[MW Forums]

Aspyr Media Inc. has confirmed plans to publish a Macintosh version of The Sims 2. It's the sequel to the best-selling PC game of all time and an enormously popular Mac game as well. The announcement indicated that Aspyr is developing the game at its own internal development studio -- Aspyr indicates that the company will release the game in May, 2005. more

[stevedave]

Hopefully The Sims will work better then the latest Mac verion of SimCity. I have had a long list of problems using this game, including crashes that lock-up my entire computer, game crashes and very poor performance when your city grows to more than a few thousand people (I have a dual G5 with an upgraded video card and lots of RAM so there's no reason for it to perform so poorly).
Tech support has been relatively helpful but the last response was little more than "it is a known issue, we are looking into it". It's still a great game though, hopefully they can get it working at least a little better. I'd be happy then.

[Schneb]

Should this game be subtitled Sims 2 - S&M version ?

[HumanJHawkins]

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Hopefully The Sims will work better then the latest Mac verion of SimCity

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What version is the latest for Mac?

[Peter Cohen]

Sim City 4, published last year by Aspyr Media.

[ronincali3002]

Looks like it'll be ready right when everyone is getting amped for Star Wars Episode III. Hmm...

[amrosario]

May!?
I know we should be grateful to Aspyr for bringing this title to the Mac, but...May!? What happened to these quick turn-arounds that Aspyr has been doing lately (Splinter Cell an exception, tho)? Seven months is a long time to wait.
Antonio

[mgescuro]

The only problem i've had with SimCity is that you really need a G4-Dual or higher once your city grows very large. Also, mayb eit's an ATI driver problem, but the maps don't show up correctly, so I don't know the influence of a school is.
It's a big pain on a powerbook with big cities, but you turn off sounds, etc, and it's bearable.
I've never crashed SimCity.. and I've got a Dual-G4 867 with 1.25 Ghz RAM.

[kingarthur]

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May!?
I know we should be grateful to Aspyr for bringing this title to the Mac, but...May!? What happened to these quick turn-arounds that Aspyr has been doing lately (Splinter Cell an exception, tho)? Seven months is a long time to wait.
Antonio

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Yes but look at all the games coming from Aspyr. Maybe they need to expand their operations, hire more people, etc? /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Peter Cohen]

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Yes but look at all the games coming from Aspyr. Maybe they need to expand their operations, hire more people, etc?

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Your wink didn't slip by me, but I know this is sticking point for some people, so let me offer some insight here as to how this process works.
For one thing, Aspyr doesn't handle all of its own projects in-house. The company's continuing to farm out work to external porting houses like Beenox, Transgaming and Trihedron as the need calls for it -- although they're doing The Sims 2 in-house.
The mistake here is in thinking that by piling more cooks into the kitchen you can speed up the cooking, or more to the point that by turning up the oven you'll cook dinner faster. That's not the way that it works when you're roasting a turkey, and it doesn't work that way with Mac gaming ports either.
In general, you're not going to get a port done faster by getting a lot of people to work on it all at once, because it takes a lot of careful project management to get the code to work -- and that's better handled by just one or two people working together than a whole bunch each slaving away on a little bit. There's a point of diminishing returns where you're just not getting as much done as you would otherwise.
So I'm afraid this is one of those cases where we just have to be patient, and trust that Aspyr is doing the best they can to get The Sims 2 to us in as timely a fashion as they can muster, while delivering a quality project that Mac gamers will be happy with. At least the cat's out of the bag, so to speak, so we can now start focusing our attention on when rather than if this great game is headed our way.

[Nobody]

Or buy a PC for game playing. Imagine, no more waiting, and a vast sea of games immediately available to you.

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So I'm afraid this is one of those cases where we just have to be patient...

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[Schneb]

That is exactly what I do. PC laptop for games (so I can go LAN elsewhere) and Mac for pretty near everything else.

[Peter Cohen]

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Or buy a PC for game playing

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To each their own. I have better things to do with my money. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[fribhey]

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To each their own. I have better things to do with my money.

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true, and i have better things to do with my time then play games.