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'Call of Duty 4' and 'Civilization IV: Colonization' Hit the Mac App Store

I am surprised people are mad at Apple because of the lack of Mac gaming developers. The fact of the matter is that companies often lose money on PC -> Mac game ports because the market isn't there for Mac gaming.

Blaming Apple for the lack of new game titles is absurd. Apple doesn't make those games. And blaming Steam? Steam is a distribution service.
 
If these games are simply Cider ports like the vast majority of games that are purportedly for mac, then it's not a true port. Native or nothing. The performance drop on cider games is an unacceptable compromise.
 
Gaming on Mac has always been dead to me, just because the ports made never perform as well as the windows version, but I'm really impressed with the close to 10 Billion downloads, I think based on that it might mean we'll see more games for the Mac, I personally wanna see more high quality games, when I say that I mean games that are released on the PC or Console side.. As fun as some of these iPhone and iPad games are, they can't compare to games that are available on Windows and Consoles..

I know I'll get someone to disagree with me, but imo gaming on Mac is dead, and the primary reason is probably bootcamp, why would a user bother buying a Mac version of a game when its not going to perform aswell and not even going to be available for a few years..

We just got GTA Trilogy for mac, GTA3 was released 2001, San Andreas in 2005..

Anyway hopefully we do see more games on the mac..
 
asdf542 said:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/16810/

Civ5 is also on Steam for Mac.

Not sure why CoD4 isn't on Steam for Mac, but I remember reading something about how Aspyr(guys who ported it) wouldn't get anything for the game if it was sold on Steam. I believe it has to do something with Activision/Infinity Ward.
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It has to do with the fact that Valve only allows one SKU for SteamPlay titles, so there is no way to differentiate if somebody downloaded the Mac version, and thus for Aspyr to get compensated. There's a good interview with Aspyr at IMG that explains the situation.

Benjy91 said:
A bit random with Call of Duty 4.... Surely they'd want their most recent title Modern Warfare 2 on there first? And then add the older games.
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MW2 was never ported to the Mac. Maybe it will be at some point, but I wouldn't hold my breath. It's probably more likely that we'd see Black Ops now.

As for me, I'm done buying non- SteamPlay AAA games for the Mac. They never come down in price, and SteamPlay titles are too convenient. I'll relegate my App Store game purchases to cheap indie titles that aren't on Steam.
 
mikethebigo said:
Have you seen the Motorola Atrix? That is the future of computing. The ARM and low power processors are fast enough now to run a desktop environment. Remember, at the core, iOS and OSX are the same operating system. It is not that far of a stretch of the imagination to see the two coming together.

I agree there are still Mac Pros, but you have to admit Apple has completely changed course towards the consumer electronics market. They're not looking to tag the professional, high tech crowd anymore.. Microsoft and Linux can have those guys. Goodbye XServe.

I'm not flipping out, but the danger is very real and very there. I am a big Apple fan and have mostly Apple computing tech, I'm just saying, if the control gets even worse, I won't stay.
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Yes, I know OS X and iOS are basically the same thing. I never argued anything otherwise (not to mention I never brought up computing power since technology is obviously moving forward...hardly new...calculators used to be the size of a room and now you can make one smaller than you can actually use).

The thing is that macs are still profitable and are growing. Demanding everyone only sell their software via the App Store would be completely idiotic. Yes, I'm sure Apple would love to somehow make the App Store mandatory but there is absolutely no way for them to do that. Part of the reason why Mac is still selling is because of the exact things that an App Store only method would kill. You obviously know that. Your thinking Apple doesn't know that is astonishing.

As far as the XServe, Apple never really broke very far into the server market and frankly OS X Server isn't really on the high end level. Do you see Apple running OS X Server for their stuff? No. Is it kind of a pain in the rear that this effectively kills OS X Server for anything other than Mac Mini media servers when there are some people who use XServes for mission critical applications? Yes. Is this relevant to the whole Apple will make the App Store mandatory meme? No. Why no? Because laptops and iMacs still make Apple money and is growing. XServes were not (from my understanding). This is why they were axed. If anything the metaphor would be more relevant to the AppleTV, an iOS device, than Macs.

So yes, the moment Macs reverse course and become niche while everyone jumps over to iOS devices instead of using Macs you can expect Macs to be eol'ed. Do you really see that happening any time soon? Really? And if you don't think it will be happening soon do you think you can predict what the iOS devices of the time will be capable of doing?
 
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Not *directly* related, but on pricing... as much as everybody is complaining about Call of Duty being $18 more than the Amazon version, at least it's still right around list price.

Has anybody seen the Family Tree Maker app? Talk about price gouging... the price on the app store is exactly 30% more than the cost of the retail list price. $99 on the App Store; $69 on Ancestry.com's website.

As if that's not bad enough, it's currently on sale at Ancestry.com for $52. So you'll very near literally pay twice as much for the Mac App Store version.

Sure would be nice if MacRumors or someone could call attention to this, or do some kind of feature on apps that charge more than their non-App Store brethren.
 
