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Wouldn't OS X ports generate revenue for and interest in waning MMO's?
JWW8767
Member UncommonPosts: 3
I'm probably overlooking something obvious, so bear with me ...
Every time I see a triple-A MMO that is losing subs or struggling with relative popularity, and they are Windows-only, I can't help but wonder why they don't port to OS X.
Wildstar may or may not be floundering, struggling, losing subs, etc., but they spring to mind when I think of a game that has stumbled. I'm sure they are still making plenty of money, but they could be making more by appealing to the Mac crowd (not all of us care to bother with Bootcamp).
Of course there was a time when a Mac version of anything was an expensive gamble, but nowadays that's obviously not the case. So it seems like a no-brainer: not doing a Mac version of your MMO is tantamount to ignoring revenue that wants to throw itself into your wallet.
Not sure if this has a point -- might just be a public rant -- but am I wrong here? (I'm sure y'all will tell me if I am.)
Comments
From your point of view it is trivial. IN reality, it is not. Your position is easy as you can just say something and don't have to spend resources to accomplish something. In the real world, they do.
If you think is was so trivial and at a trivial cost, every game would simply do it as it would be trivial.
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Depending on the technology used to write the original game it might be near the original cost to develop the engine of the game again to port it. Just a guess somewhere like 20-40% of the original cost. I would bet most of the games that are ported where written using cross platform tools from the start making it a lot easier and cheaper task.
As a fraction of the cost of developing a game, the cost of making a Mac version is going to be small but not trivial. None of the artwork or writing needs to be redone, but you're adding a lot of debugging cost, at least if you expect the Mac version to be reasonably polished. If you're using Visual Studio or DirectX to do Windows-specific stuff, that also has to be completely redone for a Mac version.
But as a fraction of the revenue you'd get from a game, the extra revenue that you'd get from having a Mac version is also small. It's much smaller than the OS marketshare that Mac has. People don't pick an OS at random; it's well known that many games are Windows-only, so gamers are much less likely to buy a Mac than non-gamers. Even gamers who do buy a Mac might still play your game without a Mac version via Bootcamp or because they also have a PC. The extra revenue you get from having a Mac version is only the revenue from people who would not have played at all without a Mac version; revenue from people who buy a Mac version but would have bought a Windows version if there were no Mac version isn't attributable to the existence of a Mac version.
Ya, basically people that buy mac do not do it for gaming. The mac market (For gaming) would have to grow quite a bit to be worth the bother.
A mac native game sold with a mac system might make a bit of profit. But turning windows games into a port or even a mac version...no way that would help a game that was doing bad on windows.
I don't think most people buy macs for gaming.
Also, it's curious to think about what would have happened with Apple if Bungie hadn't defected to Microsoft. I remember reading Macworld back in the day and we were getting all the previews of Halo and the (small) Mac gaming community was very hyped, boy it was crushing when they bailed.
In any case, I use my MacBook Pro for work and my PC for gaming. And I use a Note 3 as my phone, just to make sure everything thinks I'm crazy.
There are very few mac's that could run current games, that can not also run windows. Mac gamers just use bootcamp. Those that do not are a very small market, and the cost for recoding a game for OSX can be high. It is more likely that they would code the game for Steam (Linux).
Directx binds games to windows.
And the reason is because directx is arguably more robust and developer friendly.
In a perfect world (no pun) Everyone would use OpenGl for superior cross compatibility
but that's not gona happen anytime soon with opengl's design and Microsoft partner kickbacks to developers.
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I'm all for OS X ports. I often buy games just because they support OS X and I would like to see more of it.
I own several Macintoshes.
I game on them rarely, and when I do, it's usually via Steam In-Home Streaming from my Windows machine.
The hardware is oriented different (less towards performance and more towards effiency and noise reduction), and even on natively supported games OS X just isn't the best performing, game-wise at least. And trying to upgrade an Apple for a new game - that just isn't reallt feasible anymore - if your machine can't handle the game, you need a new machine.
I love my Macintoshes, but gaming on them is not something I advocate at all.
That, and a struggling MMO is definitely not going to find a large audience just by porting to OS X .iOS maybe, but not OS X.
If you port the game to Steam/Linux, you are probably 95+% of the way to an OS X port - OpenGL and posix go a long way with that, and you mostly just have to deal with a few OS idiosyncrasies like file location conventions and default permissions and such.
I have always wondered that. I still have my Oni CD somewhere.
1. DirectX vs OpenGL. A lot of developers use DirectX, and those games do not run on Mac. You can wrap the game like ArenaNet did with Guild Wars 2, but the Mac Client, wrapped, still performs worse than the Native Windows client (obviously) by a noticeable margin.
2. System Requirements. You cannot just replace the GPU in an iMac easily (if at all) and most people get them with integrated graphics, because the systems are expensive enough without customizing them. MMORPG developers have hopped onto the "we want to kill your PC" bandwagon the past few years and a lot of games won't play fluently on those specs.
A lot of people I've run into play WoW simply because it's the only game on the market that is decent and runs decently on their PC. I actually think that's more important than targeting OS X - taking a step back and designing games for more mainstream equipment. Most people aren't religious about their game choices and most people simply aren't willing to spend potentially hundreds upgrading a PC when there is another game that runs well on it out there...
3. Because Windows can easily be run on Macs (Boot Camp) and a Windows License really isn't that expensive. $100 for Windows 8.1 is cheaper than the graphics card upgrade some of these games force you to get to play them decently.
Blizzard does both:
1. The game runs on modest specs very well.
2. They have a fully Native OS X Client.
And they are winning because of it.
That can be fixed by targeting higher end iGPUs like Iris Pro series and equivalent Radeon iGPUs.
The Iris Pro is roughly equivalent to an Nvidia 650M. As long as the machine has 8GB RAM, that should be more than fine for an MMORPG.
MMORPGs that require better often end up locking a lot of people out of their game because most people would move on before they spent more money to play a video game (probably to WoW, which has no such issues) never mind even if you are between the Minimum and Recommended Requirements in a busy game world you can run into performance issues because there is potential for there to be upwards of hundreds of character avatars on the screen at a time interacting (i.e. in Mass PvP, Castle Siege, World Raids, and other similar situations).
MMORPGs should not have system requirements similar to FPS and Single Player games for that reason (IMO, of course). Focus more on the gameplay and content, IMO.
This also makes the game more accessible, and opens up the possibility to pull in even more users to the game, which helps bring in more users (as they will recruit their friends, family, etc. most likely - people LOVE playing with IRL Friends/Family).