Filed under: Gaming
Gears of War and UT3 coming to the Mac
Back at WWDC one of the most surprising things was the emphasis on gaming. Well apparently Uncle Steve and Co. were serious as Epic has confirmed that the Xbox 360 mega-hit Gears of War as well as the highly anticipated Unreal Tournament 3 are both coming to the Mac. On a video at Gametrailers.com, Epic VP Mark Rein reveals the news. As the resident 360 maven let me assure you that getting Gears on the Mac should make a lot of Mac gamers happy. There's no word on timing, but with announcements like this there's reason to hope that the future of gaming on Intel Macs looks bright.[via MacMinute]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Billy K said 2:35PM on 7-16-2007
Hrmph! I just began reconsidering my imminent XBox purchase.
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Jim Knotts said 2:36PM on 7-16-2007
Now it will be AWESOME once they get all of the cross-platform integration working. I'd love to be able to play someone on my 360 while at home and on my mac when I'm away!
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Zachary Hinchliffe said 2:50PM on 7-16-2007
Whoa. I didn't see this coming.
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Tony Bowman said 2:53PM on 7-16-2007
wil the Mac version of Gears contain the extra campaign and multiplayer content the PC version is getting, which won't be available on the 360.
Also, my gamertag is, with the spaces: Circle The Fire
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Patrick McCarron said 4:37PM on 7-16-2007
The PC and Mac versions should be identical. It's just a different code base for the engine per platform, but the game itself is easily ported between the two thanks to UnrealScript.
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Greg G said 4:42PM on 7-16-2007
0.0 Gears of War?
F**K YEAH!
=D
Sorry, that's fking awesome
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Micah Neumark said 5:01PM on 7-16-2007
The next question, of course, which we probably won't know for a while, is:
Is this created with Cider or not?
I would normally be fine with a Cider port, but UT3 is important because it means the Unreal 3 engine is being ported to Mac. If that happens, any Unreal based games will be much easier to natively port. Also, Gears of War is based on the Unreal 3 engine, so it is possible that this is why they were announced together (although not necessarily).
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Techslacker said 6:28PM on 7-16-2007
To my knowledge cider is not being used. Just like with Unreal Tournament 2004 this should be as native as native can be. The real thing people are going to need to be aware of performancewise is video drivers.
There's alot more support for optimizing video drivers with Windows plus Windows users have the better supported DirectX whereas OSX relies on OpenGL. Nothing wrong with OpenGL for the most part but DirectX tends to be better supported for games thus the Windows version *might* look a tad bit better or perform a little better.
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JootecFromMars said 6:09PM on 7-16-2007
Surely this news plus John Carmack and EA at WWDC means we are about to see mainstream Macs with high-end GPU's.
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Brady said 7:02PM on 7-16-2007
i believe i speak for everyone when i say
FUUUUUUUUUUUCK YESSSSSSSSSSSS
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Dalton said 6:17PM on 7-16-2007
Does anyone want to hazard a guess at the minimum specs for Gears of War? I have a 24" iMac 2.16 GHz with 2GB of RAM and the GeForce 7300. Will I be able to play?
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nfoo said 6:21PM on 7-16-2007
That's great ... but what video card do you need for this game?
Nvidia 8600 minimum, hm? Damn first generation MacBook Pro ... it's really getting old …
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rp said 6:29PM on 7-16-2007
blah... ppc once again left out in the cold. my g5 would be quite capable if apple didn't pull a.. well, pull an apple actually, and essentially drop support. thankfully, it's a rev1 g5 and i can tolerate it, being used to the ways of the apple by now, but i wonder what the last people to buy g5s think about apple when they read this garbage?
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Quix said 7:02PM on 7-16-2007
Note to Apple: it's time to start putting decent video processors in your consumer Mac offerings. And how about updating them once in awhile? The 20" iMac has been running the mostly-mundane Radeon X1600 for what, a year and a half now???
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TheWakeUpCall said 6:57PM on 7-16-2007
I didn't know Macs could do gaming because I didn't know they had good enough graphics cards? Oh well, I just hope that Mac players can go up against PC players online. I don't see any reason why not.
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Ed said 8:48PM on 7-16-2007
TheWakeUpCall: Macs have essentially the same graphics cards as PCs...
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Whubbsie said 9:27PM on 7-16-2007
Screw what video cards are in your machine... much easier to optimize a game to a system when you only have a few video cards to contend with.. this is going to be the sh*t!!!... might sell a kidney and get a Mac Pro... who needs good health when you can play GEARS on a mac.
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joel said 5:10AM on 7-17-2007
yeah but no macbooks (on board graphics card)
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Linh said 1:50PM on 7-17-2007
great, now my iMac will really struggle when trying to play the game. C'mon apple.. we need a user upgradeable mac that isn't the mac pro dammit!
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Dannybuoy said 6:05PM on 7-17-2007
Now I'm pleased I've just bought an 8core 3ghz Mac Pro with 512mb graphics card. It's all good for Photoshop and work stuff... but for games.. good to blow out the dust.. Bring it on!!!! Now if i could get a hack to use my wii remote... now you're talking!
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