Electronic Arts is coming back to the Mac

[naum]

http://live.sitening.com/wwdc2007
CCO of EA on stage at WWDC

MacWorld article
http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/06/11/eagames/index.php

Electronic Arts (EA), the video and computer game publisher behind some of today’s most popular games, has announced its direct support for the Macintosh. The company will begin releasing Mac versions of some of its biggest games beginning in July.

Taking the keynote stage with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, EA co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Bing Gordon told attendees of this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that EA would return to the Macintosh beginning in July with four of its most popular franchises: Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars, Battlefield 2142, Need for Speed Carbon and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In August, EA will ship Madden NFL 08 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08.

The plan is for EA to release the Macintosh versions of all of these games simultaneously with their PC and console counterparts, said EA spokesperson Tammy Schachter.

“We want to capitalize on the marketing momentum for these games,” said Schechter. That’s a distinctly different approach than in the past, where EA has licensed out Macintosh versions of the games to Mac-specific publishers, like Aspyr Media.

[Trippy]

Why? Parallels is going to be supporting DirectX. Won't even need to bother with Boot Camp.

[naum]

Why? Parallels is going to be supporting DirectX. Won't even need to bother with Boot Camp.

Yes, Paralllels 3.0 will be able to do DirectX (actually parallels 2.0 sort of supports it, albeit at less than optimum performance)…

But this is not running a Windows app, it's a Mac Intel app…

[Trippy]

I realize that. It's just a lot of extra cost for EA to port the apps and then test them for such a small audience. Unless perhaps they've been developing some sort of middleware that makes it easy for them to do that.

[naum]

I realize that. It's just a lot of extra cost for EA to port the apps and then test them for such a small audience. Unless perhaps they've been developing some sort of middleware that makes it easy for them to do that.

I think that's the gist of it — they've developed some sort of virtualization engine…

In order to manage a simultaneous release, EA is working with TransGaming Technologies, developers of Cider, a technology which enables Windows games to run on Intel-based Macs. Cider has already been used to bring forth Macintosh conversions of games including Myst Online: Uru Live, Heroes of Might & Magic V, X3: Reunion and the forthcoming release of EVE Online, a massively multiplayer role play game set in outer space.

Cider uses an abstraction layer similar to other Mac OS X-to-Windows “virtualization” products like CrossOver from Codeweavers or Parallels Desktop for Mac. But unlike Parallels, Cider doesn’t require a separate Windows partition or “virtual machine” to be installed — the application looks and acts like a Mac app.

This is a very different approach than a native Mac game port, where the game’s source code is rewritten to run natively on the Macintosh platform. That approach is much more time-consuming, but in this case means the difference between EA’s new Mac game being able to work on PowerPC-based Macs or being limited to Intel-based Macs instead. The EA titles will run only on Intel-based Macs.

No love for PPC users though…

[Trippy]

Well that makes more sense then.

[squirrel]

Yeah it's essentially Cedega for OS X - same company, TransGaming Software. Except the publishers pay the license instead of the end users. Which is better for us of course. That being said, unless performance is 99% I'll stick to BootCamp for games. It's not like I ever desperately need CS3 or OmniPlan in the midst of a CoH session so...

[Righ]

The performance in Mac HoMM V was decent... but that's not exactly a power hungry game. Still, it felt like a native game, so the abstraction layer isn't particularly intrusive.

[Sky]

Err...it's power-hungry enough. Stupid mini with the intel gpu.

Whoever started that idea of a lawsuit against intel should really follow through, they fuck gamers hard with that shitty cheap gpu.

Probably a good thing...keeps me from gaming at work!

[TripleDES]

Considering how much doesn't run on WINE, I doubt that the Cedega fork, no matter how long ago it happened, will be be better at it. I suppose the "licensing fees" go towards Cedega ironing out bugs and adding support for the specific package. As well as the game producer being required to do some additional work.

Unless Cedega for games is all about linking to Cedega libraries, that are being ported to various operating systems that are being abstracted, instead of using the respective system ones where applicable.

--edit: Their site says it's the usual WINE approach. I guess the advantage will be, that the PC version of various EA games will appear to be less buggy on the PC. :V

[Yegolev]

I guess the advantage will be, that the PC version of various EA games will appear to be less buggy on the PC. :V

In that case, The Sims will, at best, summon demons to piss on your Mac.

[Trippy]

Err...it's power-hungry enough. Stupid mini with the intel gpu.

Whoever started that idea of a lawsuit against intel should really follow through, they fuck gamers hard with that shitty cheap gpu.

Probably a good thing...keeps me from gaming at work!

And what really sucks is they subbornly refuse to add hardware transform and lighting (a feature of the original GeForce GPU back in 1999) to their GPUs but if they did games would run so much better on them.