Overwatch not coming to Mac OS X

[antonis]

so what?

you know where i can see this? in my mac battle.net app since a really long time. non functional forever.
how stupid will it look when they release overwatch characters in heroes of the storm on mac?

blizzard is abandoning the mac. after 21 years.

I wouldn't say they are "abandoning" mac. At least not yet. They've already stated that they are going to support Metal in their major titles (I assume that includes Diablo 3 and WoW at the very least). OTOH, it is weird that after all these years they are going to release a title only for windows, but this might just be an exception due to some marketing agreement with Microsoft. Or not.

FWIW, we should not expect that game creators will scream with joy because Metal is released. The h/w that could push mac gaming further and attract more game creators to mac, is still not delivered.

 

[DaveNinja]

There is an install button for it in Battle,net on the mac side. My friend didnt know there was no os x version and tried to install it but nothing happened.

 

[Exhale]

FWIW, we should not expect that game creators will scream with joy because Metal is released. The h/w that could push mac gaming further and attract more game creators to mac, is still not delivered.

Thing you need to remember is that Metal does not increase GPU power. It just makes it easier to use the GPU power you have. An already overloaded GPU will work no faster.

On top of that - you have to remember that not long ago, cross platform games were designed for inclusion on the PS3/XB360 - weak systems. Those are now retired, and Game Developers are looking to substantially up their 'game' in the gameplay and graphics department. Unfortunately, 1000 USD ASP Laptops are not going to handle that.

Sad reality is, you're probably more likely to find someone with a GTX Titan than a high end MP or iMac. But even a GTX970 - the most common dGPU in use today, and which on Steam is more common than the entire Mac base, will beat those machines on performance.

 

[Noble Actual]

so what?

you know where i can see this? in my mac battle.net app since a really long time. non functional forever.
how stupid will it look when they release overwatch characters in heroes of the storm on mac?

blizzard is abandoning the mac. after 21 years.

Can't really blame them though.

Apple hasn't done anything to help and they honestly just don't care about gaming.

I mean the only time they ever talk about is to show off that classic Infinity blade or vainglory demo.

Like I said, there's rumors that Blizzard and Microsoft just signed a major new sponsorship. All of Blizzcon will be running with W10.

 

[cycledance]

Can't really blame them though.

Apple hasn't done anything to help and they honestly just don't care about gaming.

I mean the only time they ever talk about is to show off that classic Infinity blade or vainglory demo.

Like I said, there's rumors that Blizzard and Microsoft just signed a major new sponsorship. All of Blizzcon will be running with W10.

bs.

- apple had a game console before ms.
- they had games on apple from the beginning. jobs and wozniak started their careers in gaming industry.
- all their computers are gaming capable. only a fraction of pc owners have those enthusiast gaming graphics cards.
- they had an app store to sell games before ms.
- they have gazillions of devs familiar with xcode that has gaming apis.
- halo was introduced by steve jobs himself as a mac exclusive. ms stole it just like they stole other stuff. why do u think apple is patenting every lil thing now.
- steam is on mac.
- they just introduced metal for mac.


and u know the one reason why blizzard is doing metal support? because they wanted their logo shown off in the keynote that is watched by millions. the man hours to implement metal into their games is nothing compared to the publicity they got there.

 

[Noble Actual]

bs.

- apple had a game console before ms.
- they had games on apple from the beginning. jobs and wozniak started their careers in gaming industry.
- all their computers are gaming capable. only a fraction of pc owners have those enthusiast gaming graphics cards.
- they had an app store to sell games before ms.
- they have gazillions of devs familiar with xcode that has gaming apis.
- halo was introduced by steve jobs himself as a mac exclusive. ms stole it just like they stole other stuff. why do u think apple is patenting every lil thing now.
- steam is on mac.
- they just introduced metal for mac.


and u know the one reason why blizzard is doing metal support? because they wanted their logo shown off in the keynote that is watched by millions. the man hours to implement metal into their games is nothing compared to the publicity they got there.

No one cares about what Apple or anyone did 10 years ago or so for gaming.

Your "facts" don't mean anything.

 

[cycledance]

No one cares about what Apple or anyone did 10 years ago or so for gaming.

Your "facts" don't mean anything.

only a few of these facts go back 10 years and they do mean something. namely what you said..

Apple hasn't done anything to help and they honestly just don't care about gaming.

...is simply wrong.

i can go on...

- apple just sold more macs this quarter than ever.
- they had gaming presentations on almost all their keynotes.
- apple tv 4 has controller support and apple pushes games there too.

 

[antonis]

only a few of these facts go back 10 years and they do mean something. namely what you said..



