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EA Ships Four Games for Mac, Two to Come
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The elephant in the room is the graphics gap between Macs and PCs. Compared to what you can get on the PC side for equivalent prices, the iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook all have crap for video hardware. You need to shell out at least $2000 (MacBook Pro) or $2200 (Mac Pro) for decent graphics, because Apple insists on a ridiculous, artificial "consumer/professional" stratification of its product line. (WTF, only "professionals" play graphics-intensive computer games?) Even at the top end, the gap still exists: the best cards you can get for a PC are better than the best cards you can get for the Mac Pro. This has implications beyond gaming.
There's also the related elephant of expandability, but that's a whole other discussion.
Well, the good thing with it is that we now know that the cider implementation uses T&L effects on our graphics cards. Sure it's said when you don't have one which supports it thought. But the specs have been there all the time.
Since it's only more or less DX-emulation on top of OS X and all the CPU-stuff runs more or less natively on the CPU as always they can't run on PPC. That would require a real port, this is only like a Windows-compatbilitylayer.
Obviously they don't know better. Of course for the money asked you can't ask for much, but ANY sort of real GPU with it's own dedicated memory would be better. They should have used an nv6200 or something.
Exactly, this isn't like EA saying "Oh, btw, we have decided to develop games for Macs aswell!", it's more like: "Oh, Transgaming has made this utility which let you run Windowsgames on other platforms, so we thought it might be a good idea to release a few windowsgames for macs thru this."
Well, if the game is graphicaly demanding they can't do magic.
Well, Apple could start by making their OS ready and fast for 3D-applications, and sell hardware with better graphics capabilities.The only reason that I would hesistate when purchasing my next Mac, or why I would even consider a PC is because of Apple's refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of their gaming situation. Apple is appallingly bad with games, unfortunately (and it's not all Apple's fault, but they can do something about it).
I suppose my Mac will remain the *almost*-perfect computer for another day.
It's better than no games, apparently his daugther would be happy enough if she could run them on her macbook, or wait, now she can't... (During the WWDC he said "My daugther lives on the macbook".
Yeah, X3100 might run these games since it has T&L and eventually more up to date shaders, I even read they might release DX10-drivers or whatever it was for it. It's still slow thought and not more than twice as fast as 950GMA or something.
The old Radeon 9200 they used in the iBook and Mac mini was (more than?) 50% faster in opengl than the 950GMA if I remember things correctly
Welcome to the MHz myth! Part 2! 5 times faster!!
I remember back in the days when they compared the iMac with a Dell desktop to show that the mac was faster for games. The iMac had X1600 and the Dell X300, or something. Yeah, only dell you can get hold of!!
Something decent would be X2400 or 8400m? They still aren't that great but atleast they could run the games.
Yeah right, thought they may switch away from integrated graphics (I doubt it thought since they choosed to have it in the first place) but they still not be anything a real gamer would want.
There are a lot of problems:
1) Incompetent hardware.
2) Slow OpenGL performance in OS X.
3) Small market for game developers and therefor no reason to do ports.
4) Game developers probably see even less reason for it if Apple releases inferior hw and sw for games.
5) Gamers choose to dual boot anyway.
6) ... or they don't buy macs in the first place.
Macs have always been bad for games. What is needed is a "Mac midi".
Yeah, the transgaming people are very skilled at DX so some day that might maybe be possible aswell. But still OS X OpenGL performance need to increase a lot before that will happen.
It's sad I don't have any means to benchmark OS X vs Linux, or well, if I got Quake 4 for both I could do it, maybe I should go dow... downtown and buy it. Do I only need some patches to make it work or special versions? Would be nice to see how it performs with the same settings in both OSes.
There are no wc3 or wow on consoles, and there will be no sc2. FPS on consoles sucks aswell. Consoles are good for single player rpgs and multiplayer games if you have someone to play with.
I guess that you can probably just download it and set it up with your windows key. If it's the windows version of the game in cider aswell it might work. Or maybe you could call the people who made it and ask them if they can somehow generate a key for you.Does anyone know if you can get a patch to enable a previous copy of BF212 to run on a MBP?
