Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Why are Mac games so expensive??

carlosbutler

carlosbutler

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 24, 2008
691
2
After looking around for Red Alert 3 for Mac, and being unable to find it, Command and Conquer Generals was the next one. I am not sure if this is the next best command and conquer down from RA3, but never the less i looked around and the cheapest i found it was for £8.99, with the expansion, but for PC.

Here is the link to play.com

Another option appeared and that was the game without expansion for £29.99. That is a stupid price. Do good, cheap mac games not exist or what?
 
There are a few reasons why they cost more (smaller market, longer development time etc). But whatever the exact reason I wont buy Mac games at all. Not when they're incredibly cheap on DD services like Steam.
 
The mac gaming community is so small that the developers have to keep the games full price for the life of the game to get their money worth out of developing it. As macs gain more and more market share you will find the prices start to drop along with the pc counterparts. Also mac games are usually ported from a company other than the one that made the original pc game, meaning they have to pay royalties to that company for the idea of the game, making it cost even more for the companies that port the title. There is already proof that mac games are getting cheaper though. I noticed last week on amazon that COD4 for pc was $47, and for mac was $45. At launch COD4 for pc was $50 and for mac $55. This games has been out for 6 months for pc and like 6 weeks for mac, so this really is an impressive feat. The more people that buy mac games the faster the prices will drop, and more games will be developed natively. :apple:
 
I often wondered why games for Mac kept their price so high long after it was released. But I think I have the reason. Saturation. There are so many more titles available for Windows that players have so much more to choose from thus so much more competition. With the Mac, less titles means by percentage more players after a particular title. I think in part that is what helps keep titles coming to the Mac, they know it will sell if it's half good.

For example, one popular game for the Mac is Age of Empires II. It is 7 years old and it still sells for $30USD on ebay. You can get AoE I and II together for Windows for $10.
 
raggedjimmi said:
There are a few reasons why they cost more (smaller market, longer development time etc). But whatever the exact reason I wont buy Mac games at all. Not when they're incredibly cheap on DD services like Steam.
Click to expand...

So you ENJOY dual booting, shutting down every program your running in OS X, booting into windows, etc. Why use a mac at all? so frustrating!
 
palebluedot said:
So you ENJOY dual booting, shutting down every program your running in OS X, booting into windows, etc. Why use a mac at all? so frustrating!
Click to expand...

I think that hits the nail on the head. For some folks the inconvenience is fine if it means cheaper games, for others the extra cost of the games is worth it for the convenience of using one operating system and keeping your other applications available. Hopefully hankolerd is correct and more native Mac gamers will means that the pricing gets closer and more folks will move to the OS X native gaming camp.

Of course there is still the issue of release dates - some people will play on whichever platform gets a title first - others are happy to wait as a good game is still a good game whenever you play it. :)
 
palebluedot said:
So you ENJOY dual booting, shutting down every program your running in OS X, booting into windows, etc. Why use a mac at all? so frustrating!
Click to expand...

Given the drop in performance by playing an OSX port compared to the Windows version, yes, I ENJOY dual booting, shutting down every program your running in OS X, booting into windows, etc. Especially since I have the added "privilege" of paying more to get the Mac port in the first place. Add worse performance into the mix and I am pretty much ecstatic to take about a minute of my time to reboot into Windows.
 
palebluedot said:
So you ENJOY dual booting, shutting down every program your running in OS X, booting into windows, etc. Why use a mac at all? so frustrating!
Click to expand...

Hah, it's you again :D

No I really don't mind. OSX takes a couple of seconds to shut down, XP takes about 20-30 seconds to boot up.

Besides I don't spend much time in OSX. I just use it for Logic, iPhoto and iTunes. So there's no loss of work flow.

XP - better gaming performance, cheaper games, no need to pay extra for drivers that you have to buy for OSX (controller drivers mostly). It's a no brainer for me and thanks to Hibernate I can get back to exactly where I was on boot :)
 
Also , how many people actually need to fire up Photoshop and Safari in the middle of TF2 matches ?

When I want to play a PC game on the Mac , the 30 secs it takes to reboot into Vista64 is well worth it for the huge performance increase over not using some Cider version of a game

I play and then when done reboot back into OS X , I don't get this huge "hassle" people say it is ,
 
raggedjimmi said:
No I really don't mind. OSX takes a couple of seconds to shut down, XP takes about 20-30 seconds to boot up.
Click to expand...

