Rumor has it thatApple is adding game ontogenesis talentto its iPod team . If genuine , this turn of event would be ironic , since the secret plan market place for the Mac — you sleep together , thatotherhardware mathematical product Apple makes — is in serious , serious trouble .
First , countenance ’s plunge into the rumour . As the write up goes , Apple has reportedly lease a former LucasArts developer with impeccable bona fides to manage a game growing mathematical group for the iPod . It ’s toilsome to say at this point even if that much is true , much less hazard a guess about what he or others under his direction would modernize for the iPod .
It ’s possible that such a maneuver might just be aimed at beefing up the iPod ’s existing game - playing abilities — current video recording iPods come up with four game set up , and they ’re all pretty halting . Perhaps future models could let in newer and more compelling games .
I ’ve also examine suggestion that Apple is function to make downloadable game for the iPod available through the iTunes Music Store , that Apple is going to come out with a exceptional “ play iPod , ” or that this is just the first pace in an all - out co-ordinated assault from Apple on the moneymaking gaming marketplace .
I think that most of those ideas are more desirous thinking than train guessing . I ’d mirthfully be prove wrong . Apple does n’t just have a stellar track record in the game market , at least where the Mac is concerned . RememberApple ’s Pippin game console ? Yeah , well , neither does anyone else .
While all this iPod - related conjecture is travel on , Mac play find oneself itself in trouble . cock-a-hoop worry . People just are n’t buy a lot of games for their Macs . The reason for this are countless — piracy , the percept of the Mac as a machine for work instead of play , limited retail availability , long wait fourth dimension for Mac port , lack of Mac - compatible middleware , and so forth . Boot Camp — which lets you set up and consort Windows XP on an Intel Mac , making it possible to toy personal computer game — is n’t help , either .
But the bottom line is thatisa problem , and companies that have long supported the Mac secret plan business are moving by from it . Here are just two examples to consider :
•Aspyr Media’sPC release schedule is pick up hurrying . In 2006 , for the first prison term , the society , a 10 - yr ex-serviceman of the Mac biz market and one of the Mac game market ’s large publishers , will ship just about as many Windows biz as Mac games .
• passing game publisherFreeverse Softwareisn’t any alien to the Windows market , but the company recently announce programme to develop a console table title of respect — TotemBall , a biz for Microsoft ’s Xbox Live Arcade , which is a feature of the Xbox 360 cabinet .
This situation has to be turned around , and Apple has the capacity to do it . That could be by starting an internal Mac plot development studio apartment that get best - of - breed games . It ’s a proved modeling that ’s been used successfully by Microsoft , Sony , and Nintendo over the age . Apple could rather just pace up to the plate with better and more co - ordinated support for existing and potential Macintosh game developer and a more focused and belligerent selling effort to romance potential gamers .
It ’s up to Apple to bump the scheme that will work . But the one strategy that I desire Apple does n’t quest after is throwing the baby out with the bathwater , and just center on iPod gaming . There ’s just way too much to lose for a company that ’s run into massive interest in its new information processing system hardware from the consumer microcomputer market for the first clip in class .
