It really doesn't pay to do the port--since Mac users actually don't need an OSX port of the game to run it natively anymore.

Sure they do. No one wants to have to boot in to a whole other OS just to play a game.

WaltC his the nail on the head. If a Mac user wants to game then they can buy Windows and set it up from within OSX... they're already willing to pay the price premium on the hardware, so a bit more is hardly going to hurt. It's better than getting games 6 months later, with only 75% of the performance and delayed patch releases making play with Windows users hard (if that's even supported to start with). Now if Apple released OSX at retail for PCs then it would be a very different matter - then they'd have an install base of millions, rather than the few dozen gamers they have currently.

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any game using direct x net code will not work with the mac version online. this includes quake wars.

This does not include Quake Wars, by any remote definition. ETQW uses DirectX for controller input, and sound.

Right, from the standpoint of the user another OS has to be purchased. But from the standpoint of the developer? It really doesn't pay to do the port--since Mac users actually don't need an OSX port of the game to run it natively anymore. And I think the extra expense for the Mac user who might like gaming is more than justified when you think of all the games he can run under Windows without waiting a year or two for a port, and all of the games he can run that will never be ported to OSX. I mean, I think the bottom line for the Mac owner is that owning a Mac is no longer a serious impediment for using it to run computer games.

You still have to buy the OS. Granted a one time thing but still...

It's odd to see this kind of article these days, considering that Intel Macs can now boot Windows natively--since they are *are* Intel PCs, of course. BootCamp, now standard with Leopard OSX, makes the whole process very simple. Apart from wishing to support older, PPC Macs, it seems that these days doing a specific OSX Port of a Windows game makes very little financial sense.

You're forgetting that ETQW is available for Linux, and that doesn't have DirectX either, yet it works exactly as the Windows version does.

This comment was edited on Nov 7, 10:58.

any game using direct x net code will not work with the mac version online. this includes quake wars.

Will the net code be the same between the two versions? For some reason I remember that one game Aspyr ported to Mac was unable to play with its PC counterpart.