Apple Finally Getting Its Game On?

Gamespot reports on the possibility that, in some way, Apple is making moves to develop games. From the article: "This week, GameSpot learned that there may be more to the Apple-game rumors than mere Mac-mad daydreams. A tech-sector recruiter contacted the GS NewsDesk with an interesting story of a prospective hire that got away. Recently, when said recruiter made an offer to a software engineer, the engineer turned the offer down--saying he was being 'heavily recruited by Apple.' According to the engineer, an Apple hiring manager named Mike Lampell is heading up a group inside Apple's storied iTunes division. The group is specifically hiring for 'C/C++ coders with a gaming background.'"

Re:About Time

[catwh0re]

Small form gaming devices (as with mobile phones) is currently an incredibly booming market at the moment. It's so serious that game developers are co-developing lightweight java versions of their games as they produce major titles.

This might just save java too.

Re:Mini versus PS3?

[Lysander Luddite]

You're kidding right? An intergrated Intel graphic chip and a 4200 RPM hard drive? A friend of mine complained about how slow the Mini is running DJ apps. The only thing a Mac mini might take on is a Nintendo hand held in terms of games.

Even high end Macs are poor gaming machines because the graphic cards Apple sticks in them are at least a generation or two behind PC cards. I dropped $1600 18 months ago and all I have is a Geforce 5200. At the time it wasn't even that great. Mac users typically have 2-3 upgrade card options available at any time and any of them will cost about the same as a console.

Don't forget that PC games are heavily into the ActiveX camp, which AFAIK still doesn't run on OSX.

Re:Mac's as ideal gaming platforms?

[RemovableBait]

There are actually quite a few decent games available on the Mac, you just need to look in the games section of the Apple Store [apple.com] instead of the Mac OS X download area [apple.com].

Re:They called me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple often wants people with graphics experience, and typically their recruiters will ask if people have 'games' experience. Among other things, such people have been hired to do OpenGL acceleration in Quartz Extreme, CoreImage, 3D effects in Keynote and FrontRow, slide shows in iPhoto, and effects in PhotoBooth.

In short, they're not really looking for people with games experience, they're looking for people with OpenGL experience. 'Games' is just a useful keyword for finding the resumes they're looking for.

Re:Mac's as ideal gaming platforms?

[Anonymous Coward]

That one seemed to be more Microsoft fulfilling a promise than anything. There, I said it, something semi-positive about MS. =)

Don't forget that Bungie was the preeminent Mac games developer before Microsoft bought them out. Halo was initially demo'd running on Macs, and (IIRC) even at a MacWorld conference. It was initially going to be a computer game, but the buyout entailed a plan change. Bungie still said they were going to release the game for Windows and Macs, but not until the XBox version was taken care of.

Re:Mac's as ideal gaming platforms?

[mrchaotica]

except Macs with a graphics card worth a shit start at 1999USD (and even then it's a MacBook Pro with a small screen, no mouse included, and 512MB of RAM).

You misspelled "$1299," "iMac Core Duo," and "17 inch screen." It's got the same graphics chip as the MacBook Pro (ATi Radeon X1600).

Re:Hmm... Wonder if they can do it...

[Anonymous Coward]

He was talking about Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy who started a new company called Mistwalker. Mistwalker is not owned by Microsoft, but they are developing RPGs exclusivly for the XBox 360.