I don't mind either.
Got my Mac Pro in Mac OS X "work mode" most of the time, but later at night or during the weekends, I get myself into "gaming mode" and (re)boot the Mac Pro into Windows, hook up my MOMO racing wheel and crash around DiRT and GRID etc. ;)

Must admit I do try everything I can to play while staying in Mac OS X. Cider ports, and proper Mac versions are used if I can get them. Heck I even try to play the older games in Parallels, but in terms of performance and availability, I usually need "normal" Windows. :(
 
yellow said:
Why are XBox 360 games so expensive?
Why are Playstation 3 games so expensive?
Click to expand...

That is a false comparison - I think it is pretty hard to justify paying $50 for a game like Fable, which was a $19.99 XBOX game a few years ago and hit PC bargain bins before the Wii launched ...

And to me that is the problem - you aren't comparing the $50 Mac copy of Jedi Knight 2 released in the fall to the $50 copy of JKII released in the spring of the same year that still sells for $50 ... shelf lives are shorter for games and prices drop faster. And the multiplayer community dies faster. That makes the value of a game much lower as time passes - things like CoD4 where there is still real value in terms of the game and multiplayer are an extreme rarity.
 
I play in Windows for some games that simply wont run well on OS X. My point is - why get a Mac if your going to dual boot? Or better yet, build yourself a gaming rig. You can throw one together for 300-400 bucks. I know most of you probably will respond "I don't game enough for that to be worth it" and I can dig that.

I am a hardcore gamer who games 5+ hours a day throughout the day in between work so for me its a huge hassle. Switching to Mac was probably the most frustrating and best thing I've ever done. I loathe playing consoles (i've been a diehard pc gamer from cs 1.3 on) so for me its PC gaming or the highway. It just depresses me that a lot of us TRY to game in OS X even with the performance hit and get told every single time "just play it in windows" (since bootcamp is nothing more then a bootloader for EFI).

It's depressing when I'm browsing the gamer communities, at a lan, or just talking to my other friends and trying to justify why dual booting is "good" as opposed to just using a PC.
 
So you ENJOY dual booting, shutting down every program your running in OS X, booting into windows, etc. Why use a mac at all? so frustrating!
Click to expand...

You really should be quitting all applications you have open before starting a game on a computer anyways. Having programs running the background of a game is a good way to slow down the frame rate and cause issues.
 
Artofilm said:
You really should be quitting all applications you have open before starting a game on a computer anyways. Having programs running the background of a game is a good way to slow down the frame rate and cause issues.
Click to expand...

That and even just working, closing the apps and running a game can still cause problems. Even when working in XP I always restart before I boot up TF2 (but I only play games after 6pm anyways, after work) especially after heavy Photoshop use. Games take much longer to load, TF2 gets the Paged Pool memory error etc.

And I don't want to buy another computer just to play games. Sure I love gaming and have invested about 250 hours in TF2 since it was released last year, but why would I spend £500 on a new computer (and monitor, so make it £700) just to avoid rebooting?
 
txa1265 said:
That is a false comparison - I think it is pretty hard to justify paying $50 for a game like Fable, which was a $19.99 XBOX game a few years ago and hit PC bargain bins before the Wii launched ...

And to me that is the problem - you aren't comparing the $50 Mac copy of Jedi Knight 2 released in the fall to the $50 copy of JKII released in the spring of the same year that still sells for $50 ... shelf lives are shorter for games and prices drop faster. And the multiplayer community dies faster. That makes the value of a game much lower as time passes - things like CoD4 where there is still real value in terms of the game and multiplayer are an extreme rarity.
Click to expand...

I wasn't directly comparing, as the price hike on Mac games is due to totally different reasons for the high prices on console games. But the end result is the same..

Generally speaking, games are expensive. And people will pay the price.
 
Sim City 4 is another good example, the Deluxe Edition for the PC is $20 while for the Mac, just the game and no expansion pack can be around $50.

Just this weekend I picked up a deluxe edition of C&C3 for $9.99 at Best Buy of all places. So much for paying $39.99 for the Mac version.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back