...I already have BF2142, but don't fancy buying the game again (just for the cider patch)
Because Steve loves hype? Because some positive news are better than none at all?
Macs WON'T be a gaming platform, thought it would be nice if they where. If everyone coded games for OpenGL it could happen. Let's hope Apple brings OpenGL 3.0 to OS X real fast .. Thought if Microsoft doesn't do it I guess noone will make games for it anyway? Or can they bundle their own OpenGL libs somehow?
Apple probably wants to get into as many business as possible since they can make more money that way.
That doesn't mean that they will do it.
Very well said.
I agree completely. EA is an unfortunate, bloated, unoriginal behemoth.
Thought of course not everyone DO play games, either pros or poor people. But they could atleast give people the option to get a machine for games if they wanted one.
Instead of offer a different case color what about a different motherboard with dedicated graphics in the macbook? But then there already exists the macbook pro...
But there need to be something like the mac mini but capable of games for people who don't want the iMac.
Yeah, it's retarded you need special mac graphics cards for a mac pro. Hacks can use anything thought... But they run BIOS instead of EFI from the begining but shouldn't Apple be able to come around that aswell? Or they could just have sticked to BIOS themself aswell. I guess this is a way for them to make even more profit on rediciously priced graphics cards.
Easiest way to solve it is to build a hack, but then you might run into some troubles with updating software and such.
Agreed - the graphics gap is a big deal. Sure, great graphics hardware doesn't necessarily mean great games, but it sure can help! I think Apple need to update their model of what a "digital hub" should be able to do - gaming plays a large part in people's entertainment now and the Mac should keep up with this. Sure, if you want to play you could follow the "get a console" logic, which is fine, but many want to play games on their computers as well!!
We constantly read about consoles offering a more robust experience than PCs, with people not having to worry about hardware or driver consistency / stability issues when they buy a game. With Apple's tighter control over hardware, a more robust experience can also be offered. Personally, I'm not looking for Apple to provide a large range of GPU hardware, just GPUs offering decent performance for games.
We constantly read about consoles offering a more robust experience than PCs, with people not having to worry about hardware or driver consistency / stability issues when they buy a game. With Apple's tighter control over hardware, a more robust experience can also be offered. Personally, I'm not looking for Apple to provide a large range of GPU hardware, just GPUs offering decent performance for games.
But the difference between your friend and us mac owners; is that your friend spent probably around $800 on his dell, where as we spend twice, some times 3 times as much... apple dropped the ball on GPU.
Damn you hardware limitations!
It's a shame that brand new $1000+ MacBooks can't play these games.... we're waiting Steve!
It's a shame that brand new $1000+ MacBooks can't play these games.... we're waiting Steve!
And that's also part of the problem - the "get a console" mantra does absolutely nothing to strengthen the Mac platform. It's basically an admission that Macs will always be subpar gaming machines, which doesn't work from a standpoint of platform advocacy. Apple's userbase should be up in arms about this, even the people that don't play games. Is there anyone out there who honestly believes that the Mac wouldn't be stronger with a better game library, and graphics cards to match it?
I don't know what it would take for Apple to reconsider. Maybe if Macworld published an article titled "THE GRAPHICS GAP" in big bold letters...
Someone wake me up when a respectable game company such as Epic Games, ID Software or Blizzard releases some Mac games that they put some real effort into making native. (Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War, any Blizzard title, Doom/Quake etc....)
Till then, these EA games are just a big yawn for me. They should of had Aspyr do the porting like they did in the past.
I can wait longer for a Mac game if the company puts *real* effort into making a great port that runs well instead of this lame Cider bull. I will never buy or play a Cider-based game, I don't want to support that kind of lazy developing for a quick buck.
Till then, these EA games are just a big yawn for me. They should of had Aspyr do the porting like they did in the past.
I can wait longer for a Mac game if the company puts *real* effort into making a great port that runs well instead of this lame Cider bull. I will never buy or play a Cider-based game, I don't want to support that kind of lazy developing for a quick buck.
Will madden 08 for mac be able to play windows madden 08 online?
How would I be able to find that out?
How would I be able to find that out?
