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Software Spore, Call of Duty 4 Headed to Mac
Marcus Yam (Blog) - January 16, 2008 4:44 PM
Print 56 comment(s) - last by mondo1234.. on Jan 21 at 1:03 PM
Rejoice Mac gamers, modern warfare and petri dish gaming is headed your way

Apple attracts a crowd different from the PC market. Gamers who simply must have computer games must own a current-technology PC. Mac owners, however, have long accepted that their platform is not one for gaming. While that likely won’t change anytime soon, the Mac crowd will soon have a couple new big hits to play.

Coinciding with Macworld, Aspyr Media announced that they will publish Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for Mac, intact with the 5.1 surround sound and dynamic community-oriented multiplayer experience. Developed by Infinity Ward and licensed by Activision, the game is expected to be available for Mac in May 2008. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for Mac will carry an MSRP of $49.99.

Electronic Arts today announced that Spore will be headed to the Mac along with the PC version, and will demonstrate the game running on Mac hardware at MacWorld sometime this week.

"We couldn't be happier to bring Spore to the Mac at the same time as the PC version. Spore is a highly creative game and I look forward to seeing what the players come up with to fill the universe they design," said Will Wright, Chief Designer of Spore.

Interestingly, EA stated in its press release that both versions of Spore will be available “later this year,” giving hope to gamers who want to see it delayed no further.

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A top Online FPS
By christojojo on 1/16/08, Rating: 0
RE: A top Online FPS
By dubldwn on 1/16/2008 5:13:47 PM , Rating: 4
Yeah, and it'll run great with your HD2600pro. Not.


RE: A top Online FPS
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 1/16/2008 5:32:58 PM , Rating: 5
Yea, having the game is nice, but lets be realistic, the hardware on a PC will crush the Mac crowd. Mac is getting closer, but still has a ways to go here.


RE: A top Online FPS
By daBKLYNdoorman on 1/16/2008 5:35:37 PM , Rating: 1
Macbook Pros are equipped with the 8600M GT graphics processors.

But yes, iMac's are equipped with the HD2600Pro's. It's a stupid move by Apple for upgrading pretty much everything except the graphics card in the new iMac's.


RE: A top Online FPS
By robertgu2k on 1/16/2008 7:33:12 PM , Rating: 5
Even the 8600 series graphics card will not be enough to play COD4 with smoothness and a descent level of eye-candy.

IMHO, you need a 8800 series Nvidia or HD 2900 / HD 3800 series ATI card to play COD4 without sacrificing too much.


RE: A top Online FPS
By feraltoad on 1/16/2008 8:29:40 PM , Rating: 2
I think users with 8600s won't be left out in the cold at all, this games scales superbly. My 1900xt 2gb Q6600 rig plays the game with everything maxed! I expected to be able to play it, but not with everything turned up. A friend of mine has a 8600gt and it played RB6:Vegas great and Kane & Lynch (not 2 impressive graphcially, but recently released) ran flawless. Of course, Crysis on high was a slideshow. Not choppy, slide show. Although, I agree about never ever having 2 much power.


RE: A top Online FPS
By FITCamaro on 1/16/2008 10:16:50 PM , Rating: 2
I think they meant in DX10 mode. But yes you could always just force the game to run in DX9. Those cards would likely then provide a decent level of performance. It doesn't surprise me that Spore is going to the Mac.

CoD4 though is a surprise. Mac not selling an upgradeable desktop except for their PowerMac series is one reason I'll never buy one.


RE: A top Online FPS
By feraltoad on 1/17/2008 1:50:46 AM , Rating: 1
What you say about DX10 and those cards is true. I hadn't even considered that. Right now though DX10 isn't that impressive on the comparison shots I've seen; certainly wasn't compelled to get Vista for what I've seen so far. I rather think today's titles are transitional titles. I'm sure the next wave of games will be the real deal though, and give the majority of cards a proper kick in the teeth.


RE: A top Online FPS
By Ryanman on 1/17/2008 3:03:18 PM , Rating: 3
DX10 shouldn't be the issue guys... it's going to look like crap either way.
The fact is that the highest perfomance card availible for mac is/was the x1900xt. Even if you have them in crossfire it's lightyears behind the competition. Why bother gaming with a $2000 machine that can't keep up with an xbox by a longshot?


