Casual Hex

I made the switch away from Windows to Mac OS X in May of 2004. But all of my friends still use and prefer Windows. Why? Because of the gaming options. I miss gaming on my system. Sure, I have World of Warcraft and there are a few other great titles for OS X, but the majority of titles I’d really like to play are only available for Windows. I was able to give up Windows gaming for the simple fact that I gained so much more in every other way. But like my friends, there are many who will not switch.. not even consider it.. unless OS X can satisfy their hunger for gaming. For every game available on the OS X platform there’s probably 20 more available for Windows. While it’s true that the primary reason for this is the overwhelming number of Windows computers in homes versus Macs I don’t think that’s all there is to it.

Microsoft has it’s own Windows game division. Microsoft’s DirectX is a powerful API for game development. So while Apple’s GUI is all nice and filled with eye-candy that Vista wont even be able to live up to, the OpenGL platform within OS X is far, far behind DirectX in gaming potential. It’s time for Apple to create a division that focuses on nothing else but getting gamers to pay attention to OS X. Obviously putting huge amounts of money into such a division from the start would be a waste, but even a small group, well funded and properly focused, could do wonders for the bottom line at Apple.

Oh, and yes.. I’m perfectly aware of Boot Camp. But as nice as Boot Camp is, rebooting to play games is a half-wit solution. It’s too much trouble and too limiting for the user. Games should run within OS X at comparable speeds (or better) to those running in XP/Vista on similar hardware. Also, Apple should give incentives to game publishers to add extras to OS X games that aren’t available in the Windows versions— just like Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft regularly do in the console world.

This is all so obvious to me and I’m sure it’s obvious to many others, so I wonder what the hold up is for Apple? Does Jobs hate gaming? Is gaming a waste of his precious hardware and operating system? What else could it possibly be? I understand that Apple can’t overtake Microsoft in gaming overnight but a small dent is better than nothing at all. Please, if you have any ideas or comments on this, I’d love to hear them.