Kinda worrying to know that...I acknowledge both Origin and Bullfrog made GREAT games for the Apple II and the Mac, including some of the best RPG games out there (the Ultima series, if I remember well) and also the excellent MacSyndicate...really good games.
CNC3 didnt run that well on my iMac (1.83/128 x1600) and from what I've read the new 2xxx series arent much better.
Software is not going to drive Mac gaming. The hardware needs to come first.
Software is not going to drive Mac gaming. The hardware needs to come first.
The thing with the X3100 is that everyone thinks that if it made it into the latest Mac Mini and MacBook we wouldn't be in this position now. The problem with the X3100 and likely the reason why Apple didn't include it is that currently it is barely faster than the GMA950. It has great hardware inside, including hardware T&L, and SM4.0 (DX10) PS and VS. The problem is that Intel themselves haven't figured out how to activate those features. The only thing done in hardware right now is PS so it's really no better than the GMA950 with only higher clock speeds setting it apart. Intel has said they would release drivers for Windows that support everything up to DX9.0c in hardware by the end of the year and DX10 in hardware in H1 2007. Apple is likely waiting for Intel to figure out the DX9.0c hardware implementation so that they can develop the OpenGL equivalent drivers. Otherwise if Apple released the GMA X3100 now, the performance will be little better than the GMA 950 and what little reputation it could have had would be forever scared even if Apple released better drivers later. This way Apple could probably get the older 667MHz Meroms are bargain prices to help Intel clear inventory, while going with the GMA X3100 would have mandated Santa Rosa, which kind of looks them into the 800Mhz Meroms.It's better than no games, apparently his daugther would be happy enough if she could run them on her macbook, or wait, now she can't... (During the WWDC he said "My daugther lives on the macbook".Yeah, X3100 might run these games since it has T&L and eventually more up to date shaders, I even read they might release DX10-drivers or whatever it was for it. It's still slow thought and not more than twice as fast as 950GMA or something.
The old Radeon 9200 they used in the iBook and Mac mini was (more than?) 50% faster in opengl than the 950GMA if I remember things correctly
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macmini.ars/5
In terms of the GMA 950 vs the Radeon 9200 in OpenGL tests I'm assuming you means CineBench and XBench. In those tests the Radeon 9200 leads the GMA 950, 480 to 453 in hardware shading in CineBench. But the GMA 950 leads the Radeon 9200, 58.45 to 52.18 in Quartz graphics and 162.28 to 69.02 in OpenGL graphics in XBench. And this was with the slowest 1.5GHz Core Solo Mac Mini so a more modern Core 2 Duo would perform better. Neither is leading the other by 5 times in pure OpenGL tests, but the GMA 950 seems to lead the 9200. Of course, that doesn't translate that well into actual gaming but even then I doubt the 9200 has 5x the fps of the GMA 950 in any game.
In terms of EA's new games, I can understand that BF2142, C&C3, and Carbon don't support the GMA 950. However, I think OotP not supporting the GMA 950 is a mistake. The PC version can run on a 32MB Radeon 7500 so it's not like the game is graphically intensive even with the Cider layer on top of it. Plus, the target market is kids and teens and the likelihood of them having a Mac Pro or a MBP is rather low. By excluding the Mac Mini and MacBook from OotP for no other reason than what appears to be laziness will probably make the game a flop in sales. Really, they could have just waited and released OotP in the September/October window like the other 2 EA games and optimized it better. Then they can't come running back complaining about lack of sales.
Apple's hardware doesn't need to catch up, drivers and game port quality need to. If the game is extremely poorly ported, it will always run bad regardless of hardware; except in the case you have the most ultimate gaming machine.
When my iBook came out in October of 2003 (wow it's been 4 years already), first thing I did was run UT2004 on it. I was impressed that it was a playable level of performance on a 1 ghz G4 with a lowly Radeon 9200 Mobility. From what I see the Macbooks don't even perform much better than my iBook here. Testament to how much the GMA950 is a crock.
Look at Halo for example, that was an absolutely abysmal attempt at a PC port, let alone Mac. Performance was so shoddy it was laughable. I remember getting 1 to 5 frames per second on the last stage of that game on a Dual 1.8 G5 with a Radeon 9800 Pro. A few patches later and the game runs much better.
