MacTel Is Gonna Kill Mac Gaming, Right?

I guess it seems obvious…putting an Intel chip in a Mac and allowing it to dual-boot into Windows will kill Mac gaming, despite some see-sawing from game developers. I know that from experience — in particular, the experience I had playing the game Goldeneye: 007 a few years back.

I remember when the game first came out for Mac and I was surprised at the announcement, because it seemed to me that I’d already played the game. Then it hit me — it was a time when I was writing a few cross-platform Internet books and I had both a PC and a Mac on my desk at once. When that happens, I tend to do more gaming — blowing off steam when I’m trying to rip through chapters of a book — and I’d actually gone to CompUSA and bought myself a copy of Goldeneye for PC. (Usually I just download demos and play a level or two…around that same time I remember playing the first 60 seconds of Starsky and Hutch over and over again.)

So when the announcement came around, it was an odd feeling for a 15-year Mac/snob/veteran — it was exactly the feeling that PC gamer/snob/types must get all the time when they see a big-time Mac game release. “Been there, played that.”

I imagine a few companies will continue to offer some Mac games — particularly card games and 2D shooters that can be played in a Mac window when you’re supposed to be working, but it seems like it’ll be a hard sell to get companies to continue to port high-end games — those with movie ties-ins, serious Doom-style action and so on — to the Mac OS when the alternative is to simply release the Windows version and tell Mac gamers that the cost is a copy of Windows XP Home or whatnot. Even dual-booting wouldn’t be that painful for gaming, although it may not be necessary with Parallels and similar solutions that allow Windows and Mac OS X to run side-by-side.

Yeah, there are still a lot of G4 and G5-based Macs out there, so maybe it’ll be a viable market for 6 months or so. But on the cutting edge of gaming, the ports…in my guestimation…are history.

August 1, 2006 · Filed Under General Stuff