Spore Coming To Mac, But Analysts Remain Unconvinced

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Spore Coming To Mac, But Analysts Remain Unconvinced


Apple's [http://www.ea.com] commitment to gaming.

The announcement was made at the Macworld Expo [http://www.macworldexpo.com/]yesterday, although no official release date for the game has yet been given. According to David McCombe of EA, the company will be making use of a new "wrapper" technology that will simplify the process of developing Mac or Linux versions of PC releases. "The technology wrapper goes around (the software), and traps the (code) calls native to the Windows environment, and converts them to the correct calls for Mac," he said. "It's not a complete code rewrite. It's more wrapper technology with some customer work." McCombe said that by using the technology, gamers should see no noticeable differences between the PC and Mac versions of the game.

But a DFC Intelligence [http://www.gamedaily.com/games/spore/pc/game-news/analysts-take-a-bite-out-of-apples-gaming-plans/4126/19089] said, "To me they just don't seem to have a high-end game strategy. They seem to feel they don't need that consumer."

"As far as the Mac, I just don't see it being a major option for a serious gamer and that is a reason, despite it having a new found cool factor, I think they have decided to concede the hard-core gamer to Microsoft [http://www.microsoft.com]," he added.

"I'm really unsure about their strategy," commented Michael Pachter of iPhone [http://www.wedbushinc.com/]would work fine for gameplay."

Lazard Capital Markets' [http://www.lazardcapitalmarkets.com/] Colin Sebastian said Apple has not pursued the game market as "aggressively" as other platform manufacturers, but expects that to change in the future. "Given the strong market growth it's difficult to imagine that they can remain on the sidelines for long," he said. "Particularly with the iPhone, Apple has an opportunity to drive increasing awareness and use of games and other digital media, where carriers and handset manufacturers have been slow to make progress."


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PettingZOOPONY

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Dec 2, 2007
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Gotta go call grandpa and see if Hell is freezing over!! I'm not a Mac user but I hope this means that they will start developing more games for the native OS on Mac and give me more options for my computer gaming without having to resort to using bootcamp and running windows.
 

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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What's the point? The Mac is a great platform but I don't think you'll ever see game development for it move beyond ports of major PC releases. And if you did, there's a good chance your "options" would quickly be supplanted by platform exclusivity, which doesn't do much to improve your choices but has a nice impact on your wallet.
 

J.theYellow

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"Wrapper" technology has been used for a long time to make things work on Macs, but now that they're all Intel-based, I expect most Mac users who want to play games either just get a separate partition with Windows, or better still a whole separate Windows-based computer so you don't have to worry about the CPU lag or "consumer-based" (what a way to say it's going to be a pain in the ass to use) technology.
 

the_carrot

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Nov 8, 2007
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They've been more or less ousted from gaming, why would they cater to the people developing for it?
 

PurpleRain

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I just want to know if it's comming out on consoles. That may be one of the best games for a while and I would hate to miss it.