusing on windows and abandoning mac, sales are increased by 6-7%
Because of this, throughout the 90s and 2000s, a cottage industry developed of companies that specialize in porting existing games over to the mac. But, those companies had to pay royalties to the original developer, so to maintain profitability, they only went for the biggest titles, that would most likely be the best sellers.
Nowadays, (my understanding is) that it's become easier to port to the mac, especially when creating games in e.g. unity. But it still requires some extra work, especially in QA and optimization, and a lot of developers, especially ones that have been around for a while, just can't be bothered.
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Mac users are a fraction of the PC users and the gamers among those users are also a small portion. I find it reasonable that companies would neglect developing their games for an additional OS, if the cost of production is above the potential earnings.
Even if the profit was higher than the cost, would you risk? For some more commercial games (e.g. CS:GO, Dota2, LoL, etc.), maybe. However, I can't see smaller companies taking that risk.
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Just dropping some statistics here. Imagine being a developer and you need to earn money, what would you do?
Used OS
Windows: 96.24%
OSX: 2.95%
Top Video Card
Windows: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
OSX: Intel HD Graphics 4000
The information gathered is incredibly helpful to us as we make decisions about what kinds of technology investments to make and products to offer.
Source: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=combined
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I can't speak for anyone else, but here's why my game is not available on Mac:
1) I use GMS, which does support all 3 operating systems "widely" available on PC (Windows, MacOS, and Linux).
2) I don't even have to do any changes to the code and assets, so unlike many real developers, I could just click "compile" - in theory - without any additional costs and time spent, right?
3) Wrong! While compiling and building code for Windows&Linux is easy and basically free as you already have the computer and everything else you need, in order to compile and build a game for MacOS you need a "native apple machine newer than..." and a developer subscription which is, last time I checked some $100 a year. Maybe some other things too for required signing the code and so on...
4) While subscription wouldn't be a problem, specially after I release 2-3 games and decide it's time to make them all available on Mac, I've never even used a MacOS computer, don't know anything about the system and it's mechanics and stuff so setting things up and providing support later would be above my knowledge which would negatively affect my customers, which is something I wanna avoid.
5) In order to buy a MacOS computer over here I'd have to be rich. Like, really rich. You can buy at least 3 regular Windows gaming computers for the price of one Apple machine...(and I'm talking cheaper models!) or a new-ish used car. Heck, I could get half an apartment with a single bedroom for the price of MacPro. Why? Importing across the ocean, taxes, already inflated prices to begin with and so on...
6) And the only use I'd have for that very expensive machine would be to once in a few years compile a game for less than 3% of potential customers, who probably wouldn't be interested in said game anyway.
What would you do if you were me?
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Why are so many games not able to be used played on Mac. It may not have been initially designed for gaming and it is less customisable but when it comes to speed and graphics it can compete with most windows computers. Linux and SteamOS are getting more games than Mac. I will be doing on Poll asking do you think Mac should have more games on steam.
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