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"These are the first games ever published by EA for Mac OS X..."

How can that be? According to Wikipedia, the system requirements for The Sims 2: Nightlife are OS 10.3.8 or above. In addition, Wikipedia states that Nightlife was, "released for Mac OS X on March 27, 2006".

Maybe EA means the first title they've published without the assistance of a 3rd party like Aspyr?

If it's for the Mac, then it should be Need For Speed Cocoa.

I'll get me coat...

=:~)

The list of other EA titles available for Mac consists entirely of The Sims 2, The Sims 2 expansions, and The Sims 2 spinoffs.

I hope EA doesn't take over porting the Sims line. Aspyr does a better job than EA ever would.

@EMG

Maybe they are considering the "The Sims" series simulations, and not games although I would certainly call them games...

Just a thought.

Or the 1st designed for intel

Will I be able to play any of these rags on my Dual 2.7 ghz G5 with 4.5 GB of RAM? eh?

Many of the games EA has published that haveended up on the Mac were published by Aspyr,

If Aspyr ports them, almost certainly yes.
If EA ports them, almost certainly not.

EA coming back to the Mac is a bad thing for Mac gaming because they've decided to come back with an absolute minimum of effort.

Sorry. The post "@Paul Zune's Meathammer" is actually meant for Roberto.

I got distracted by two magic words being rejected as not entered correctly and two pop-up windows taking me to advertiser sites i have zero interest in.

[EDIT: comment refused again]

System Requirements:
Mac OS X v10.4.9 or later
1.83GHz or faster Intel Core Duo processor
1GB RAM
6GB free hard-disk space
Video card: ATI X1600 series or later; NVIDIA GeForce 7300 or later
DVD-ROM drive

Note: This game does not support the GMA950 integrated graphics card.

Take a look what happened since the PowerMac G5 was released and we had all sorts of great games, many more to come.

Remember what OS it ran on? Jaguar.

Now place yourselves in a developers shoes trying to finalize games for a small market share platform.

Looked what happened in rapid succession.

1: Panther
2: Tiger
3: X-Code
4: Intel processors
5: Lepoard

Now from a buisness point of view, it takes years to work the bugs out of software and release it. You hope to have the game on the shelves as long as possible to generate the most profit.

Now you know why there is very little good games for the Mac now since the Powermac G5.

Apple killed the game market for Mac's. Sure some couldn't be helped, like cool G5 processors. (Actually IBM said they could produce a cool G5 for laptops, Apple didn't want it in favor of cheap Intel processors for more profits)

And you know what? I fire up my Dually Powermac G5 with it's three year old video card and it still SMOKES the shit out of this dual core Intel POS MacBook Pro.

I constantly get lags and beachballs on my MacBook Pro. Not one on my Powermac G5.

Hey "Apple is the problem":

Comparing your Power Mac G5 to a MacBook Pro is silly and proves nothing. Why don't you compare a 3 year old PowerBook to a MacBook Pro. Oh yeah, because the MacBook Pro would smoke in every possible way that POS G4 system. Your Power Mac is a power-hungry, noisy mess compared to a Mac Pro.

Perhaps Apple should have stuck around with IBM. Or not. Does not matter anymore. Deal with the fact that Apple chose Intel and you will be much happier.

Chas--nice. At first glance, I actually thought the game title was referencing the developer issues involved--terminal case I am.

I think it will be more interesting to see what Core Animation will do to game development...though Mac users don't seem to be that big on games. Maybe all that is changing.

Maybe high-def, high framerate gaming is less dependent on heavy duty hardware and more on an efficient, fast, stable OS?

Is Core Animation applicable the first step to a gaming console? Perhaps one that DOESN'T lose money on every sale?

Just wondering.

"I constantly get lags and beachballs on my MacBook Pro."

what are you doing on it? my intel mini never beachballs. i would think your pro would be better....

Great, so these new games, wont run on my Macbook, as it has a GMA950 ntegrated graphics card.

F*ck

If you're constantly getting beachballs, then keep the sand out of yer shorts!

Especially if they're spinning! Egads!

JAYGEE,

Not supported doesn't mean it wont run - I've run Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2 on my MacBook - I'm betting they'll run unless EA put a hardware check in them.

I'm getting Command and Conquer, 950 or no.

Meatballs - Not supported doesn't mean it wont run - I've run Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2 on my MacBook - I'm betting they'll run unless EA put a hardware check in them.


I hope they do work, as i would love to play these games on my Macbook, but i will need to get a Logitech games controller, as i would rather use that than the keyboard.

