OSNews.com

Can you provide us a link?

 

Direct link to article (I hope).

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4045

 

While they are at it, Apple can add an extra dollar to each Mac sold for my kids' college fund and another dollar for my mortgage payment.

My biggest grip with Apple is their pricing structure. Why would I want to pay even more for games I don't care about? Get the prices down and I'll have cash left to buy the games I want or maybe even an iPod or iSight or add Apple Care to my order.

I do agree that Apple needs to something such as a gaming division. As implied in the artical, gaming pushes the limits of the hardware. If you look beyond the "first person shooter", there is alot to be gained by developing high end / high quality games. If managed properly, a gaming division could become a self supporting R&D division.

 

MacOS X already has a free, built-in game. It's called Chess.

 

The best I've ever done is stalemate with Chess, and I'm not that bad at chess. The difficulty slider only adjusts the amount of time the comp spends on analyzing moves. The fact is that a computer that can crunch 700 million numbers a second will still figure out more moves in five seconds than I will in a lifetime.

 

You just need to go on ebay and buy a Lime Green iMac, load OS X on it and play on it. But I definitely agree with you, Chess is way too hard. Plus... where's solitaire and free cell? I know they are windows games but they are fun and pass the time.

Apple should really consider buying Aspyr or MacSoft if they were to pursue a gaming division. I imagine that both of these companies would appreciate the extra resources and Apple could fill the void without the drama.

I think Apple is in a bind because as of right now, there really isn't enough marketshare to be able to program high quality games exclusive to the mac platform and be able to break even. But, then again, people said that about the iTMS and the retail Apple Store locations so who knows.

edit: Ok so I just read the article. The man made me a believer. Although how's this for an idea. Perhaps instead of adding $50 to the machine price, Apple could create a subscription service of sorts. It's $50 a year, 2 to 3 exclusive Mac games and 2 to 3 Windows ported games. It could also be integrated into .Mac. Sort of a ".Mac Gamers Edition" where your using .Mac allows for online gaming. I think people will do this. This year I've bought two games (Masters Of Orion 3 and Simcity 4000). These games together cost me over $100 but under this subscription plan, I would have only paid half that. 4 to 6 quality games a year for $50 would definitely turn some heads.

 

The only problem with this idea is it would not bring in any PC people at all. Why would a PC person switch to a Mac for free games when all the games they are switching for they have been playing for a year to a year and half. That's how long it takes to port them. By the time most games are ported to the Mac they should be free because they are so old.

 

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14868

heh.