Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Odds and ends, Apple
Aspyr delays Guitar Hero III, they are now dead to me
Man, remember how excited we were that Guitar Hero III was coming to the Mac at a reasonable time? Yeah, well, guess what. Aspyr has no love for Mac owners. Our friends at Joystiq say that while the PC version is sitting happily on shelves, we're still waiting on the Mac version. "Later this year," Aspyr says. I'll believe it when I see it.I don't want to get off on a rant here, but who the hell put Aspyr in charge of Mac gaming anyway? Their incompetence has reared its ugly head time and time again. They deliver late, buggy ports all the time, and yet game companies still seem to flock to them for development and publishing jobs.
There is something rotten in the state of Mac gaming, and it is Aspyr Media. Have they ever kept a promise for release? Have they ever delivered a worthy, on-time port? Or have they continually and constantly profited off of placing junk on Apple Store shelves, forever confining Macs to the bottom of the list for gaming platforms? I won't tell you what to buy, but I'm done seeing Aspyr's name on Mac games. Until they show that they actually have the capacity to release a game that even slightly compares to the PC release version (or even shows up on time -- I'd settle for punctuality at this point), the Aspyr name is a complete dealbreaker for me in terms of both interest and purchases. As far as I'm concerned, they're out.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Tim Day said 3:20PM on 11-15-2007
He spoketh the word, and it was true....
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Luigi193 said 3:20PM on 11-15-2007
BOO TO ASPYR!!!!!!!!
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David said 3:21PM on 11-15-2007
um. relax?
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Sam said 3:21PM on 11-15-2007
if you bothered to LISTEN to what there saying, there making a hybrid disc that supports both Mac AND Windows fans. So you could theoretically play guitar hero on both partitions if you boot camp. I dunno about you, but thats a win.
Ok, we have a wait a bit longer, but it'll be worth it.
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Fred Manning said 3:25PM on 11-15-2007
It's because the d-bag developers don't care if it's a buggy piece of crap for Mac because we still buy it, and their just trying to ring out the last possible bit of cash from the title.
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narles11 said 3:29PM on 11-15-2007
Ouch. That's pretty harsh. I actually do like Aspyr but I think I'm thinking more of the old Mac-only Aspyr. Mac users used to be able to relate with the company on a more personal basis with fun email contests going out every month (one of which I won). Nowadays they do seem to have gone more corporate with the newsletters losing the Ask Aspyr portion and the contests. Maybe they are stretched a little too thin with Xbox 360, PC, GBA, and Mac games going out now. The quality seems to have suffered as a result of this. I do hope that they can bring Turok to Mac though....maybe they can redeem themselves with it. I know they are acting as just the publisher for it but it'd be nice to see a good port with their name on it nonetheless.
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Lou Griffith said 3:46PM on 11-15-2007
I COMPLETELY AGREE - I wonder if a email or two to Steve might have any way of changing it.
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Mark d said 3:58PM on 11-15-2007
You know, lately when I've read blog posts on TUAW that don't sit quite right they all seem to be written by you Mike. What's the deal?
If you're so hardcore about gaming install bootcamp or even better, consider a console (at least for GHIII, perhaps not for turn based strategy). While you may not like Aspyr, there don't seem to be a truckload of other companies trying hard to bring titles to the mac. Without them, I doubt we'd have seen many of the ports we were lucky enough to get over the past few years.
But, as poster #3 says, 'Relax'. You appear to be freaking out because your guitar game is running late? Come on...
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Se7en said 4:08PM on 11-15-2007
"I COMPLETELY AGREE - I wonder if a email or two to Steve might have any way of changing it"
Uh, you mean Steve Jobs? That Steve? You are going to send an email complaining about the state of gaming on the Mac..to Steve Jobs? The same Steve Jobs who has shown absolutely ZERO interest in gaming on the Mac? That Steve? Good luck with that :p
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Quix said 4:11PM on 11-15-2007
"Ok, we have a wait a bit longer, but it'll be worth it." - Sam
Sadly, that's always the attitude of necessity for us Mac users. "Sure, we get the game a year after everyone else, but think how much *better* it will be after all the anticipation?" Unfortunately, my brain is no longer fooled by this weak attempt at placation.
How long will we have to wait for Unreal Tournament 3? I haven't heard any news on that one. Then again, probably no current Mac under a $3,000 Mac Pro is going to be able to run the thing satisfactorily anyway.
And Mac gaming continues its walking-dead ways...
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Josh said 4:23PM on 11-15-2007
I agree with poster #8 (Mark d)
Mike, it seems you kind of have a bad attitude in general.
