Aspyr want to drop PowerPC by 2007.

[iMeowbot]

TMO Reports - Mac Game Companies Talk Universal Binaries, Move to Intel-Only (http://www.macobserver.com/gamingnews/2006/01/25.2.shtml)

Ms. Adams reported that Aspyr will likely make the move to Intel-only in "late 2006 at the earliest, and maybe not until 2007."


Yeesh, software's going to start disappering before some of the warranties on G5 machines are up.

[kwajo.com]

not good news, hopefully it'll be only Games that do this. there is no reason for a small app or business app to not be universal for a long time

[colocolo]

I think they are mainly talking about high end games, that will require super fast computers. As such, it is pretty ovbious they will only support Intel as they wouldn't run anyways on a PPC Mac. Remember, that is the timeframe Aspyr is giving as the earliest when they will BEGIN shipping Intel-only games- not when ALL of their games will be Intel-only, quite a difference.

This is 68k-PPC all over again, I don't think we've got anything to worry about.

[Dont Hurt Me]

Its not unexpected, it a royal pain for them to convert games for the dreaded PPC. The bright side is we are going to have Mac Games fasster then ever before.

[Thomas Harte]

Its not unexpected, it a royal pain for them to convert games for the dreaded PPC.
I second this - games are a very special case of application that usually benefit from making assumptions tightly tied to the very latest generation of silicon. In addition the fact is that most gamers are consumers rather than professionals and the consumer line of Apple computers does not feature replaceable graphics chips. The market being the way it is, games barely support the GPUs of a year ago so not supporting the CPUs isn't exactly a major blow.

[portent]

It's a cost-benefit calculation, really. How much does it cost to offer a PowerPC version, and how many potential PowerPC customers are there?

For game developers, the cost of optimizing for PowerPC is fairly high. For, say, Microsoft, the cost is fairly low (just let the compiler do it, it'll be fast enough.) At the same time, gamers usually buy the latest-and-greatest hardware, but it'll be several years before the majority of middle-market consumers are running Intel.

[Thomas Harte]

For game developers, the cost of optimizing for PowerPC is fairly high.
But on the other hand, this cost is likely to substantially decrease over the coming year as all 3 of the next generation of consoles are PowerPC based - including the already available XBox 360. They're not quite the same as "ordinary" PowerPCs but they are much more similar than the current chips games target.

With the advances being made in the PowerPC realm all of a sudden now that Microsoft, Sony & Nintendo have taken an interest it's a shame that Apple have suddenly decided to transition to Intel!

[BornAgainMac]

... but it'll be several years before the majority of middle-market consumers are running Intel.

I disagree. I think you will see many Joe Minis and Joe iBooks in the next 2 years that are switchers from the Windows camp running on Intel hardware.

[DrNeroCF]

Do we really need to have the 'game is written for an API and not a processor' argument again???

[Veldek]

That's been my biggest fear and now it does really happen. And then Aspyr, who bring out the best games IMO. So much to the universal binary...:mad:

[Nermal]

Do we really need to have the 'game is written for an API and not a processor' argument again???

I don't actually see any mention of APIs, so no, we don't have to have that argument :)

[GFLPraxis]

I expected this in the case of the gaming industry.

In most apps, universal binaries are feasible, but with games you have to optimize for SSE instead of AltiVec and make a lot of changes to the code. It makes sense for Mac games to drop PowerPC sooner.

[pknz]

Yikes, 2007 isn't far away, damn its only next year, there is no way my dad will get a new computer by then. It took 8 years last time. Damn you Aspyr, damn you!

[BornAgainMac]

I fear more that existing games will never be updated to be Universal. At least existing games that matter.

[Eric5h5]

Do we really need to have the 'game is written for an API and not a processor' argument again???

Games are written for the processor though, not just the APIs. Even in recent games you can find x86 assembly, not to mention all the endian problems that have to be addressed.

--Eric

[Play Ultimate]

I disagree. I think you will see many Joe Minis and Joe iBooks in the next 2 years that are switchers from the Windows camp running on Intel hardware.

My wife has a 2003 G3 12" iBook, I have a 2004 G4 12" iBook (couldn't justify the price difference for the 12" pBook.)

Most likely within the year we will both get new *books and hand these off to my daughters. I can see many current owners migrating to the intel-macs as soon as addtl. software and computer options become available.

[bousozoku]

Of course, Aspyr wants to eschew the work of trying to get poorly-coded games running well for everyone. As far as I've seen their ports haven't worked so well but they churn out a lot. If they have to do less work to get their games to work on the Intel-based machines as Mark says, they should consider dropping their prices by $10-$15. Are any of their current games worth $50?