EA, Apple and WAR

[Anglakhel]

Last week at Apple's WWDC7, Steve Jobs made a major announcement regarding games on the Macintosh platform.

EA has made a commitment to begin bringing games to the Mac. The goal seems to be simultaneous release of major EA titles on the Mac. They are beginning with some major EA titles this summer, but I'm wondering if this is going to affect the release of WAR by EA Mythic.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?op...5951&Itemid=59

http://digg.com/apple/Apple_and_EA_A...Games_for_OS_X

In the past, in Grab Bag #1 (pre-EA), it was stated that there are currently no plans to bring WAR to the Mac, and that it will be released initially for the PC only.

Q: Will there be a Mac/other platform version?

A: I never say never - but we will only launch WAR on the PC.

Do you think this recent commitment from EA will change EA Mythic's position regarding WAR on the Mac?

[aryan1614]

I don't care, depends which one is financially better for Mythic. Mac takes up 8% of the market, so launching with it may be a bad decision. But I'm not very good when it comes to profits, so I could be way off

[Razner]

if you have the money for a mac, you have the money to buy a copy of XP to load on it.

[Duke Serok]

Its possible but I doubt they will do it for release, maybe later on if things turn out well.

[infinityvoid]

I'm going to have to say no. I really don't see it worth the time nor money to have WAR as a multi-platform launch title. Perhaps once WAR has a built user base and is in the black they will design a client for Apples. If/when they do however create a client for Apple I would love to see them make one for Linux, but I won't hold my breath...

~Infinityv

[SgtSassafras]

Originally Posted by Razner

if you have the money for a mac, you have the money to buy a copy of XP to load on it.

Quoted for truth by a mac owner.

I personally do hope they release in on OSX, I hate having to load up windows just to play a **** game. It really is easy enough to have both the mac and pc install on one disc, its not as if they would have to ship out some boxes as mac versions, and some as windows. WoW did it just fine.

[Turkish Massage Owl]

Both Games Workshop and EA are giants. The simple fact is that not only do they have the money to release it on OS X, but it's really not that damn hard to do. Just like SgtSassafras said, WoW did it. Don't forget that Blizzard has been releasing titles on the Mac since the 90s. Starcraft, Warcraft, and they did pretty well. They would just be closing off part of the market if they don't release on OS X. It doesn't take that much release something on OS X AND PC.

EDIT: And yeah, as an Intel Mac owner, I have to honestly say that Windows XP is a major pain in the to get anything done in comparison to OS X... *Fanboy lasers disengage*

[erloas]

I don't see this announcement really changing much. Most of the hurdles required to getting WAR working on MACs has not changed at all since they made their initial statement that they weren't going to be for MACs.

The game is still being made with the same engine, it still has all the DX9 coding in it, none of the technical issues have changed at all. We know they can't change the whole system so that pretty much means some sort of DX9 emulation thing wrapped around the game. Maybe EA has figured out a very quick and easy way to do this that isn't going to create more problems and will patch just as easily, but I don't know.

Patching really is the big issue too. Unlike most of the games EA announced so far they are not persistant world games so it doesn't matter if people are playing at the same version level all of the time. But on an MMO you can't go even a couple days after most patches before both OS copies are at the same point.

If they've got a very eligant and consistant system to copy all DX9 games to OSX without much trouble then we'll probably see it on both.

[jazz]

surely the whole point of having a mac is because u get to use the mac OS. May aswel buy a pc if ur going to use XP - unless ofcourse ur stuck with a mac like the OP is

[Anglakhel]

Originally Posted by erloas

I don't see this announcement really changing much. Most of the hurdles required to getting WAR working on MACs has not changed at all since they made their initial statement that they weren't going to be for MACs.

The game is still being made with the same engine, it still has all the DX9 coding in it, none of the technical issues have changed at all. We know they can't change the whole system so that pretty much means some sort of DX9 emulation thing wrapped around the game. Maybe EA has figured out a very quick and easy way to do this that isn't going to create more problems and will patch just as easily, but I don't know.

Patching really is the big issue too. Unlike most of the games EA announced so far they are not persistant world games so it doesn't matter if people are playing at the same version level all of the time. But on an MMO you can't go even a couple days after most patches before both OS copies are at the same point.

If they've got a very eligant and consistant system to copy all DX9 games to OSX without much trouble then we'll probably see it on both.

Most of these issues have actually changed since the original comment in Grab Bag #1.

1) Mythic was bought by EA which has considerably more resources for game production and distribution.

2) The switch from PowerPC chips to Intel chips means the basic hardware on the majority of Macs is now the same as high end PCs.

3) Cider and similar applications have made it much, much easier to port software designed for Windows to Mac OS. Cider translates the existing game code and fills in the DX9 information so the application can be run directly in OSX rather than needing the Mac to run Windows XP from BootCamp.

