Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Rumors, Software, Apple
Rumorland: Bungie leaving Microsoft, Apple gaming on the horizon
Rumors are flying in Seattle that Bungie, makers of Halo and, much more relevant here, Marathon and Pathways to Darkness, may be splitting from Microsoft. A complete and total rumor, unsubstantiated and unsourced, but like all good rumors, it has just enough good reasoning that it might actually be true. Microsoft certainly has no reason to let go of Bungie, but it's totally believable that Bungie is tired of being the Halo company, and ready to do some developing on its own again.And of course, if Bungie breaks away to work on the platform of its choice, it's almost a given that we'll see a brand new Bungie game on the Mac. And how fortuitous, says Christopher Price-- he cites Bungie's rumored split as part of a trinity of Mac gaming developments lately that all point to one thing: Apple is poised to return to (and take over) gaming.
We are securely in rumorland here, so take all of this with a full tablespoon of salt. But you can smell the storm coming in terms of Apple and gaming-- something is brewing in Steve Jobs' head. I don't know if it will come on AppleTV (because of course that's a "hobby," and Apple's real power isn't in the set top box -- it's in the insanely fast and beautiful Macintosh computers), but the stars are aligning, and if Apple wants to get into gaming, it can definitely do it. Make no mistake -- Leopard is the priority right now, and likely will be through the end of the year. But next Christmas, don't be surprised if gamers want something under their tree from Apple.
Thanks, Christopher!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Xanthor said 10:58AM on 10-04-2007
If this is even vauely true - I'm in heaven. God I love all things Bungie...
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Greg G said 10:34AM on 10-04-2007
Oh, it would be so cool. Lets hope so.
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Steve said 10:27AM on 10-04-2007
I hope that it's not just a rumor but real !
If the core Bungie engineers can get back their independance, I really hope that we get some cool new games from the various platform Mac included !
I still remember back a while ago the Halo demo at one of the MacWorld keynote...
Steve
http://inewsonly.com
The first ZUI news aggregator for iPhone & iPod touch
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Quix said 10:29AM on 10-04-2007
"Apple is poised to return to (and take over) gaming."
Puh-lease. I hate to be Negative Nancy, but how many times over the years have we heard this?
I'll believe this is a real possibility if/when:
1) Apple puts a decent 3-D processor in its iMacs, or
2) Apple releases a consumer-priced tower with a replaceable graphics card that actually *accepts* 3rd party cards that are reasonably priced and have robust drivers. This means cooperating with other companies, not exactly Apple's forte. And,
3) Apple puts some serious work into OpenGL.
I read about all these great new games coming to the Mac (Gears of War, UT3, EA stuff), and think "What the heck are we supposed to run these on, $3,000 Mac Pros???" My dual-core Intel iMac with 2 gigs of RAM can barely run UT2004 fast enough to keep from being cannon fodder for the Windows Horde (I get by with my cunning, heh).
Wake me up when Apple actually *does* "return" (?) to gaming (you're implying that they've actually been there before?).
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Dan said 11:47AM on 10-04-2007
This might finally be the overreach that all the Apple haters have been waiting for, but I'd be fascinated to see what Jobs et. al. would come up with. It seems like all the pieces are there to make a move.
http://www.filterra.com/stormwater-management
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Pete Zich said 10:45AM on 10-04-2007
Imagine: Halo 3 for Xbox and Mac only, that would boost apple's profits :D
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Jesse said 10:56AM on 10-04-2007
Please Bungie, make an Oni 2!
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Greg G said 10:38AM on 10-04-2007
Apple really does need to start making their hardware better for gaming if they want more people buying Macs, and if they want more game developers making their games for Macs. Valve recently complained about this, and it won't be long before they have to do something, or lose all this new market share and publicity.
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Luna Lovegood said 10:41AM on 10-04-2007
Of developing for the Mac, Gabe Newell of Valve (Half-Life) has this to say: "[Apple] seems to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms."
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Martin Smith said 10:47AM on 10-04-2007
Well, I'm as big an Apple fan as anyone here, but Bungie have changed the world of online gaming, Halo 3 is the greatest gaming creation yet and I'd hate to see them stop developing for the Xbox 360 platform.
Hopefully any such changes to Bungie will just expand their horizons, as if MS do one thing well its online console gaming..