Mr. a.c. was impatient for a new game ..so he put a sock over the head of a prominent tech analyst ..he then called him names as he moved about the room. When he called him a pompous, self-aggrandizing dick the analyst broke down and began to cry. At level two condescension is laced with tech trends and misquotes of the analysts own material ...the sock jerks back and forth to locate my position ..I mean your position. If he doesn't urinate over himself then he moves to level three where his opinions over the last twenty years are read back to him and the extent to which he's discredited himself becomes clear. A strobe flickers and guilt approaches and begins to cast a large shadow ..and guilt has gas ..bad gas The analyst squirms for air and wants to say he's sorry but if he does then he loses and he needs to make it to level four so he can breath ..and did I say that guilt has bad gas. This is not an EA game and Harry Potter doesn't need to see this ..this is not pretty and it's not for wimps but it will do ...for now.

"truly innovative features such as the ability to transform online battles into a spectator sport"

What? As in, people can watch the matches, like having observers in WC3?

That's kind of ridiculous that neither my 2-year-old iMac G5 nor my C2D 2GHz MacBook I just bought a few months ago meet the minimum requirements for C&C3;.

Especially since for the PC version the requirements are "AGP Video Card with 64MB+ plus NVIDIA GeForce 3+ Or ATI Radeon 8500+" for the graphics.

Rest of the requirements for PC are:

Optical Drive: DVD-ROM
CPU Type: Intel Pentium
CPU Speed: 933MHz
Disk Space: 2.0GB
Display: AGP Video Card with 64MB+ plus NVIDIA GeForce 3+ Or ATI Radeon 8500+
Memory (RAM): 256MB
Operating System Compatibility: Win98/ME/2000/XP, Not Mac Compatible

Why are the Mac requirements so much higher? How does using OSX and OpenGL add that much overhead? Are they just terrible and inefficient ports or something?

And you know what? I fire up my Dually Powermac G5 with it's three year old video card and it still SMOKES the shit out of this dual core Intel POS MacBook Pro.

A 1984 Corvette still smokes the shit out of a 2007 Prius. Apples and oranges.

I'd love to know how long the G5 could run on on the MacBook's batteries. Or how comfortable it'd be with that 45-lb CPU in your lap...

A 1984 Corvette still smokes the shit out of a 2007 Prius. Apples and oranges.

Apples and oranges my ass.

Game developers make new games that push the hardware envelope because later hardware upgrades will run the games even faster.

When a hardware maker starts, in your words, putting out Prisus that are a step backward in hardware performance than Corvettes, then there isn't a hell of a lot of incentive to make any more games now is there?

Of course the real problem is the way Intel is implementing multiple core technology.

With the Dual Processor PowerMac G5, like the above poster has. Each processor has a wicked fast bus in and out of each processor. So basically one gets two computers in one box.

With Multi-Core processors, they all share a bus, so this effectively hobbles the I/O so the consumer doesn't get two or more computers in a box, therefore substancially increasing their turnover rate.

The I/O hobbling done by Intel of course makes 3D gaming hobbled.

That's why for better 3D gaming, a Cell processor is much better.

So in esssense, 3D gaming is dead on PC's and even deader on Mac's due to low market share.

AMD buying ATI also has a effect on the market.

Why are the Mac requirements so much higher? How does using OSX and OpenGL add that much overhead? Are they just terrible and inefficient ports or something?

A very interesting experiment will be to compare the PC and Mac versions of these games on the same hardware, i.e. Intel Macs with Boot Camp.

The PC C&C3;runs great on my iMac Core Duo 2.0.

they actually aren't running natively on mac, instead they are essentially being emulated by Cider made by TransGaming Inc.

It's not emulation.

"How does Cider work?

Cider works by directly loading a Windows program into memory on an Intel Mac system and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs. TransGaming.s Cider implements common multimedia Windows APIs such as Direct3D, DirectInput, DirectSound and many others by mapping them to Mac equivalents. This allows games to run with equivalent game play and performance but without the typical brute force porting effort typically required to bring games to Mac."

http://www.transgaming.com/products/cider/

Maybe you and man-child developers who burst into flame at the mere mention of the latest shiny geek toy get all hot and bothered about more performance and faster speeds and and and other passing phenomena. But people who care about making GAMES care first about the gameplay, not about the hardware requirements. Do you know anything about development? Seriously. The first rule of management is to give the developers LAST YEAR'S COMPUTERS. That's to force them to be efficient and not code as though everyone had or could afford the latest jazzed-up gaming rig. If one of the goals of games is endurance, then doesn't this logically follow? I can't believe that I have to explain the philosophy of developing games to someone who advocates for them.