...is simply wrong.

i can go on...

- apple just sold more macs this quarter than ever.
- they had gaming presentations on almost all their keynotes.
- apple tv 4 has controller support and apple pushes games there too.

We are all on the same side here, but there are many sides in every story. 10 years is like centuries in IT. 10 years ago, Steve was also alive and leading apple. Things change, and in IT market things change even faster. Apple has done a minimum to promote mac gaming, if anything at all (mind that I'm referring to "mac gaming", not iOS).

Here's some facts from a different point of view:

- The fact that this quarter apple sold more macs than ever is irrelevant under gaming context. People don't buy macs for AAA gaming, so this target group keeps well out of the apple's ecosystem. People buy macs because they are still the best computers out there - but only when gaming is not a priority.

- Their gaming presentations on their keynotes are mostly targeted on iOS (which is a totally different story, where apple really rules). This is not, however, the so-called AAA computer gaming.

- Apple TV is also irrelevant to computer gaming. It has iOS titles ported for it. It is not a competitor of PS4 and XBox One. And not even close to computers.

- Metal's main mission seems to be the bridging of (2nd class) gaming between iphones/ipads, apple tv and macs. Apple loves to unify things and keep them under control and Metal does just that. The gaming h/w that would be required for AAA gaming is just not there and Metal cannot solve this.

- Apple is still insisting to make portable low-consumption computers (iMac included) and equip them with mobile gpus for high end models (and we all know what a mobile gpu means under the AAA gaming context). And that's for the high-end, highly-priced models. All the others keep having the integrated gpus from intel.

Personally, I cannot credit apple for gaming support on Macs, as long as they fail to deliver a desktop upgradeable computer, capable of following the GPUs evolution from nVidia and ATI. The AAA titles are always aiming at these GPUs and there's where the gaming war takes place. Apple is still keeping out of all these.

 

[jeanlain]

Yeah, Apple keynote guests demo some Mac games from time to time, but that doesn't compare AT ALL to what MS does.
Apple seem to care less about gaming than they did 15 years ago (or more) when the Quake III demo was released as a Mac exclusive and shown off on stage by Schiller, or the first Doom 3 content demoed by Carmark.
Although Metal is cool, it don't think it will change Mac gaming much, since all recent Macs are limited by their slow GPU (where Metal doesn't help at all). It won't make game developing easier, as far as I understand (coding is harder, but optimizing and debugging might be easier though).
The tower Mac Pros and Power Macs were more gaming-friendly than any current Mac. It's true that a Mac may not be worse than an average PC for gaming, but PC AAA games developer mostly target hardcore gamers, who are virtually inexistant on the Mac platform.
To compensate, the Mac market share is rising and porting houses do very well thanks to the Mac App Store and Steam. So overall, don't think gaming on the Mac is in a bad shape. Blizzard's decision is a political one, probably due to their relationship with MS (as mentioned).

Gaming is a very important selling point of the PC platform, because it's basically the only reason justifying the increase in CPU and GPU power these days, especially if VR takes off. Apple doesn't seem to care. When the only reason to by a new computer or GPU is to play the latest games, I believe Apple will have already abandoned the Mac. They probably think that gaming is better served by a console or a tablet, and they are mostly right. For Apple, PC-gaming is already a thing of the past.

We know that Apple has posted several job offers related to VR and gaming, and has filled several patents. I'm very curious what they're up to, because the Apple TV is clearly not powerful enough for VR (and I don't think it will ever be, unless they radically change the design).

 

[Ferazel]

- apple just sold more macs this quarter than ever.
- they had gaming presentations on almost all their keynotes.
- apple tv 4 has controller support and apple pushes games there too.

Apple has at best a spotty relationship with games regardless of your ancient historical references. They seem to prioritize it one year and then completely ignore it for a couple years until they realize that their users actually care about this stuff. They like to talk the talk, but they fail at actually walking the walk.

However, this doesn't change the fact that Mac GPU hardware is a fraction of the power of basic dedicated GPU is on Windows. Not only can you never upgrade your GPU on Macs to suit the needs of the user, the drivers on OS X are prioritized to stability instead of speed. NVidia has decided to bypass this limitation now that they are not the current Apple's GPU manufacturer to try to show customers just how limiting this process is by releasing drivers that are 20-30% faster than the drivers that Apple offers.

The fact that Apple has sold more Macs every subsequent quarter is telling Apple that they're right to short change the GPUs on their hardware is A OK with their customers. So we're not the majority of their customer as more and more consumers are turning to their phones, tablets, and dedicated consoles for their gaming needs. However, in doing so they have removed themselves from the high-end graphics market as well.