It's all about software people, if developers don't take the time to optimize it, a game will never perform good on a Mac. This is why Cider is so bad, there is no optimizing. It's still DirectX code running in an API layer on a non-native OpenGL platform.
If EA took the time to make true, Mac native games then performance would be a non-issue. If Apple, ATI and Nvidia got on the ball with their graphics card drivers, the new iMacs would have much better performance.
This is lazy developing; the hardware is good but the software is the bottleneck. Bad drivers and lazy developers. Common people...
When my iBook came out in October of 2003 (wow it's been 4 years already), first thing I did was run UT2004 on it. I was impressed that it was a playable level of performance on a 1 ghz G4 with a lowly Radeon 9200 Mobility. From what I see the Macbooks don't even perform much better than my iBook here. Testament to how much the GMA950 is a crock.
Look at Halo for example, that was an absolutely abysmal attempt at a PC port, let alone Mac. Performance was so shoddy it was laughable. I remember getting 1 to 5 frames per second on the last stage of that game on a Dual 1.8 G5 with a Radeon 9800 Pro. A few patches later and the game runs much better.
It's all about software people, if developers don't take the time to optimize it, a game will never perform good on a Mac. This is why Cider is so bad, there is no optimizing. It's still DirectX code running in an API layer on a non-native OpenGL platform.
If EA took the time to make true, Mac native games then performance would be a non-issue. If Apple, ATI and Nvidia got on the ball with their graphics card drivers, the new iMacs would have much better performance.
This is lazy developing; the hardware is good but the software is the bottleneck. Bad drivers and lazy developers. Common people...
I think I would have to agree with that. The advantage of native ports and porting companies like Aspyr is that their survival depends on the success of the Mac games they make. For something like Halo, I'm always surprised by the number of patches that that game received to correct issues and improve performance. And the fact that they put up with things like creating Universal binaries for old games for little to no cost or the changes that Apple makes to OpenGL in different OS versions. That's one thing about Cider and EA, I doubt they will show the same level of patch commitment as porting companies do, since for EA, if you bought it they already made their money, and if you don't like their support, they always have their PC and console market to fall back on.
I hope Apple have removed the "do everything" rubbish on the MacBook pages. Honestly, the MacBook GPU is worse than the iBooks, when has an updated product ever had an inferior component before? And then, when given the option to upgrade to the X3100 (which is over twice as fast) they don't bother.
Heck, the Apple TV could probably make a better job of running these games. It has a way better GPU, after all.
And of course Apple somehow managed to find a way to put a REAL GPU in the Apple TV but not the $1,000+ MacBook. Apple's practice of artificially inflating it's "pro" Macs value by crippling the consumer Macs is really quite disgusting.
Heck, the Apple TV could probably make a better job of running these games. It has a way better GPU, after all.
And of course Apple somehow managed to find a way to put a REAL GPU in the Apple TV but not the $1,000+ MacBook. Apple's practice of artificially inflating it's "pro" Macs value by crippling the consumer Macs is really quite disgusting.
I hate gaming on laptops and PCs. Get a console. It's not at all a shock that the baseline products can't play 'cutting edge' games. Mine emulates MAME and Genesis games well, but if I want to play NHL - I would use a 360 or something. The Wii is more fun than a keyboard/mouse anyday.
I can understand why Apple had to put a Go 7300 in the Apple TV. The GMA 950 requires the CPU to handle T&L and VS and the Apple TV only had a Dothan based Pentium M running at 1GHz. Dothan didn't have the SSE and FP improvements or SSE3 support than the Yonah Core Duo's had and combined with the low clock speed, the GMA 950 would be even more underpowered. The Go 7300 also has better MPEG2 and h.264 hardware acceleration than the GMA 950, which is important to free up the CPU to handle interface and other OS tasks, especially since Dothan isn't dual core.
That of course doesn't explain how Apple could afford to put a Go 7300 in the Apple TV since ULV Pentium Ms aren't cheap.
Took long enough.
Yup.
I think I'm going to delay my purchases of any Mac titles from EA. Kind of... postponed. But to be fair, I will be closing the gap between my EA Mac game purchases and purchases for other platforms...