Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software
Madden and the iMac: a story of woe
Now, we already knew that neither Madden nor Tiger Woods would run on any Mac with the GMA950 graphics processors in it, so the Mac mini and the MacBook were already out of the question. The screenshot above came from an iMac, though. Clearly the text is bungled up beyond readability. The same problem appeared in the menus for the game, and even during play-- the scoreboard had overlapping graphics problems as well. Unbelievable. Did they (or Transgaming, whose Cider technology was supposed to be how EA ported these games) have their QA team play this thing even once on a Mac? This is what Apple was showing off at WWDC?
For their part, EA blames Apple's drivers, and says a driver update is coming "later this month" (M|L wisely suggests that means Leopard). Poor form, EA. Not that we expected much (EA games are often plagued with release problems, on any platform), but this is not how you bring gaming back to the Mac.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Fred said 4:20PM on 10-20-2007
Hey EA! Welcome to Mac Gaming! This is the perfect opprotunity for you to shovel old, crap games onto the Mac platform and wring a couple of more bucks out of your franchises!!! And to sit back and blame Apple for their drivers? Really? How about some beta testing you retards!
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cwaldrip said 4:37PM on 10-20-2007
What's amazing is that official EA ports using Cider seem to be crap (this and Battlefield 2142 for example), but 'unofficial' ports like Battlefield 2 seem to work great (well, except for network play - but that's a serial number issue).
From what I've seen from others playing these unofficial ports I don't know why EA is having so many problems. Unless it has to do with the original game itself.
What a sad, sad way to reintroduce yourself to a platform that is growing by leaps and bounds.
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Bruno said 4:44PM on 10-20-2007
There are definitely reported ATI driver issues with the new iMac machines. Can't say for sure if this screenshot is a product of any of the known issues. As it turns out, the issues are probably in Apple's driver framework rather than ATI drivers specifically anyway.
Google for it.
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a ham sandwich said 5:24PM on 10-20-2007
while its pathetic that EA would release a game on the mac with this many problems, to say that "EA games are often plagued with release problems, on any platform" is really low. EA's by far the largest game company in the world who consistently releases game after game. do you think they got where they are releasing crappy ports on every system? No. And congratulations, you found one example from X3F of a bug in an EA game. pat yourself on the back.
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Greg G said 5:40PM on 10-20-2007
Wow... EA sucks. There's no excuse for this.
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Mo said 5:56PM on 10-20-2007
Here's the thing: Mac OS X has some of the most talented and impressive developers of any platform building software for it, many of them small-time indies producing stunning applications. Time and time again, big companies come along and produce comparative crap for the Mac, while the small developers produce works of art. Sometimes the works of art are small utilities, and sometimes they're something bigger.
Sadly, the resources required to produce a game akin to Madden or Tiger Woods (licensing, artwork, audio recording, and that's without thinking about the game engine) put them out of reach of the kind of developers who produce the best Mac apps out there.
The only solution I can think of is for the likes of EA to take a long, hard look at themselves, and then go out and actually hire some of these developers and stop turning out rubbish (regardless of platform). Promising the world and then releasing crappy rushed ports doesn't really make the Mac look bad, it just reinforces the idea that the big developers are cumbersome and lazy.
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Rowan said 6:12PM on 10-20-2007
Really, no excuse. I mean for 100% compatibility with the current platofrm, they need to test it on an iMac, a Macbook Pro, and if they're bothered the Mac Pro with it's (four?) video card options. That's 6 machines they need to buy to check compatibility with the entire current mac platform. Surely it can't be easier for developers.
( i know i know, i'm missing the whole cider point here etc. )
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Andrew Ian Dodge said 6:06PM on 10-20-2007
I have reviewed Need for Speed: Carbon. The game gets really ropey once you get to the higher level of the game 50% completion+. The only one that seems to have been a decent port is CoC3 which runs rather well.
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Bootes said 6:30PM on 10-20-2007
a ham sandwich it's completely true. EA releases buggy crappily made games one very platform.
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David said 6:35PM on 10-20-2007
Buy a mac for ilife and iwork. Buy an xbox 360 to play games.
Seems to be the best way.
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mchugh24 said 6:43PM on 10-20-2007
Tiger Woods 2008 is even worse. On my (and others if you look at the TW page comments at the apple store) new 24 inch imac, you cannot play the game at all. Clicking "Play Now" from the menu will start to load the game, then the screen goes blank and the computer is locked. You have to power reboot the imac. Pathetic.
