BioWare agrees Mac version of Star Wars: The Old Republic is important

While I wouldn't mind having a good gaming franchise on the mac, why can't we just skip the middle man and release it for PS3/xBox? We'd get dedicated gaming and we wouldn't have to build a "gaming machine", or be pissed off that we don't have the current specs on our slightly outdated macs (meaning by one month in my case). I have a gaming machine, it's called the xBox it cost less than half as much as a gaming PC. This method worked well for COD:MW3, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Dragon Age....

The biggest reason why gaming has always been a drawback to the Mac is simple - Apple has shown little interest in their history helping developers port games to the Mac. Yes, there are political reasons why most games are developed for Windows/DirectX or Consoles... it's because the companies that create those platforms actively seek out and help developers make their games compatible. For the longest time, VALVe's games were not on the Mac because Apple did not adequately provide the proper environment, tools or support to make such an effort feasible both technically and monetarily.

That has changed recently. Apple has shown a great interest in getting games onto its iOS platform and have been working with developers directly to make iOS the dominate platform in mobile gaming. Apple actually worked with VALVe on porting the Source engine over to OpenGL, which allowed them to release all of their Source engine games onto the Mac dating back to 2004's Half-Life 2 (for FREE if you already bought the PC version - go VALVe!!). The Mac is now a "Tier 1" platform, meaning Mac versions are released the same day as Windows and Console versions.

I'm thinking with the Mac App Store, Apple is finally looking to push games onto the Mac in a big way. I believe in a couple years, every big blockbuster title and Indie developer releasing a game will make their way onto the Mac same day as their PC counterpart. Macs account for a *huge* percentage of consumer PC sales now. They are no longer a niche platform to be ignored.

If you spent $1500 to $2000 on Mac you can afford to spend $600 to $800 on a decent albeit budget gaming PC computer. Now is the time to buy since PC components all across the board are dropping in price too. (I have both a macbook laptop and a custom built gaming PC).

All I ask is that it isn't a terrible port like Civ 5.

Too little, too late. Even if they released one in 2-3 months, who wants to wait that long to start the game and have o compete with those who have been playing it since beta? I think Mac users have gotten the shaft yet again. And like another poster, I refuse to put Windows on my system to play a game. I'm not giving Microsoft ANY of my money.

MAKE IT FOR MAC - I'M SICK OF REBOOTING MY COMPUTER, like I'm doing in 2 minutes haha.

Breaking News: Bioware likes money.

A vicious circle. "We don't built Mac games because there's no audience. There's no audience because there are no Mac games."

i absolutely refuse to buy windows to play a game. If the developers will not release to accommodate an already available market then it is their loss. I met those guys and they don't care. Its like Blizzard was the only large developer that cared enough and was smart enough to exploit the mac market. Even with cider available there is no excuse for developers to exclude mac users. You read enough about the industry to get an idea of why this stuff happens. Its all politics and money.

Great example... Half life 1 was complete and gold master working on bondi blue iMacs smoothly and without issue also was cross platform. (according to a video interview with the lead dev) Gabe claimed someone at apple told him they would sell 100000 copies. only 10000 orders came in and "someone" at apple said "we don't quote projected sales figures" or something like that. Gabe called the developer and told them to shelf it. They got paid and the game never was released.

Then there are the politics of OpenGL vs directX and the money that was thrown at developers to NOT release OpenGL versions even though at the time is was a superior graphics rendering environment. Without corporate support openGL fell behind.

When consoles came out and devs started porting for them its was clear that politics was the driving force of the lacking mac game market. Then the porting companies like feral and aspyr while helping actually became part of the problem. releasing a game on average a year after initial release. when no one cared anymore because they want new and shiny.

So for people who claim macs are bad for gaming are misinformed.

Thank GAWD! I have a Parallels VM running Win 7 with SWTOR. I'd much rather run it native!