Electronic Arts to bring "games" to Mac [Joystiq]

[DP ServBot]

Filed under: Mac (http://www.joystiq.com/category/mac/), Action (http://www.joystiq.com/category/action/), Sports (http://www.joystiq.com/category/sports/), Strategy (http://www.joystiq.com/category/strategy/)

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2007/06/eagames1.jpg (http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/11/steve-jobs-live-from-wwdc-2007/)

Another big announcement from Steve Jobs at WWDC today: Apple (http://www.joystiq.com/tag/Apple/) will be offering a new type of software for Macs (http://www.joystiq.com/category/mac/) this summer called "games" (pronounced "gaimz"). The new genre, being supported in a big way by publisher EA (http://www.joystiq.com/tag/EA/), will allow "players" to enter virtual worlds and take part in contests of skill. The first titles in EA's "game" line-up include Command & Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need For Speed Carbon and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Later this year, Madden NFL 08 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 will arrive on Mac at the same time as other systems -- apparently, "games" have been offered for several months elsewhere.

There are, of course, still plenty of unanswered questions. If you die in the game, does your corporeal form itself die? How does the on-screen man know what actions you want him to take? Do they come in teal? We'll keep digging.

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[icbrkr]

Hmm... nice sarcasm. While it's true that the Mac side isn't teeming with as many games as the Windows side, it's not true to say there hasn't been any at all. Most A titles get converted (wife is playing Sims 2 and Age of Empire III right now) but it can take awhile. Blizzard has always been good about doing a simulatenous release of both PC/Mac stuff.

[norkusa]

Woah, Battlefield 2142??? I'd buy that. Was actually about to buy the PC version and play it on my Intel iMac but I'd rather wait for a UB Mac version.

Is there a release date yet?

[Lady Jaye]

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/06/11/eagames/index.php

For a less sarcastic, more detailed article on the subject, see the link above.

Aspyr isn't losing all EA franchises (like the Sims), however, the fact that EA will simultaneously publish Intel-Mac versions of their games is good news. No indication though of whether the releases will be Mac/PC hybrid (like Blizzard's releases) -- hopefully it will be.

Norkusa, according to insidemacgames.com, Command & Conquer 3, Battlefiled 2142, Need For Speed: Carbon, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix are coming out in July, while Madden and Tiger Woods will be released later this year.

[GM80]

A bit of information that matters and yet simultaneously doesn't really matter:

EA will be using Cider's TransGaming wrapper for these new Mac games. That basically means the games will be the Windows version inside a MacIntel translator, with little to no Mac-specific optimization. They will run, however.

This is different than Aspyr and other companies who take the source code and assets of PC games and port them to the Mac.

As far as I know, this will be the first major commercial test of Cider's product, and I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

[icbrkr]

A bit of information that matters and yet simultaneously doesn't really matter:

EA will be using Cider's TransGaming wrapper for these new Mac games. That basically means the games will be the Windows version inside a MacIntel translator, with little to no Mac-specific optimization. They will run, however.

This is different than Aspyr and other companies who take the source code and assets of PC games and port them to the Mac.

As far as I know, this will be the first major commercial test of Cider's product, and I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

I think I read this over at insidemacgames.com - isn't this more or less a WINE wrapper with some configuration settings? Personally, I could care less as long as it works properly (which in some cases the port doesn't). I'm still burnt over the No One Lives Forver port which ran like crap on my system back in the day and STILL runs bad now (on a quad core 2.66Ghz system). My old 600Mhz AMD Duron system could run it with everything enabled. Hopefully this will help kick start the companies doing bad ports.

[Lady Jaye]

Thing is, there aren't that many companies doing ports in the first place. In fact, Aspyr was about the lone player left in the market (MacSoft is still around, but they release so few games nowadays, that it's easy to think they no longer do).

BTW, has there been another case like Civ III, where the same game was ported twice to the Mac but for different publishers (MacSoft and later Aspyr) yet both times ported by the same guy (Brad Oliver, who also ported MAME to the Mac)?