[jedi228]

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No offense intended, but I am glad you are not running my company... There is one thing all really profitable businesses have in common: When they see money available, they find a way to take it.
And, doing anything today that passes up a good opportunity, just because you did it that way yesterday, is the surest way to become less successful than you could have been.
About your Apple example, do you really think that Apple wouldn't break it's 99 cent music policy if Pepsi came along and offered to buy 100,000 songs at a lower but still profitable rate? Oh wait... My bad. They already did this. I'll try to think of a different question.

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I'm glad you're not running any company. Have you heard the old adage: "Not all money is good money." Here's the deal: all successful companies have multiple potential sources of income. A smart company knows how to walk away from less profitable (but still positive) or non-strategic sources of money. This not a minor issue--this is the primary issue that separates A+ businesses from A- businesses.
Successful companies have focus and vision. They chose their products, policies and promotions strategically. A company that chases a thousand different directions anytime they see positive return on investment will surely fail.
I agree, repeating yesterday for tradition's sake is a bad way to do business. A smart company can look to the future and walk away from income because it is the smart thing to do--not because it is or isn't tradition.
Apple did take up Pepsi on their offer for strategic reasons. (The publicity at the time was brilliant and the money involved was negligible for both parties. Apple didn't do it for the profit.) Apple will not talk to some small independent music label who wanted to sell at $.49 if that small company were 2% of the market even if it were proven that the $.49 cent sales would triple that segment.

[roadwarrior]

License it for free for Mac games, then charge a per-copy fee (a reasonable one that won't break the bank for most decent-sized developers) for Windows games. Apple's no stranger to this kind of pricing bias...they've been doing it with Shake for years.

[iSunfish]

Where do these figures come from for Mac market share? Two percent. Two percent of what? All personal computer sales? Mac game sales vs. total game sales?
To me, the important number is how many people willing to spend money to buy and play games on their computer own Macs vs. other gaming platforms. I have no statistics to back it up, but I'd bet that number is way higher than 2%. It's just a hunch.
To me, Mac users who want to play games are an untapped market larger than the conventional wisdom holds. Bravo to Blizzard. Here's hoping more developers follow their lead and gain success for their willingness to buck the trend.
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[tallscot]

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Where do these figures come from for Mac market share? Two percent. Two percent of what? All personal computer sales? Mac game sales vs. total game sales?
To me, the important number is how many people willing to spend money to buy and play games on their computer own Macs vs. other gaming platforms. I have no statistics to back it up, but I'd bet that number is way higher than 2%. It's just a hunch.
To me, Mac users who want to play games are an untapped market larger than the conventional wisdom holds. Bravo to Blizzard. Here's hoping more developers follow their lead and gain success for their willingness to buck the trend.2

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I think you replied to the wrong post. I didn't say anything about the 2% market share.:)
But I agree with you. 2% includes all those PCs at corporations not playing games. Also, I think you are right that developers look at a user base (millions of users) versus market share percentage.

[tallscot]

The issue is that the Mac gaming is on life support
PC gaming has cancer.

[tallscot]

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World of Warcraft maker Blizzard Entertainment will license the Havok 4.0 physics engine for use in new Mac games. What will this announcement mean for the future of Mac gaming? <a href="http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/gameroom/2006/09/havok/index.php">[more]</a>

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How big an issue is DirectX? What percentage of the work getting a game ported to the Mac is DirectX-related?

[Peter Cohen]

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To me, the important number is how many people willing to spend money to buy and play games on their computer own Macs vs. other gaming platforms. I have no statistics to back it up, but I'd bet that number is way higher than 2%. It's just a hunch.

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Actually, the number's more like 1.5 percent. I'm spitballing here, but the number's about right.
The commercial Mac game market isn't tracked by any market tracking or research companies, so my estimates are about as good as you can get. But from my discussions with Mac game publishers, $12 to $15 million a year in Mac game revenue is pretty close to accurate. It peaked a few years ago with about $15 million a year, and it hasn't increased -- it's decreased a bit, but the mix of games have changed (refocusing more on big-selling titles that have longer shelf lives).
By comparison, estimates put the PC gaming market at closer to $1 billion in annual revenue. There's been a noticeable decline in the past few years because of increased console adoption and other factors, but it's still in that ballpark, within a few tens of millions.
That means that the Mac commercial game market generates, optimistically, about 1.5 percent of the revenue of the PC game market. I'm sure that when you examine unit sales of any individual Mac game, it'll vary pretty widely -- a Mac game publisher has a hit on his hands if he sells 3 to 5 percent of what the PC game sold. So it stands to reason that for every 3 to 5 percenter, you're going to get some games that are underperformers.

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To me, Mac users who want to play games are an untapped market larger than the conventional wisdom holds. Bravo to Blizzard. Here's hoping more developers follow their lead and gain success for their willingness to buck the trend.

