Madden and the iMac: a story of woe

crap. i hadn't heard that madden wouldn't run with a gma950 card. i took the cellophane off as i was reading this article. i'm not taking the stickers off. anyone need a copy?

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.

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....

You expected anything different from EA blaming Apple? Madden sucks anyway.

@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*

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.

#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?

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!

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.

i got Need For Speed for my mac, it isnt bad...