Computer Games For Mac A Thing of The Past?
Michalis 'BIG Mike' Kotzakolios


Defined Tag: Computer Games For Mac.

Up until the release of ‘Boot Camp’, in 2006, computer games for Mac computers were far less available than those for the pc. The problem was one of distribution; not of games, but of computers. With a far lower market share the Apple Mackintosh, or ‘Mac’, just wasn’t a big enough market to design games for and the vast majority of games developers have continued to focus upon the pc computer market or gaming consoles such as the Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox, and Nintendo Wii. So what would happen, and still happens, is that games are designed for one platform, such as the pc, and then recreated for the Mac; or ‘ported’. ‘Porting a game means taking the code for one platform and translating it into code which will be able to be compiled on another platform.

‘Porting’ might be done in two different ways: in-house or by a third party. When porting is done in-house, it is done by the same company who designed and developed the original game. This is probably preferable, since the standards and goals of the original team will be available to the team porting the game and therefore it might be expected that a game will retain those standards in its translated form. Third party porting is probably the more common form. The problem that arises here is that if issues arise the team do not have direct access to the original development and so differences may appear between versions. Additionally, licensed technologies available to the original team may not be available to the porting team so a decision may be required between paying out extra funds to buy licensed technologies or else and recreate code elements afresh without those licensed technologies.

In either case, whether porting is done in-house or by a third party, Mac games are more costly for the obvious reason that more work must be done to them on top of that work which went into the original version. With the introduction of ‘Boot Camp’, by Apple, much of this can be by-passed. Boot Camp is software which allows an Intel based Mac to install Windows to the hard drive and, therefore, start up as a pc would and use pc games. This means a Mac user can install Boot Camp and go out and buy pc games for his Apple Mac; which means cheaper costs, more variety and original games (not ‘ported’ or recoded) for the Mac gamer. Many are arguing that with this new software computer games for Mac are a thing of the past!

BIG Mike is a well known author, developer and Adsense expert as well as the owner of Niche Maniacs - a unique Adsense Marketing System designed to build long-term passive income streams from Adsense, Amazon, YPN, Chitika and other PPC services.