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EA Games Use TransGaming's Cider; To Require Intel Macs

I bought my iMac G5 in March 2006. It was the only iMac available by that time in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. It was model October 2005. So this model will be only 2 years old this october and it won't be able to play recent games.
Before I got iMac I had a PC, bought in 2003. It had Pentium 4 Northwood 2800Mhz, 512 megabytes of RAM and ATi Radeon 9200 with 128 Mb VRAM. And it ran recent titles even in 2006. What the hell?
 
EDIT: Apparently Safari couldn' handle that post...
Anyway, Macs went through a processor change, Windows machines didn't.
 
raykhrud said:
I bought my iMac G5 in March 2006. It was the only iMac available by that time in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. It was model October 2005. So this model will be only 2 years old this october and it won't be able to play recent games.
Before I got iMac I had a PC, bought in 2003. It had Pentium 4 Northwood 2800Mhz, 512 megabytes of RAM and ATi Radeon 9200 with 128 Mb VRAM. And it ran recent titles even in 2006. What the hell?
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Macs are not gaming machines. Why did you buy the G5?
 
gkarris said:
Will the Intel Mac platform secretly become the best computer gaming platform?
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No. Great OS, but very narrow view on hardware. Where hardcore Mac users can be conned into buying all in ones and workstations, gamers are much more used to variety and are pretty particular in what they buy. Apple has nothing for them.

Imagine not having to constantly upgrade boards and download patches, the game just works - like on a console!
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Doesn't quite work that way. There will still be patches. In fact, the x360 and PS3 do actually have add-ons and patches

flopticalcube said:
Macs are not gaming machines.
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Why do people make comments like this? Look if gaming offends you in some way sorry, but a lot of us like to use our Macs for the full range of computing tasks.
 
flopticalcube said:
Because its true. Most people DON'T play computer games on their computers and Macs are not optimized to play games.
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I don't know what kind of circles you're running in, but most computer users I know do play games of some sort. As for the not optimized, that was due to non-competitive PowerPCs. The switch to intel and the arrival of OGL 2.1 in Leopard will really up the ante.
 
How do you think C&C 3 will run on the 128MB 8600M? Can't wait till they release it :). No need to install windows if it runs fine on the mac!
 
gco212 said:
Anyone know about performance issues using this process?
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That the $64,000 question. There really hasn't been a AAA title ported to the Mac using cider yet. X3: Reunion is said to run well though. HOMM V is very buggy, but it was done by basically a shareware company and the PC version isn't in the best shape either. I guess we'll see in about a month. The results could either make or break Mac gaming. If cider works as advertised and it proves to be an affordable option for game companies, you could see Mac version in box as standard practice.
 
BenRoethig said:
I don't know what kind of circles you're running in, but most computer users I know do play games of some sort. As for the not optimized, that was due to non-competitive PowerPCs. The switch to intel and the arrival of OGL 2.1 in Leopard will really up the ante.
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It's rather ironic that Apple seems to be doing particularly well among students these days -- where a lot of the gaming market is.
 
I don't think hard core gamer will ever choose Mac, just for the fact they are not upgradeable. Macs can't be over clocked, have less selection of video cards, doesn't have a driver modders community and again components are not interchangeable compared to PC white box. And using OSX as a gaming platform, even with current game announcement, is not enough to sway gamers. There is still not enough AAA titles to sway gamers. I'm not going to spend mass money to switch to Macs just because of a few games that's already been release or will be release for my PC. I think the game announcement is good for current Apple gamers, but that's about it.
 
"Lied" seems like a strange word to include in the headline. Am I missing something, does the body of this article support that allegation? (Sorry if someone addressed this above). Did Apple ever say the games would support PPC architecture?
 
Episteme said:
Releasing discs with both the Mac and Windows binary on them makes a lot of sense for EA -- they just have one production run to deal with etc., no separate SKU so they can benefit from the economies of scale...

I hope that's the way it goes, it'll make getting the Mac version both easier and cheaper.
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The problem with that is statistics. You don't have any visibility into how many people are buying the mac versus PC version if you do that, unless you build some form of "activation" into the installation in order to figure it out.

Will be interesting to see what happens. They'll want some way to track how the versions compare in terms of sales figures...

be well

t
 
roach said:
I don't think hard core gamer will ever choose Mac, just for the fact they are not upgradeable. Macs can't be over clocked, have less selection of video cards, doesn't have a driver modders community and again components are not interchangeable compared to PC white box. And using OSX as a gaming platform, even with current game announcement, is not enough to sway gamers. There is still not enough AAA titles to sway gamers. I'm not going to spend mass money to switch to Macs just because of a few games that's already been release or will be release for my PC. I think the game announcement is good for current Apple gamers, but that's about it.
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I disagree. I think that plenty of "Weekend Warriors" will be swayed by this shift. From my assumptions, hardcore gamers are a much smaller demographic than the weekend warriors who would just like to be able to enjoy some of the most popular titles. I think yesterday's announcements will only accelerate the switchers.
 
BenRoethig said:
I don't know what kind of circles you're running in, but most computer users I know do play games of some sort. As for the not optimized, that was due to non-competitive PowerPCs. The switch to intel and the arrival of OGL 2.1 in Leopard will really up the ante.
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I was thinking of schools, libraries and offices. The majority of desktops and vast majority of laptops use integrated graphics which are not really meant for gaming. I must admit my comment about about Macs was aimed at the poster's purchase of a PPC Mac. I guess things are changing with the switch to Intel, albeit more slowly than people think.
 
Nermal said:
They're separate. With any luck, EA will force their distributors to offer both versions.
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I don't hold high hopes for that. The retailers are already reticent to offer large numbers of SKUs and also very wary of a Windows user buying a Mac disk and getting home not knowing what to do with it.

If Win and Mac are on separate disks (which I really can't see why other than to control their prices separately) then you can bet that you'll still need to be ordering the Mac box online or finding the one CompUSA in your state that's still open.

Sigh. So close.
 
superleccy said:
One thing that's not been discussed (I think): what's the performance of games going to be like under Cider (compared to the Windoze versions)?
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My guess is that instead of 253 frames per second we'll be stuck with 192 frames per second.
 
jettredmont said:
My guess is that instead of 253 frames per second we'll be stuck with 192 frames per second.
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Since the human eye catches about 30 fps, I always wonder what the point of going higher is. Anyone have a good explanation?
 
bdj21ya said:
I disagree. I think that plenty of "Weekend Warriors" will be swayed by this shift. From my assumptions, hardcore gamers are a much smaller demographic than the weekend warriors who would just like to be able to enjoy some of the most popular titles. I think yesterday's announcements will only accelerate the switchers.
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Hardcore gamer and tweakers are big. Just look at component market (GPU, motherboards, ram, cooling, PS, cases) that serve these guys. An example are GPU companies with their constant release of GPU and technology such as dual video card technologies...these aren't for CG industries, I know because SLI and Crossfire doesn't work for with my 3D Maya. You got to see that, just like in Consoles, it's the selection of games that dictates the market. And the recently announced games for Apple are not big enough to sway gamers. Plus, with the released of such games as Cyrisis requiring DX10 hardware, I just can't see how Apple can fit this segment of the market.
 
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