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peter cohen posts

Filed under: Gaming

Macworld lists best games of 2006

Peter Cohen, the Macworld gaming guy, has compiled a list of the top Mac gaming gear of 2006. Now, I am not much of a gamer, but there are some interesting games on the list. I am sure you will be able to find the prefect holiday gift for any Mac gamer that is in your life on this list.

Any Mac gaming list that has Freeverse on it is OK in my book.

Filed under: Gaming, Software

Whither Mac gaming?

Peter Cohen, Macworld's 'Game guy,' has penned an article wondering if in a world full of next gen consoles (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and the Wii) the Mac has any relevance as a gaming platform. Not too surprisingly, since he is probably the most recognized of all Mac gaming columnists, Peter thinks that the Mac still has a lot to offer in the gaming arena.

Peter points to games that have a social networking aspect as the place where the Mac shines. These games, at least the ones he mentions, are online games which can be played on either Mac or PCs so lumping these in as 'Mac games' seems a little disingenuous to me (though they can be played on a Mac).

Peter expounds on the benefits of computer gaming as compared to console gaming, but I think he falls short of crafting an argument for the Mac as a gaming platform.

Are there many Mac gamers out there? None of my Macs have any games installed on them, but perhaps I am in the minority.

Filed under: Gaming, Interviews

Molyneux - "Apple needs to get behind games"

Last week I carried out an interview with Peter Molyneux (the founder of Lionhead Studios which has games like Black & White, Fable and The Movies to its name) over at TUAW sister site Joystiq. I made sure to ask him a question or two about the state of Mac gaming because one, I *used* to be a relatively hardcore Mac gamer and two, Lionhead has a track record of bringing all of its games to the Mac. That isn't changing with Microsoft's recent acquisition of the company (haven't we heard all this before?!).

The relevant part of the interview:

"There's this Catch 22 situation where not many people play games on the Mac and therefore developers don't want to make games for the Mac.

Exactly. I think it would need Apple to get behind games. There's nothing in their operating system that panders to games at all and I take my hats off to Microsoft. I think they've realized that games are important.
"

Macworld's Peter Cohen suggested that Molyneux was referring to Apple's lack of a unified application programming interface that would make the jobs of game programmers much easier. I think this suggestion is spot on, but not the only thing that Molyneux was referring to. One passive improvement could include getting Apple to kick its recent integrated graphics habit (Molyneux called my MacBook "a perfect thing" in the interview - pity it can't play games). Sure, we'd all like an iTunes Games Store, a mid-range upgradeable Mac with a decent graphics card and an Apple that publishes games, but it ain't gonna happen while you-know-who is still around.

Unless Apple gets off its arse and gives game developers more than the bare minimum of support, Mac gaming is going to disappear thanks to the rapid emergence of easy access to Windows games via Boot Camp or GPU virtualization (when it finally appears). Only then will we see articles on Apple.com about how awesome Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter looks on the Mac, instead of long features about how the GRAW music was composed using a PowerMac G5.

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