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Jeff B said 2:01PM on 10-21-2007
i got Need For Speed for my mac, it isnt bad...
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jh said 9:11PM on 10-20-2007
Told you. CIDER is NOT a porting method. The sad thing is, it will continue to be treated like one, just as they're acting like Wine is a solution for linux.
The fact is, part of the problem here is the hardware, specifically the video card.. just isn't technologically capable. Sorry.
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Patrick said 9:39PM on 10-20-2007
A true conspiracy from EA (aka A now Microsoft Game division)...
They did poor ports on the Playstation 3....now the Mac....
Unbelievable!!
Electronic Arts.... was a good game company....not anymore!
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Kendal said 11:04PM on 10-20-2007
#4: EA suck. They release buggy game after buggy game, and expect that the customers will just put up with their even buggier patches (take BF2, or BF2142 for example- constant crashes, glitches, etc.).
They might have been good back in the 90s, but now they are large and that doesn't make them somehow successful off the back of brilliant, stable gaming releases.
I don't support EA, and I don't buy their games- why should we be paying to beta-test their software?
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Jasen said 11:02PM on 10-20-2007
Did you ever think that the Aluminum iMacs were not available for EA & TransGaming to do QA testing on? The Al iMacs are NEW machines. BF2142 runs fine on my 1st gen 17" Intel iMac. No problems. None.
I suspect that as soon as Apple made the Al hardware available, EA and TransGaming grabbed a set, tested, found the problems, tracked them down and gave Apple a call. Apple has a history of bad GPU drivers.
Why is this problem a surprise and EA's fault? If you want to blame someone, blame TransGaming and the Cider engine.
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DaiMac79 said 7:39AM on 10-21-2007
@Mo: I totally agree. What sucks is that we had one of the best studios in gaming in the 90s, Bungie, and Apple let them go. I would compare it to Nintendo losing Square to Sony with FF7, the Halo Mac demo that so captivated MS being just like the tantalizing FF 64 demo that came out before FF7 was announced. Apple could have easily bought Bungie (even in the darkest times they kept a fairly substantial cash reserve) before MS, and I'm sure we'd now have an intact Bungie now under Apple, no Wideload games, etc, etc. Halo would have been a Mac/PC game instead of a 360 game, and instead of a constant droning of halo haters "game is just an average FPS, etc etc" that we hear now on the InterTubes we would see a hardcore (and still massive) following for both the wonderful FPS/RTS hybrid that Halo should have been and for the other amazing games Bungie was forced to dump like Oni and Myth.
The only other Mac-centric dev who comes close would be Ambrosia, and I think they would more forcibly resist such assimilation, prefering their current business model. That said, whoever could bring me a super awesome 3D version of Escape Velocity, with all the trading/conquest/etc elements intact and layered on a massive space war simulator/space dogfight sim, with the same level of mods, is going to make alot of damn money.
*imagines Battlestar Galactica mod for such an EV game, tries to keep head from exploding FOTNS-style as a result*
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dappleganger said 8:33AM on 10-21-2007
You expected anything different from EA blaming Apple? Madden sucks anyway.
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merc669 said 3:58PM on 10-21-2007
I have a MBP first gen with ATI Video Card and 2 G Ram. I have had no problems running Madden. Biggest problem with Madden was trying to register it. I played Madden and a couple of other EA games in the past but on a PC and their problem then as is now is their lack of response to its customers and support of their own products. One can only hope that somebody over there wakes up.
Bill....
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Wilder K. Wight said 7:20PM on 10-21-2007
All of this is pointless anyway. Prices for games on Mac have always been higher than any other platform. Why would I pay more to play on my Intel Mac when I can get the lower-priced version of the exact same game for Bootcamp Windows XP, or for my video game console? Whether you own XBox 360, PS3, Wii, the EA games end up cheaper on those than they will be on Mac.
It always ticks me off when I see a game for Mac priced at $49.99 (or more) and then on the other side of CompUSA I find the Windows version for $19.99 and the XBox 360 version for $29.99 --- How dumb do you think I am, publishers?
If I had no choice, then maybe you'd have me by the short-n-curlies, but I DO have a choice. I can play in Boot Camp, or I can play on a console. The pricing stinks, and therefore I'm not jumping on board Apple gaming yet. It's not worth the price of admission.
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