In a Mac Observer article recently, several Mac game makers spoke about the impact of a switch to Intel processors on Mac gaming. While the potential for a Macintosh machine capable of booting into both Windows and OS X might impact the interest of hardcore Mac gamers in Mac native applications, Aspyr's Glenda Adams indicated that more casual gamers would be less likely to want the hassle of configuring a dual boot system.

"the existing WINE and dual boot solutions for Linux don't seem nearly as clean and wonderful as some people portray it. A lot of people talk about running games okay in WINE, but only after tweaking a lot of drivers, downloading updates, etc. It's definitely not the easy drop-in experience that 90% of end users want. I think most people just want to buy a box at the Apple store, take it home, install it and play. They don't want to restart their Macs, subscribe to a monthly fee for an emulator or have to keep track of emulator updates.

"So there will continue to be a market for OS X native games," she continued. "It just may skew more towards casual gamers and not such much to hardcore gamers who might put up with extra work to get a Windows game running."

the "Mac games market is pretty much a goner" if Windows turns out to be easy to install and run on the new Macs, but "it'll take a while for the Intelitoshes to gain a sizeable chunk of the Mac gaming market anyway, so whatever happens, we've probably got a couple years to adjust."

"Anything that grows the Mac market is great for Destineer," he added. "Anything that lets Mac users run more games is great for Mac users."

Mac Observer Article

Aspyr

Strange Flavour Games

Destineer

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