Microsoft doesn't seem to be following exactly and offering a decent dedicated GPU for their graphics/gaming customers in their surface book. We'll see how well it does and see if it convinces Apple to offer other options outside of the top-of-the-line computers. Or as mentioned in another post, give us some Thunderbolt 3 ports with external GPUs as an optional upgrade for customers.

 

[jeanlain]

There's still the hope that Apple finally supports eGPU with thunderbolt 3.

 

[Irishman]

There's still the hope that Apple finally supports eGPU with thunderbolt 3.

While potentially great news for new Mac buyers, that won't necessarily help those of us with 2012 Macs (TB 1 only).

 

[antonis]

Even when new Macs are equipped with TB3, I highly doubt that Apple will give their blessings for external GPUs. Unofficially, it might be possible (as it is now with all the cons that it carries) but officially I wouldn't bet on it.

 

[ActionableMango]

On top of that - you have to remember that not long ago, cross platform games were designed for inclusion on the PS3/XB360 - weak systems.

It's not a hardware requirements issue. Overwatch officially supports some really weak integrated graphics cards. Macs meet or exceed the hardware requirements just fine.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

I am inclined to think this is an Activision influenced decision based purely on expected return on investment. Right or wrong (and no way to know for us) it could be based on a lukewarm Mac user response to Heroes of the Storm even though it is a different genre of game.

I honestly think they just don't see enough users spending money on it to justify the expense of bringing it to OS X and then maintaining it in sync with the Windows version. I wouldn't know but it is possible that among our demographic there is less demand for a team based shooter or a MOBA than there is for an MMO and Online Action RPG. I can also see Hearthstone and StarCraft being more popular and justifying Mac development more easily again than either a MOBA which may not be doing well after trying it and a team based shooter.

I could be wrong of course but I really think if they believed there was enough money to be made it would become a priority. What they choose to do or not do I think is ultimately the most telling thing of all when it comes to this. I do not buy stories of inability to recruit the talent needed. They can afford to easily but there would of course need to be the payoff for that.

I also would not take any of this personally. This is all about the business of making money and always has been first and foremost as is appropriate for any business. People seem to forget that and have a perception that greed drives such decisions, that companies do not care about certain people as human beings or whatever. It has nothing to do with any of that. At the end of the day all decisions by top management are always made with the need to turn a significant profit in mind and as a priority. That is not wrong. It is just responsible management responding to market reality. Without wise management decision making you see stuff like THQ who have folded and are not publishing anything anymore. Granted their situation is a long story but it does boil down to poor management being their undoing.

 

[MacAlien]

It's simply about resources. The Mac development team is at one of the lowest it's been in years. They are barely able to fix bugs in their other games, lead alone build a new one for OS X. It's not how Mac users do or do not not play certain genres, or how they're completely abandoning their overall support (though we'll see how things pan out in the coming years). It's plausible they've teamed up with MS for this game. Either way, until they officially come out and explain to their players why they are not making Overwatch for Macs, all this is pure speculation, minus the silly small Mac team.

The only thing they've done wrong is not announce anything prior to their QA the day the Beta went Live. And that's just bad PR decision making at it's finest. For the foreseeable future, if you want to play it just start Bootcamp up or play on a PC. Sucks, but people should be used to this kind of treatment by now, no matter who the company is. The Blues will soon be able to actually discuss the thought process behind the decision in the next couple months most likely. Right now, there's a gag order on the matter. Patience.

 

[Toxe]

It's probably coming for PS4, which is way more interesting to me than a Mac port. As long as they port their non-shooter games to the Mac I am happy.

 

[Musubi]

The Mac development team is at one of the lowest it's been in years.

Part of this is probably due to Blizzard not paying competitive wages in this area (except for maybe the senior programmers). It's a common negative that is noted by past and current employees across the entire organization; ones who aren't/weren't in the executive/managerlal ranks on the administrative side, a game director/producer, or a senior/lead designer (the ones who do pull in the six figure salaries plus bonus royalties from other Blizzard franchises)

As some former employees have candidly mentioned, they love the environment and most other people there (since it's a common interest they share with being gamers). Blizzard's leadership knows this and uses that aspect to their advantage in filling many of the lower paying hourly positions like game master, forum moderator, customer/technical service rep, quality assurance analyst, etc that are used by folks who just want to get their foot in the door. I don't think anyone with the "associate" title there makes a competitive wage (tech wise plus high cost of living) either. So many employees end up leaving after several years because they can get paid better elsewhere/being actually involved in the creative design process instead of being continually strung along with regards to internal opportunities.

