Hi, my name is Matthew, and I write for a website that covers a multi-billion dollar industry. The amount of games that are developed and published is nothing short of amazing. The gaming scene is quite saturated with consoles and handhelds to mess around with. On top of that, gamers have the added option of building their own rig with any number of PC part combinations, making for quite a formidable gaming machine. Add hundreds of game controllers and it really doesn’t matter whether you’re a gamer with a controller or with a keyboard and mouse, you’re usually covered. This leads some people to believe that the PC is the best solution for gaming.
In all of my years in gaming, I’ve honestly had as much fun with my Mac and iOS devices as with my consoles: The answer is a mixture of the PC hardware with console usability and ease of use. I believe gaming on the Mac will rise in popularity to meet the demand of a new type of gamer; The gamer that loves the big massive blockbusters, but also the time killers that can easily be played with during one’s downtime waiting for their school class to start, waiting for their order at a local coffee shoppe, or procrastinating on that novel you’ve always wanted to write.
Gaming on the Mac has been almost nonexistent. It really didn’t matter what game you wanted to play as a potential Mac gamer, it usually wasn’t available on Mac. Even that sounds like an understatement. The Mac and gaming had never been mentioned unless you were making the claim: “If you want to play games on your computer, don’t get a Mac” or “Macs aren’t even capable of playing games.” Everything you know about a non-gaming Mac is about to change.
Remember back in the day, in the year 1999, when the Mac was on the steady rise? It was nothing like it is today, which I’ll expand on later, but the Mac was rising from the dead. Steve Jobs had returned to Apple for better and for worse, and he had a plan to get the Mac back in the conversation. One project to achieve that goal was Halo. Many didn’t know this: Halo was actually developed as a Mac game before Microsoft bought Bungie and turned a would-be flop into the current money machine that Halo currently is. That’s not to say the game would have actually flopped, if I may backtrack. It definitely wouldn’t be nearly as successful at this point, and I have no doubt that Bungie would have moved on to more successful platforms after the initial launch on the Mac. Apple doesn’t seem keen on making the Mac a gaming platform: I see them forging a gaming experience.
Before we can really dive in and see what might make the Mac successful, I wanted to take a look at what the Mac has going against it.
First, the price. It doesn’t matter what time period you go back to, Macs have always been expensive. I’ve personally owned just about every Mac at one point or another, and I know exactly how expensive Macs can get. The competing argument seems to be that for half the cost or less than a Mac, one can build a much better gaming machine.
Well let’s take a look at the competing Macs, shall we? The iMac is probably the most accessible Mac in Apple’s lineup because of all of its features and price point. For the sake of picking a one-size models, I’m going to stick to one model in a few categories of Macs.
iMacs: The iMac is the beast in Apple’s lineup. It has a really powerful mobile GPU, a massive display with a resolution of 2560×1440, and the latest Intel CPUs. This, of course, comes at a hefty price point. The starting price of the top end iMac is $1,999,99 USD. The computer comes with a 3.1GHz i5-2400, 4GB of 1333MHz memory, 1TB 7200 rpm HDD, and an AMD Radeon HD 6970M with 1GB GDDR5 V-RAM. In my eyes, some modifications should be done to make them better for the gaming environment. An upgrade to RAM and V-RAM costs $200. The iMac with a 3.1GHz i5-2400, 8GB of RAM, 1TB HDD, and the same 6970M with 2GB of V-RAM is $2,199, tax not included.
MacBook Pro: Apple’s mobile option is instantly as expensive as the iMac, though it must be said that the system has came down in price considerably over the years. A MacBook Pro with a Retina Display (2880×1800 ips panel), i7-3720QM, 16GB of 1600MHz memory, 256GB SSD, and a NVidia GT 650m 1GB GDDR5 V-RAM costs $2,399, again, without tax. That’s even more than the iMac, but the display is a higher resolution and this computer has more more of the faster 1600MHz memory.
$2,199 and $2,399 is, no doubt a lot more than more would like to pay for a computer to play games; however, it’s important to keep in mind that most people don’t buy Macs to play games. The ability to play games is more of a bonus than a single reason to purchase one. Every computer that I’ve purchased serves me as an aid for school. I love the stability and ease of use, but I love that the gaming capabilities are quite good for the niche audience that Apples serves.
The second reason for the Mac’s lack of success in the gaming market has been, well, the lack of games. Pretty much the only big time games that are released for the Mac are Blizzard titles, such as Diablo lll and StarCraft ll, and some Valve games. I’m somewhat of a fan of Blizzard games, but I don’t particularly like Valve games. Even with those two companies on board, EA, Activision (Not Blizzard), Eidos, Ubisoft, etc. have always avoided the Mac platform. What this translates into is in order to play all of the big games on a Mac, one needs to install Windows via BootCamp. BootCamp comes free with Macs, but users will have to pay full price for Windows, which adds to the price of the Mac.
That’s about as bad as it could get for a company trying to get into the gaming scene. Expensive gaming hardware has always fallen to affordable gaming hardware; It’s why Wii sells more than PS3 and 3DS’ sell more than Vitas. What are the redeeming qualities that could resurrect Apple’s previous failed attempts? Now let’s take a look at what Apple is doing right.
