Spore and COD4 Mac-bound. Is Mac Gaming Going To Improve?

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Spore and COD4 Mac-bound. Is Mac Gaming Going To Improve?Posted 12:45pm Wed Jan 16, 2008 by Aaron Dunlap Tags: Mac, Apple, Spore, Call of Duty 4, editorial

We in the gaming world typically don't need to pay attention to the Macworld Expo for news, since it's been pretty well-known that gaming on the Mac sucks. One of the "hottest" games on the Mac right now is Age of Empires III, which came out something like 400 years ago.

Macs use Intel chips now, and the market share is expanding day by day. There's no reason for the gaming market to be so bleak on the Mac, and it looks like perhaps things are starting to make a turn.

Today, Activision announced that uber-hit Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare will be coming to the Mac via game-porting specialists Aspyr. Yesterday it was revealed via EA that Spore is being developed for the Mac, and is even available on display at Macworld.

I do most of my work on a MacBook Pro but I have to hang onto a Windows box for the sake of the few PC games worth playing that come out every year or so. If the PC and Mac gaming markets were a little more symmetrical, I'd be ecstatic for one, but I think it would be good for gaming and great for Apple.

Go into an Apple store and the only games you'll see on those machines are such fare as Finding Nemo and some new age analog of Reader Rabbit. Aren't Macs supposed to be for the young, hipster, media-savvy crowd? Shoddy ports coming out months late doesn't strike me as very hip or savvy.

This could be a product of Microsoft's buddy-buddy status with the publishers. They've dumped millions on this "Games for Windows" concept, and pushed DirectX on the developers like smack on a pre-teen. It could also be a product of legacy. Games started out on computers, and although this tricked-out "gaming rig" trend is a recent phenom, PCs have always been seen as gaming vehicles.

They're also beginning to be seen as antiquated, and Apple is moving in as the younger alternative. If they'd like one hell of a boost in that direction, a decent library of video games would do that.