With regards to the Mac development team, it's not surprising how full their plate is since it's an issue of retaining and attracting the talent they are looking for, while also trying to deal with Apple's own yearly OS upgrade cycle.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

I don't buy that Mac programming talent is impossible to come by. For the right money I'm sure they could be employing whatever number of engineers they need, etc. The issue I think is the money which goes back to everything else I talked about above. I don't think they consider it worth spending on or they would.

 

[Noble Actual]

only a few of these facts go back 10 years and they do mean something. namely what you said..



...is simply wrong.

i can go on...

- apple just sold more macs this quarter than ever.
- they had gaming presentations on almost all their keynotes.
- apple tv 4 has controller support and apple pushes games there too.

Listing a bunch of random words doesn't mean ****.

- And PC still still is overwhelming more than Mac

- Those presentations are for the iPhone

- Apple TV is a joke...they showed Crossy Road as its premiere game, its not an actual game.

LMAO

 

[Noble Actual]

It's probably coming for PS4, which is way more interesting to me than a Mac port. As long as they port their non-shooter games to the Mac I am happy.

Its coming to Xbox One for sure.

1. There's already controller support with aim assist in beta.

2. Microsoft (Windows 10) is a huge sponsor of Blizzcon this year. They will have their own booth this time.

 

[Noble Actual]

I don't buy that Mac programming talent is impossible to come by. For the right money I'm sure they could be employing whatever number of engineers they need, etc. The issue I think is the money which goes back to everything else I talked about above. I don't think they consider it worth spending on or they would.

Plus it seems like Microsoft is actually helping Blizzard technically and financially compared to Apple which hasn't really cared or done anything.

I expect at Blizzcon that Microsoft and Blizzard will announce a partnership beyond W10 being at Blizzcon.

 

[Noble Actual]

Part of this is probably due to Blizzard not paying competitive wages in this area (except for maybe the senior programmers). It's a common negative that is noted by past and current employees across the entire organization; ones who aren't/weren't in the executive/managerlal ranks on the administrative side, a game director/producer, or a senior/lead designer (the ones who do pull in the six figure salaries plus bonus royalties from other Blizzard franchises)

As some former employees have candidly mentioned, they love the environment and most other people there (since it's a common interest they share with being gamers). Blizzard's leadership knows this and uses that aspect to their advantage in filling many of the lower paying hourly positions like game master, forum moderator, customer/technical service rep, quality assurance analyst, etc that are used by folks who just want to get their foot in the door. I don't think anyone with the "associate" title there makes a competitive wage (tech wise plus high cost of living) either. So many employees end up leaving after several years because they can get paid better elsewhere/being actually involved in the creative design process instead of being continually strung along with regards to internal opportunities.

With regards to the Mac development team, it's not surprising how full their plate is since it's an issue of retaining and attracting the talent they are looking for, while also trying to deal with Apple's own yearly OS upgrade cycle.

This is actually a bigger problem than Blizzard. Its the gaming industry as a whole which is why we often see studios laying off a large portion employees after a game is finished and going into pre-production of whatever next project they are thinking about. Then when they need people, they higher a bunch of people and the process repeats itself.

But if your a senior programmer, this is kinda the truth since I've had friends and professors who worked in the industry say that you want to get a job at a tech company, not a video game company. The pay and benefits is almost always lower. If you leave, they will almost never fight to keep you unlike tech companies (Apple / Tesla are poaching the **** out of each other).

 

[Dirtyharry50]

Plus it seems like Microsoft is actually helping Blizzard technically and financially compared to Apple which hasn't really cared or done anything.

I expect at Blizzcon that Microsoft and Blizzard will announce a partnership beyond W10 being at Blizzcon.

I expect Win10/XBox One cross play for Overwatch which would explain a lot. Since I am moving to Xbox for my own AAA gaming this works for me.

A gaming capable Mac is midrange performance at best when brand new for 3 grand. I'm not doing that. I'll do Mac for everyday computing and whatever games will run on the Mac I have such as older titles, etc. but for new stuff I'll be going console which provides an experience I'll enjoy for less money spent on hardware.

 

[Exhale]

It's not a hardware requirements issue. Overwatch officially supports some really weak integrated graphics cards.

Support does not equal to actually running at a playable performance. FPS games require higher and more steady frame rates than any other genre besides fighting games.

Blizzard puts the minimum specs at:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 460, ATI Radeon HD 4850

They also mention an intel iGPU - but it is significantly weaker than the cards above, and reads like a ******** recommendation. The official forums actually confirm its unplayable on such iGPUs.