4) EA just made a commitment to release it's premiere titles on Mac simultaneously with the PC/Console releases. WAR is shaping up to be a huge release from EA Mythic, so I find the question of whether or not we'll see a Mac version of WAR at release extremely relevant under the changed conditions.

[erloas]

I believe the Macs where already running on Intel chips when Mythic made the statement as Mythic and Cider was around too.
And yes, with EA they have a lot more resources now but it doesn't really change the technical aspects of it.
I haven't used Cider or other such systems, but from what I've heard using those sorts of things in both OSX and Linux is that they generally work ok but not perfectly and they usually take some tweaks to get many things working on them. They are pretty good, but they aren't 100% yet.

The issue as I see it isn't getting the client to run on a MAC at release, that shouldn't be too hard, but to get the client to run on MAC consistantly after every single patch without having to do considerably more work. It is one thing to go through a lot of extra work when you have a release and then 3-4 patches total over the lifecycle of the game, but it makes much less sense when they do smaller patches every couple weeks for years and years.

[Quazar]

Blizzard does it. Anything they can do EA Mythic can do as well. EA has more than enough money to do it and it will be worth it if WAR does well. Way more Mac gamers are online now thanks to WoW, WAR shoulb able to capitalize on that. With Cider it shouldn't be that hard for Mythic to do it, EA would appreciate it no doubt.

[silex]

Honestly - not really.

This is a business. I'm sure Mythic has run numbers to see the costs of porting to Mac vs. increased income. Mac still has a very small market share. Factor in that many Mac gamers already have Windows XP installed on their Mac... the target audience for a Mac port is even less.

Any decision they've made on this subject was based off that analysis. So until the increased income surpasses the costs of porting, it ain't gonna happen.

[Turkish Massage Owl]

I'd like to see the numbers on the cost of porting, and how many Mac users would buy WAR. How much money would we be actually talking about? What kind of loss/gain would EA Mythic experience?

And why have so many other super-successful titles been released for Macs in the past? When those titles were released, there was an even SMALLER Mac community, and they still turned a profit.

They didn't have anywhere near this many resources to port things to Macs, but they did it anyways. They still made a profit.

The dev teams who made Unreal Tournament, Starcraft, Warcraft, WoW, The Sims titles, and plenty others aren't going "Aw geez we wish we hadn't made it so that more people can play our games. Their money is so dirty."

Anybody know about a game called Spore? It's going to be one of the largest, most popular games of all time. And hey, it's an EA title! And Will Wright said himself that it'll release for both Macs and PCs. How come THAT EA title can do it? Why not WAR?

[Mbj]

Folks,

WAR on the Mac is not a likely scenario for the following reasons:

1) WAR's client is being built on a PC-based rendering engine that has not been ported to run under a Mac's native OS. The cost of porting that engine would be quite high, difficult and potentially a nightmare for us going forward. If we don't have a native version of the game, we would have to rely on Cider,

2) if we have to rely on Cider, then there *might* be a performance hit from using it. How much that hit is, we can't say but there might be a hit. We know more as development and release of other EA titles occur. We will be in touch with the guys at Dice and we will be able to get the full scoop from them on the impact of using Cider. If we have to rely on Cider and take a performance hit,

3) Then the graphics chipset on the Mac would have to be at least equivalent to what our specs are for the PC version. That is not the case with most Macs and certainly would not be the case when we release WAR. The most likely result would be that performance on the game would be significantly worse than on a PC and we won't do that and,

4) As we continue to expand WAR after release, we will do what we did with DAoC, continue to raise the specs for the game as hardware improves (while keeping backwards compatibility for a long-time). If we do so, it is unlikely that the Macs will keep up in terms of graphics hardware and that would mean that Mac users/version would be way behind the PC users. From what I've read on the web, using Cider means that PowerPC Macs or any Mac that isn't an Intel Mac won't be able to run the games at all so Macs that are a year or two older won't be able to run it. This decreases the potential market size for this game significantly as well.

In the case of WoW and Blizzard, they have been developing Mac-based games for years and their level of expertise with Macs blow away our expertise, which is zero. So, even if we wanted to do it in-house, there is no way we could unless we use Cider. Also, keep in mind that Mac games sell only a fraction of their PC counterparts and even a large company like EA has to bear that in mind. In terms of what EA has said regarding Mac games, I suggest re-rereading what EA said about Mac versions of the games. EA has said we will use Cider to run these games and they are not native OS versions. EA has also committed publicly to 4 titles, not all of EA's titles (though those 4 are way cool though).

Once again, keep in mind that if we make a commitment to have WAR run under Cider for the Mac, then we are committing to that platform for years of updates/expansions unlike the games that EA has committed to do for the Mac. That is not an easy commitment to make and not one that we take lightly. However, as the proud owner of an Apple II, I'd love to see our game reach the Mac community but it is not something we will rush into until we are really, really sure that it is a decision we won't regret a year out. I'd rather disappoint some Mac gamers now than disappoint some WAR subscribers later.

Mark