Starting things off is the hardware. The price is what completely loses the gaming crowd, but for the price you also get above decent hardware. The iMac ships with a 6970m, which is about as powerful as a 5870. That’s a tough card. Yes, it’s a few years old, but I have one, and it runs Battlefield 3 on its highest settings with higher frame rate than the console version. The 6970m is no slouch. Can it game at the huge 2560X1440 resolution at max settings? No, of course not, but it can definitely rock at 1080p.
The MacBook Pro’s GPU is the GT 650m. I don’t have any experience with the card while playing Battlefield or Crysis, but I have played Diablo lll, Star Craft ll, Limbo, and Angry Birds. The Latter games will be explained at a later point, but the Computer can run both of those games at max settings at the amazing 2880×1800 resolution. I most certainly didn’t expect this, but it’s true in my experience. I didn’t use any fps software, so I couldn’t tell you exactly how many frames I was getting, but both games were absolutely playable.
So, the latest Mac hardware can play the latest games; That’s a good start considering that this was not always true in the past. More needs to be done, though. A very capably PS3 isn’t going to win many people over with a $600 price tag. What else does the Mac have to offer?
Game Center is one of things that’s been done before, just not in the exact way Apple’s doing it. The feature is exclusive to iOS and OS X users, and it ships with every device capable of running it. Game Center is essentially XBox Live for PCs. Players can earn achievements, view leader boards, invite players to games, and send friend requests. All this for machines that aren’t even dedicated gaming machines. To add, Game Center has over 100 million Game Center users even though it technically hasn’t even launched on the Mac. About 1/4 of all iOS users use Game Center for all that it has to offer. That’s not to say the trend will continue, for better or for worse, when Game Center does come to the Mac, though.
This next feature is still technically apart of Game Center, but it’s a fairly new concept, so I’m giving it its own spotlight. Game Center allows for cross-game multiplayer between iOS and OS X. This isn’t the typical chess game that can be played through the web, no: This is full integration of cross-game action between two different platforms. I’m blown away by the possibilities. I can slay zombies at home, on my Mac, with a buddy who might be at school or at work, on an iPhone or iPad. This means that it really doesn’t matter if Mac users adopt Game Center, I can still have the ability to play with those 100 million iOS users on Game Center.
All those “time-waster” games are pretty much golden in the future of Mac, but what about the more engaging experiences that are all but exclusive to any system but a Mac? Hopefully they’re coming, too.
Steam is one of the most popular video game distributors on the planet. People trust Steam because of its open nature and righteous prices and deals. About two years ago, Steam announced that they’d bring their digital distributing realm to the Mac. As a Mac user, I knew that we wouldn’t be getting ALL that Steam had to offer, but I foresaw enough games coming over to keep me entertained. Killing Floor is one such game. It has incredible multiplayer with servers that can literally handle hundreds of players and AI. It’s a pretty decent game and the reason why I failed an English course on one occasion. Of course, all of the big Valve games made it to Mac, too. It’s pretty much gotten to the point where I expect all big Valve games to be released on the Mac. This is great news if you love the creative games from Valve.
Finally, I wanted to go over a couple of exclusive titles that have a chance of making their way to the Mac. As of right now, iOS has the most popular AppStore of any mobile platform; If you didn’t know, the mobile business is pretty big right now. One big game that’s coming soon is Infinity Blade: Dungeons. Infinity Blade Dungeons is a point and tap-RPG similar to Diablo. What’s so interesting about this title is that it’s among the first of its kind on iOS, and it’s quite big for an iOS game. It’s almost big enough to be a Mac/PC game. The game is good enough, but the fact that they game is published by Epic Games makes me excited for the future of the Mac. Epic Games is responsible for a lot of popularity in the 360 and PC. The fact that they’re showing a lot of love for iOS tells me they might be getting ready to debut one of the first BIG Mac AppStore games. Perhaps during the fall, when we get our first glimpse of Mac OS X 10.9, we’ll see our first title published by the highly regarded company.
Am I stretching some possibilities a little too far? Maybe, yes, I might be, but it’s pretty clear that Apple does want to extend the same success from iOS back to the Mac. This isn’t going to be an easy task. Macs are still really expensive, and a lot of consumers still see the Mac as a complicated system to use. The iPad isn’t necessarily popular because it has games, no. The iPad is popular because it does everything the people basically need computers for, they just do it easier and faster than on a typical laptop or desktop. I believe the gamers are already interested in Macs. They might not like having to pay for Windows all over again and the staring prices, but Macs have excelled in the hardware department, and have popular features found in dedicated gaming consoles like Game Center. Ever since Mac OS X and iOS, we’ve never thought about computing in the same way again. I believe by the time Apple is done executing their vision for gaming on the Mac, we’ll never think of gaming in the same way again.
Special thanks to YouTube’s BuiltForGames and PolloSpeedo for allowing me to use their quality videos as proof of what these Macs can do!