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I agree, but I think the reasons for doing it are profound and varied. Having a company like Blizzard release a big game simultaneously certainly helps, but performance issues with OpenGL on Mac OS X, a lack of retail shelf space availability, Apple's past ambivalence about gaming and other issues that I've discussed in my past Game Room editor's notes certainly haven't helped.

[Peter Cohen]

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How big an issue is DirectX? What percentage of the work getting a game ported to the Mac is DirectX-related?

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It's not a deal-breaker. Any Mac game publisher work their salt has development libraries that ease conversion of Direct3D to OpenGL and other DirectX libraries to their Mac OS X API equivalents. The better companies avoid the issue all together by steering clear of DirectX all together or making their code flexible enough to support multiple APIs regardless of platform (like Doom 3, for example, or World of Warcraft).
Having said that, let me say one thing categorically: As it stands right now, DirectX is beating the pants off OpenGL on Intel-based Macs running Boot Camp. It's interesting to see. For years, direct PC to Mac comparisons haven't been possible. And now that they are, it's clear that Mac OS X running OpenGL is at something of a deficit running on the same hardware as Windows XP running DirectX.

[tallscot]

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How big an issue is DirectX? What percentage of the work getting a game ported to the Mac is DirectX-related?

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It's not a deal-breaker. Any Mac game publisher work their salt has development libraries that ease conversion of Direct3D to OpenGL and other DirectX libraries to their Mac OS X API equivalents. The better companies avoid the issue all together by steering clear of DirectX all together or making their code flexible enough to support multiple APIs regardless of platform (like Doom 3, for example, or World of Warcraft).
Having said that, let me say one thing categorically: As it stands right now, DirectX is beating the pants off OpenGL on Intel-based Macs running Boot Camp. It's interesting to see. For years, direct PC to Mac comparisons haven't been possible. And now that they are, it's clear that Mac OS X running OpenGL is at something of a deficit running on the same hardware as Windows XP running DirectX.

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Great info, Peter. Thanks.

[Grendelmon]

Peter,
What I don't understand is why Apple hasn't built it's own Gaming/3D API environment (and I'm not talking OpenGL). It sounds like Core Animation might be something suitable?
I honestly think this is one of the biggest impacts of game performance on a Mac vs. Windows.

[CloverTAC]

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Peter,
What I don't understand is why Apple hasn't built it's own Gaming/3D API environment (and I'm not talking OpenGL).

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They did a few years back. It was called Apple RAVE and very few games utilized it.
Quake 1, Mechwarrior 2, Fly2, and a few other late 1990's/early 2000 titles offered RAVE accelerated gameplay but the technology just didn't catch on especially given how widespread GLIDE, and later, Open GL were.

[Peter Cohen]

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What I don't understand is why Apple hasn't built it's own Gaming/3D API environment (and I'm not talking OpenGL).

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Because that's completely antithetical to Apple's design philosophy for Mac OS X -- specifically, to embrace open standards. Apple did have its own gaming API once -- GameSprockets, which depreciated with the discontinuation of Mac OS 9.

[canettijazz]

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No offense intended, but I am glad you are not running my company... There is one thing all really profitable businesses have in common: When they see money available, they find a way to take it.
And, doing anything today that passes up a good opportunity, just because you did it that way yesterday, is the surest way to become less successful than you could have been.
....
I'm glad you're not running any company. Have you heard the old adage: "Not all money is good money." Here's the deal: all successful companies have multiple potential sources of income. A smart company knows how to walk away from less profitable (but still positive) or non-strategic sources of money. This not a minor issue--this is the primary issue that separates A+ businesses from A- businesses.
Successful companies have focus and vision. They chose their products, policies and promotions strategically. A company that chases a thousand different directions anytime they see positive return on investment will surely fail.
I agree, repeating yesterday for tradition's sake is a bad way to do business. A smart company can look to the future and walk away from income because it is the smart thing to do--not because it is or isn't tradition.

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I'd have to agree with HumanJHawkins. Havok's business is developing physics and animation software tools. The Havok physics engine is complete. They've already built-in compatibility/support for the Mac. Yet none of the Mac gaming companies have licensed Havok because they know that they would never be able to make a profit because of the Havok licensing price. The Mac game developers aren't just trying to drive a hard bargin. As Peter Cohen mentioned, MacSoft even went so far as to strip out the Havok engine and substitute a less expensive engine because licensing Havok would not make financial sense. So, Havok's pricing model has locked out a number of potential customers - in essence they are turning away from this money. There are a limited number of game developers, so Havok's potential customer base is small to begin with. To turn away potential customer's is idiotic.
It's like Apple developing OS X and charging $300 for each copy even though many customers will balk at purchasing it at this price. A smart company would come with another pricing model in order to capture these customers. If Havok doesn't want to license at a discount to Mac developers, they should come up with another licensing model that will still allow the Mac developers to make some money. It's not like they're selling widgets that cost $0.25 to make and you're trying to sell them for $1.00, but the Mac developers are only offering to pay $0.20, in which case Havok would be losing $$$. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif