Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming
Oh EA, where art thou?
Remember back at WWDC when EA announced they were coming back to the Mac in a big way? Well several of our readers did, and have written in to point out that it's the end of July and EA on the Mac is nowhere to be seen. Back in June Macworld reported that EA would be bringing four popular franchises to the Mac starting in July, and that these would be released simultaneously with their PC counterparts thanks the the Cider technology. Well Peter Cohen at Macworld recently noticed that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is shipping for the PC, but the Mac version is nowhere to be found (it's not even listed among the options on platforms page). This sets a very bad precedent for the return of EA to the Mac. And so Mac gamers are forced to ask: oh Electronic Arts, where art thou?Thanks to everyone who wrote in!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
JC said 8:56PM on 7-31-2007
Amen! Where is EA???? I've been scouring the internet and stores for copies or just some information. I mean - if the release is delayed, ok, just let us know. I'm not a PR kinda guy - but I think leaving a new field of potential customers in the dark is not good business.
A little nugget of information goes a long way there EA.
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Chris von Eitzen said 9:01PM on 7-31-2007
I sent this in about 2-4 days ago. Thank you TUAW for posting about it. I hope it gets people going a little bit to light a fire under... Well, at least get things going in the right direction. Where's my Battlefield 2142, etc. on the Mac now anywho? I've got this nice new MacBook Pro I want to do some Mac gaming on...
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Victor Agreda Jr said 9:13PM on 7-31-2007
EA drop the ball on Mac software??? In other news, the sun will rise tomorrow. Shock.
*sigh* I don't recall Bill Budge missing a ship date.
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Angela said 9:24PM on 7-31-2007
I was waiting for the HP game to come out when the movie did, too. Where's EA--guess they are all hype!
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AK said 8:02AM on 8-01-2007
Believe me you don't want Harry Potter
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Vandy said 10:35PM on 7-31-2007
Well the last time a major game was shipping for mac that got people excited, it was called Halo. Then Microsoft bought up Bungie and we all know how that ended. Well here we are with new games coming to the mac platform and....? Peter Moore leaves Microsoft to go work for EA. Then we miss the ship dates for new games on the mac...
Yup. Awesome.
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Vandy said 10:46PM on 7-31-2007
At the bottom of Apple's webpage for Games and the EA announcement, they provide a link to send them a 'note', feedback style. I went ahead and voiced my concern on the matter. I'd encourage others to do the same.
http://www.apple.com/games/feedback/
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JeffDM said 11:03PM on 7-31-2007
I guess it was good to not get the hopes up.
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Greg G said 4:50PM on 8-01-2007
I had been thinking of this for a while.
Just like GameTap for Mac, it's either been delayed (happens when they don't care enough), or it's taking longer longer than they thought.
Probably a mix of both x_X
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Snowdog said 3:34AM on 8-01-2007
Yeah, EA may have dropped the ball.
But people have already been able to port San Andreas. Vice City, BF2142, NFS MW, and more using Cider.
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JootecFromMars said 5:31AM on 8-01-2007
I suspect EA are waiting until Apple release a Mac which has a GPU capable of playing games with an acceptable level of detail and framerate.
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MysteryQuest said 6:20AM on 8-01-2007
Recently a clean copy of Cider leaked on to BitTorrent. This makes it possible for people to port their games themselves. GTA San Andreas, Need for Speed Underground 2 and Far Cry already found their way to the Mac platform this way. If the game studios don't do it themselves, the community will do it apparently.
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E.3 said 7:02AM on 8-01-2007
Ahh.. Cider, i got that off bittorent, have no idea how to use it tho, its so confusing =S
though i also did manage to get a copy of Hitman Contracts, which was ported from Cider, it works like its PC counterpart, just with the fact you cant play at a 16:10 ratio, which is the aspect ratio of my Macbook Pro = [
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Justin said 8:52AM on 8-01-2007
Same deal for me... I have been checking ea.com literally every single day in July and in the past few days as the month draws to a close I've sent a couple of e-mails as well. The first reply was your standard $6 /hr moron response, completely ignoring the detail of my message, and simply pointing to Aspyr. The second response admitted to the C&C3 release for the Mac but said the release date hadn't been decided yet.
So much for getting your hopes up. I can't trust EA anymore -- I'll just wait for Starcraft 2. They release their Mac games simultaneously and don't jerk people around with fake release schedules and then trying to just pretend the customers will stop bothering them when they don't meet them.
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Sey Hee Park said 8:48AM on 8-01-2007
I say hold your horses for a little bit and wait til maybe August 7th? or sooner? If by the end of August nothing comes then I'll probably be screaming "ea where art thou" as well
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koopa said 11:37AM on 8-01-2007
Not just when but how much? Anyone who's attempted mac gaming in the past knows about the "luxury tax" we pay on some games. For example: Command&Conquer:Generals Deluxe Edition, PC= $14.99, Mac= $54.99 at amazon.com.For generals?Why? Why? Why would anyone with an intel mac buy mac games? I must say that if it wasn't for bootcamp, I would have to buy a pc just for gaming. At first I thought new EA mac games(ports) was great, no more rebooting for gaming. Then I realized that even when we get it, will it be worth the extra money for not rebooting? Especially when you're actually playing the games thinking "this is the exact version of a 4 year old game playing 'natively' and yet it's somehow worth more than double?" for a mac logo? Not just EA, Aspyr's SimCity4 (mac)is $50 bucks at amazon. SIMCITY 4!??? If we do get good games like C&C3 or something, would it be worth the second mortgage?
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jh said 1:08PM on 8-01-2007
Well, this is nothing unfamiliar for Apple fans.
Every year is the "Year of the Desktop" for linux and the "Year of gaming" for Apple. Every year it turns out to not be true.
You'd have thought everyone would get used to it by now. But.. at least Apple fans have an ace in the hole..they can always install windows and run their games :)
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Billy K said 1:18PM on 8-01-2007
Cripes. For some reason I decided yesterday I really wanted a new game. Went to the Apple Store (brick n' mortar) and discovered the shelf space for games has been halved - at least. Unless I wanted Sims or Railroad Tycoon, I had some slim pickins'.
Decided I may as well just finally buy Halo - it's onyl $29, right? Right? Yeah - right. It WAS $29, but the UB version is apparently worth $20 more. 49.99 for a game released in freakin' 2003!!!
Grrr.... so sick of this garbage. And they wonder why people pirate stuff.
(P.S. No, not gonna dual-boot Windows for gaming. If anything, I'm gonna send $400 Redmond's way for an XBox.)
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Kendal said 2:55PM on 8-01-2007
On that note, does anyone know if Leopard builds are using that fast bootcamp state, where you could quickly go back to OSX where you left off? They took the feature from the website, so I'm curious...
Stupid EA- can't trust them with anything. And the prices of Mac games is a joke.
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K said 2:57PM on 8-01-2007
Emailed Apple Games feedback, but don't expect much...
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