You make TUAW a less desirable place to visit with your negative posting all the time. Well maybe not all the time but often enough to be noticed.
I don't visit TUAW to read hate mail.
For the third time: RELAX dude!
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Wolfman2000 said 4:23PM on 11-15-2007
I just called Aspyr, and they told me that the Mac version would be out by the middle of December.
I also asked if both Windows and Mac versions were being worked on for the same amount of time, and when I got a yes, I tried to pursue a reason. I couldn't get one.
Perhaps calling and petitioning can do the job.
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Gregory Pierce said 4:24PM on 11-15-2007
Wow... while I agree with you on this to a large extent - you went kinda overboard :) Having been in the gaming world on the development and biz side, a lot of the reason Aspyr gets these games is that they approach the IP owners and ask for the port or a publisher will approach them about doing a port (more the former than the later in my experience). There is then a revenue share put in place and the original publisher doesn't have to spend a dime in most cases and just collects money if the game does well enough.
So if you really want to see game X,Y,Z you should lobby companies like Aspyr to actually go out and get Fallout 3... I mean whatever game you want them to port.
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PSM said 4:25PM on 11-15-2007
Aspyr is the reason I stopped Mac gaming altogether and built a gaming PC about three years ago. I could even understand the six month delay from PC games, but when they finally come out, their ports suck.
I'm sorry to see nothing has changed in recent years. Now with Boot Camp IMO there's no reason whatsoever to pay the same amount or more as you would for a PC game and have it be bad and six months or a year late, or never come out at all.
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XGM said 4:25PM on 11-15-2007
I own a mac, and a the only consoles i have was the first PS1's to hit the shelves and a Famicon (and not a NES). The problem with gaming on the mac is that 98% of the games are not native, but rather wrapped in a "emulator" (like cider does) and there you go.
Mac's need a new version of OpenGL or a new graphics layer that would be DX10. So meanwhile i will keep working up the BF2 ranks here in Canada on my MacBook Pro, unfortunately needing XP to do so.
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ms said 4:34PM on 11-15-2007
I'll cut Aspyr some slack -- there's a whole lot holding back gaming on the Mac, including:
* No ActiveX-like environment for game programming
* Apple as a company seems completely uninterested in gaming
* Smaller installed base, meaning smaller profits
* Porting is a tricky business, period
That said, their priorities seem wrong. How many Sims add-on packs do we need, rather than solid first party titles? And with the popularity of Intel-based Macs, shouldn't that make it easier to port these games?
I am sick and tired of Aspyr. NWN was so buggy, I couldn't play through expansions. KOTOR was similarly unplayable. Lego Star Wars for the Mac convinced me to get Lego Star Wars for my GameCube. In fact, I'm done with Aspyr, and any gaming I do from now on will be done on a console. Get your business in order and I might come back.
Also, kudos Mr. Schramm. It's about time someone said it.
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Andrew Sims said 4:39PM on 11-15-2007
Thanks for this e-mail. You are totally right. Aspyr sucks and Apple needs to step in and pump up EA to get the job done instead.
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potato said 4:48PM on 11-15-2007
Thank you! It's not the tardiness that bothers me - we still play second fiddle to PCs, so delays are to be expected. The problem is that, even after all the delays, Aspyr consistently comes up with unstable, buggy crap that simply won't play, or runs RIDICULOUSLY slower than their Windows counterparts, on the SAME hardware.
I'd be willing to wait a whole year for GH3 if it meant that the end product won't be dog slow on my MBP and won't crash every other minute!
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Ian Beck said 5:21PM on 11-15-2007
What sort of editorial oversight let a worthless bit of vituperation like this through? I was under the impression that TUAW had some sort of desire to be a decent news source, not a publisher of second-rate tirades.
Opinions are fine, but if you're going to publish them as journalism, please try to make them reasonable. Your examples of why Aspyr is, apparently, Satan were comprised of Quake Wars being delayed (the same article cited twice) and Sims Pet Stories being ported by Aspyr instead of EA..which would seem to be a mark again EA, not Aspyr. So apparently, they have one late game. I assume you were really looking forward to it, and now you're angry and taking it out on Aspyr on a well-read news blog. Good work.
TUAW, you're losing credibility fast for me. Is there just someone back there hitting "publish" for everything authors write? Because that's a bad game plan.
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Russell said 5:21PM on 11-15-2007
No loss. There isn't a Mac in existence that meets the recommended requirements for the PC version, and its not secret that ports tend to require even better hardware to get the same performance. The point being the Mac port could only have sucked incredibly.
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