I for one hope the Bungie thing is just a rumour. I say leave gaming to consoles and let Apple continue to innovate the computing world! iPhone 2.0 please!
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Billy K said 10:55AM on 10-04-2007
Oh look, it's October. Must be time for a new "Apple Getting Serious About Gaming" rumor.
No, they are. F'real! You just watch!
Puh-leeze.
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potato said 11:00AM on 10-04-2007
Sorry to burst people's bubbles... not only have we had the whole "Apple to get back into gaming!!!" rumor before, but Apple seriously taking over gaming? Hell no.
Until the day Apple starts putting good accelerators into MBPs and iMacs, it simply won't happen. Macs will always be a good market for simpler, casual games that don't tax the machine, but if Apple wants to capture hardcore gaming they'll need to step up the hardware.
And we all know how likely that is to happen.
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Jon Niola said 11:03AM on 10-04-2007
Unless Apple commits to building a unified API for game developers (ala DirectX on Windows) I don't see Apple making any serious inroads into the computer gaming market.
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Winston Baccus said 12:04PM on 10-04-2007
Sorry.. not buying this one. I just don't think that it makes sense for Apple to get into this market.
I do think we might start to see some low-end games from Apple. One of the problems with the gaming market is that there's a significant amount of time required to invest and a steep learning curve for most games. It works for a small percentage of the population, but not the majority of folks. I think there definitely is a market for games that you can load up and pass the time in. Games that are more arcade like.
Is the console market really all that profitable for Sony right now?
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Whiplash said 11:15AM on 10-04-2007
There's no way Microsoft is going to let Bungie go. They just released Halo 3 and it's a smash hit. Why on Earth would they dump Bungie now?
Secondly, if Bungie did become independent, they certainly wouldn't focus on Mac games. The market is miniscule compared to PC's and consoles. Bungie is one of the elite of game companies now and breaking sales records with Halo, you don't throw away that kind of market and revenue to sell a few games to Mac users.
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Andy said 11:14AM on 10-04-2007
Riiiight. His Steveness hates games, regarding them as a waste of time.
Of course, while I'd like to play.. I don't have time now to do anything remotely game like, so I guess it's a wash anyway.
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alphacrumb said 11:36AM on 10-04-2007
For Mac gaming to overtake PC gaming would take more than a consumer-priced game-centric Mac. It would require a paradigm shift in gamers' minds.
Even worse, considering how PC gaming itself is a miniscule market compared to the consoles, the Mac-as-game machine sits somewhere way behind last place -- it's not even on the same page.
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puffin said 11:44AM on 10-04-2007
Bungie didn't sign a deal to just creat Halo for Microsoft.... Microsoft bought Bungie which means MS owns the company. Therefore Bungie has no say what-so-ever in what platform they develop for. Sorry to say this is a bad rumor, and shouldn't have even been reported on.
Of course the developers could splinter off and do their own thing but seeing as how Halo3 has raked in over 300 million in a week... I doubt they would want to jump off the gravey train anytime soon to develop games for OSX.
Also read Quix's post #2. He makes very good points about the state of Mac gaming.
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akatsuki said 12:19PM on 10-04-2007
I have heard this before, many times...
The hardware solution is not too complicated: take the base Mac mini, add in a really killer 3D graphics card, chop the price $200+. Then sell it with already-paired Wii remotes or a knockoff thereof. Something positioned right between console and PC gaming. (Get rid of the AppleTV while you are at it).
The software solution requires a full gaming SDK solution that is on-par, at least, with MS. That is actually the more difficult part.
And if I was a developer, I probably wouldn't develop for the mac even then. I would be too afraid of investing time into developing for the mac only to be left out in the cold by Apple when they changed their mind again.
Apple would probably close the hardware platform so it could make revenue off of the software, but that is pretty typical of the console market.
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Dale said 11:46AM on 10-04-2007
Yeah, I don't see this happening. When the biggest Mac gaming announcement this year was EA slapping an emulation wrapper around a bunch of their franchise titles, we are a long way from Apple dominating the gaming scene.
Not that I wouldn't like more games to play on my MacBook Pro (which is fairly nifty - I have WOW running at 1400x900 with all settings maxed and it's running at a solid framerate).
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