Cougarcat said:
It has to do with the fact that Valve only allows one SKU for SteamPlay titles, so there is no way to differentiate if somebody downloaded the Mac or PC version, and thus for Aspyr to get compensated. There's a good interview with Aspyr at IMG that explains the situation.
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Then why does Aspyr have Civ4 and Civ5 on Steam?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

$49.99 for COD4?

Steam had either a Labor Day or Memorial Day special which provided COD2, COD United Offensive, COD WAW and COD4 for $29.99. As much as I hate having to boot into Windows evert time I want to play COD MW2, I will continue to do so.

I recall buying the Aspyr version of COD4 early last year thinking it would run better than it's Win counterpart on bootcamp and boy was I wrong! I have read others running it fine but for me it was a turd.

I would not download COD4 for Mac from the app store if it was free!
 
50 dollars for a very old version of COD which will run poor. No thanks Apple. Mac Gaming is still a joke.
 
asdf542 said:
Valve should really just split the development in two instead of producing these weird frankenstein clients that contain data from a completely different OS. If Steam for Mac used native Cocoa API's then the major issues would be fixed. Things like hidden expose windows and one of the worst scrolling system ever placed in an OS X app.
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Maybe then Ill stop getting a 6.5GB update on a game whenever it gets ported to Mac :D

That's annoying when I want a quick round on Counterstrike or L4D, on the flip side it means more and new people to play with. Some might even be worse than me at it, no? Oh well, a man can dream :cool:
 
as mentioned in a previous post, the dvd installed version of COD4 is not being recognised in the mac store? what's all that about? will this be rectified or are we gonna be missing out on any updates.... if any are released?
I know it's not a major deal but i figured that for such a 'major' release, compatibility for current owners would have been thought of?
 
Benjy91 said:
Maybe then Ill stop getting a 6.5GB update on a game whenever it gets ported to Mac :D
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When a game got ported to Mac is was updated to the 2009 Source Engine and Valve also added some new features to the game (like training mode in TF2) or bug fixes, so it wasn't like you were downloading it for nothing.

Even with that said though, the only current Source games Valve still needs to port to the Mac are Half-Life Source and Alien Swarm.
 
asdf542 said:
Then why does Aspyr have Civ4 and Civ5 on Steam?
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Civ IV wasn't their choice, 2KGames had the distribution rights for the digital version.

For Civ V, they had a difficult time deciding whether to do SteamPlay or not. I guess they decided that virtually no one who had bought the PC version would rebuy the game for the Mac, and the benefit for the consumer made it worth it. Also, many people bought the PC version of Civ V expecting a free Mac version later, considering Civ IV was SteamPlay.

If the game hadn't been SteamPlay, I would've probably bought the PC version and Aspyr wouldn't have seen any of my money.
 
syzee said:
as mentioned in a previous post, the dvd installed version of COD4 is not being recognised in the mac store? what's all that about? will this be rectified or are we gonna be missing out on any updates.... if any are released?
I know it's not a major deal but i figured that for such a 'major' release, compatibility for current owners would have been thought of?
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Your answer
 
This is big. This is huge. Mac games didn't sell that good in recent years, but this could boost sales of these games quite a bit. Even these older games are a huge win for Apple/Aspyr/Mac users. If people really start buying these games and Aspyr releases this games it will give them the ability to port more games to the Mac and eventually make them cheaper too. Piracy was a very big hit for Mac gaming in the last 5 years, if this could counter that, the Mac may catch up on a big slack in gaming.
 
Bokito said:
This is big. This is huge. Mac games didn't sell that good in recent years, but this could boost sales of these games quite a bit. Even these older games are a huge win for Apple/Aspyr/Mac users. If people really start buying these games and Aspyr releases this games it will give them the ability to port more games to the Mac and eventually make them cheaper too. Piracy was a very big hit for Mac gaming in the last 5 years, if this could counter that, the Mac may catch up on a big slack in gaming.
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For 50 dollars for very old games available cheaper else where I doubt it. Unless people really are suckers.
 
PlipPlop said:
For 50 dollars for very old games available cheaper else where I doubt it. Unless people really are suckers.
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It's good exposure for games that a lot of people don't even realize exist for the Mac. Mac games get practically zero retail space.
 
Cougarcat said:
It's good exposure for games that a lot of people don't even realize exist for the Mac. Mac games get practically zero retail space.
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If you didn't know it existed your prob not going to be interested enough in paying 50 dollars.
 
PlipPlop said:
If you didn't know it existed your prob not going to be interested enough in paying 50 dollars.
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Maybe not, but you may be so inclined as to research the game and find out that you can buy it cheaper elsewhere. Bottom line is that this can only help Mac gaming.
 
roadbloc said:
The future doesn't look bright for Mac Steam.
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If these are the prices we can expect from the mac store, and these are the titles we can expect from the mac store, then mac steam will be just fine.

steam's regular price on Civ4: colonization (which has steamplay for mac/pc and play-it-anywhere capability) is 19.99.
 
Quite simply put, I will not be using the Mac App store for anything if the price is lower elsewhere.
 
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