Rumorland: Bungie leaving Microsoft, Apple gaming on the horizon

Amazingly its true, Bungie has left Microsoft: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7030513.stm

It doesn't make sense for Apple? Goodness me.

I'd throw down the full retail price for MYTH FOUR for the first time for anything in about 5 years.

With what, Apple's crippled MacBook with interconnected graphics cards? Sorry, not a chance here....not while Microsoft still holds the source to Direct X. We may have OpenGL, but 90% of all games are still written in graphics engine. And even if EA has found some magical way to emulate the engine, it still would be CPU intensive and Intel only.

Apple fanatics, like myself, WISH Apple were interested in gaming, but they're not. If they were, you wouldn't have to drop $3K on a Mac Pro just to get your hands on the only Mac system with a replaceable graphics card.

Apple wants to be in the business of selling widgets that need to be replaced every 2-3 years. It's very much in thier interest if those products can't be upgraded or are feature hobbled in some way because it causes consumers to upgrade. Right now their interest is in iPods and iPhones. Gaming isn't even on their radar.

This is a pipe dream... Bungie is owned 100% by Microsoft. They can't just leave, not as a company anyway.

No offense, but the delusional need to get this through their heads...

The Mac IS NOT, and NEVER WILL BE a platform for serious PC gaming!

It is too closed and over-managed to ever be considered by serious PC gamers. If they can't change their video card twice a year and tweak every setting in the drivers and bios they aren't interested. It's just that simple.

"Hey guys, The iMacs and MBPs actually do have pretty kick ass 3D chips in them.. both of them are "DX10" cards.. the new MBPs housing GeForce 8600s, and the iMacs running Radeon HD 2900s." - duscrom

Incorrect. The new iMacs are running HD 2400 and HD 2600 Pro chips, both of which are blown away in gaming tests by the nvidia 7600 found as an upgrade in the old 24" iMac.

Since when does a company "serious about gaming" put slower gaming chips than the previous model in their brand spanking new machines? Since, um, never.

Perhaps it's just a driver issue. One can hope.

Apple has zero interest in gaming consoles.

What we will see at some point are games running on OS X Mobile for the iPhone and iPod touch optimized for the touch screen. But I'd expect pretty casual games in the vein of those released so far for the 5G iPod.

There was a time when Apple was a major player in the game market, brief as it may have been, I am excited by the potential. Perhaps this may have something to do with Halo. Or it just might have to do with the fact that Bungie didn't leave apple, Microsoft bought them out to pump up Xbox. BTW, "Personal Computer", they all are PC's( I just figured this out after 20 years), Apples and oranges alike, lets try to spread the word. Anyhow, the Intel angle makes 3rd party hardware more of a possibility, thus in turn making gaming much more likely on the mac. I am the last person who wants Apple to "dominate" the game market, I think it would just be nice for a good exclusive or at-least a simultaneous launch.

But what does Apple bring to the table that the Win platform doesn't?

Also, Apple is seriously handicapped by its product line when it comes to gaming. Even if Apple put in better GPUs in the Mini and iMac, they are not upgradable. Most general consumers won't ever want to upgrade their graphics card, but gamers do. And they're not going to buy a Mac Pro just for the privilege of playing the same game they could play on a much cheaper Windows box.

This is where the oft-debated mid-range small tower could help a lot.

It's a nice though - but while I could see the core Bungie guys leaving to form their own separate company (MS is NOT going to let go of Bungie), I don't know if that automatically means more Mac games on the horizon. A good friend of mine works at EA - and while they all use Macs as their work computers, all of their development resources are really PC and console focussed, not just because of the nature of the business, which dictates that those two areas have priority - but because Apple doesn't have the hardware, unless you are going to look at a high end Mac Pro, to deal with more advanced graphics. And as someone mentioned upthread, the lack of an API like DirectX or you know, decent support for OpenGL adds a code barrier to the aforementioned hardware problem. Apple doesn't want to sell upgradable "home" computers beyond expanding RAM or swapping out the hard drive -- I understand that and I respect that - but that is going to cut out people who want to play games. Apple comes out with what, two product cycles a year? Unfortunately, that is going to mean that video cards are automatically going to be no longer bleeding edge, right off the bat. It's easy for a company like HP or Dell or Sony to throw in even a cheap PCIe card into machines that use the same mobo as an earlier model, and just tack on a faster processor and disable the on-board, if it is present to save money on components -- Apple can't do that because with the exception of the Mac Pros, all their computers are built like laptops - but with longer product cycles. That just doesn't work for people who want to play games.

Could Apple take a shot at the gaming market - absolutely, and if they got the right programming behind it - I have no doubt they would be successful -- but just looking at the history, when the last time you could even argue Apple had dominance was MAYBE the very early CD-ROM era (and I say maybe because I had a ton of DOS CD-ROM games that were awesome, for the time, Windows 3.1/1 sucked for games, but DOS 5.x/6 was great, for the time) -- I don't think the company is interested in bothering with that market - especially since the market is pretty small anyway. If they can capture a large percentage of the overall computing market, that might change - but if they continue to be most successful with laptops and high end machines geared towards creative professionals, I don't see gaming being a top priority. And that's fine with me. More games on Mac would be awesome - but I have my 360 - I have my Wii and I don't have tons of time to play them as it is.