RE: A top Online FPS
By Spivonious on 1/17/2008 8:28:58 AM , Rating: 4
Did I miss something or is DirectX still a Microsoft API, and therefore probably doesn't exist on Macs? So even mentioning DX10/DX9 has zero bearing on Mac performance.


RE: A top Online FPS
By Chadder007 on 1/17/2008 9:51:43 AM , Rating: 2
...Bingo.
MAC games are mostly OpenGL based. DirectX is Windows only.


RE: A top Online FPS
By Mitch101 on 1/17/2008 11:22:58 AM , Rating: 2
List of Games for the MAC.

Quake
Civilization
COD 4
Photoshop


RE: A top Online FPS
By bighairycamel on 1/17/2008 11:42:56 AM , Rating: 2
Photoshop got a million/10 on Gamespot! Awesome game, it's my favorite.


RE: A top Online FPS
By mondo1234 on 1/21/2008 1:03:23 PM , Rating: 2
I think he meant Corel of Duty!


RE: A top Online FPS
By Zoomer on 1/17/2008 12:13:41 PM , Rating: 2
Wait, wait, there's probably Doom too!

And Bubble Puzzle!


RE: A top Online FPS
By iFX on 1/17/2008 8:18:14 AM , Rating: 2
My Specs:
X1950 Pro 256MB
AMD FX-60
4GB Ram
Vista 64

I can play COD4 at 1280x1024 just fine on full settings.


RE: A top Online FPS
By neothe0ne on 1/16/2008 5:44:27 PM , Rating: 1
The demo ran decently on my 256mb GDDR3 8600GT in Vista 64. I'm sure those Mac users will be fine.. unless Aspyr pulls another fast one ala Guitar Hero III PC requirements which are only there so they can deny support to as many people as possible.


RE: A top Online FPS
By retrospooty on 1/16/2008 7:33:06 PM , Rating: 2
Even if the Mac had the exact same CPU and video card, it will still run WAY slower than a PC. Macs and their drivers are not at all optimized, and no-one has bothered to change that fact.


RE: A top Online FPS
By The Boston Dangler on 1/16/2008 7:33:22 PM , Rating: 2
if what you say is true, then you are satisfied with very little.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?m...


RE: A top Online FPS
By dcalfine on 1/17/2008 12:19:56 AM , Rating: 2
Aspyr has enjoyed a monopoly on Mac games for a while, and they got a bit lazy with DirectX to OpenGL porting. To be honest, my Mac was my primary gaming machine for the longest time. I still play StarCraft, which will be turning 10 this year. You don't need a top online FPS (though I was a huge fan of UT2004 and look forward to the Mac version on III) but something like spore will certainly be appreciated.

And EA's 'partnership' with Apple should ensure a delivery no less speedy than PC users will experience.


RE: A top Online FPS
By kelmon on 1/17/2008 3:19:09 AM , Rating: 2
Aspyr aren't a monopoly in the Mac gaming area. They do produce a reasonable number of titles but no more so really than MacSoft who, for example, is bringing UT3 pretty soon.

While I'm pleased that more games are coming to the Mac I have to confess that I still haven't really touched Call of Duty 2 or Quake 4 despite having bought them over a year ago. This isn't a problem with the games themselves or the Mac hardware but rather that I had also bought World of Warcraft and, well, you know how that goes... They could release every game for the Mac and make it run wonderfully and I'd still end up playing WoW instead.


RE: A top Online FPS
By Jedi2155 on 1/16/2008 5:56:27 PM , Rating: 3
I'm sure it'll run fine as they probably wont' fiddle with the graphics settings all that much and just run at the settings it auto detects at.

On the other hand....still don't like the whole "grenade dodgeball" feel of the game. Enjoyable...but when my average life expectancy is less than 30 seconds, it does get annoying.


RE: A top Online FPS
By KernD on 1/16/2008 7:05:06 PM , Rating: 2
Yea there are too many explosives, and too little good server admins. You can remove perks one by one, so if 3 frag, grenade launcher and RPG are abused you can turn them off.

I personally would have gone with you get 1 grenade, either frag, flash, stun or smoke, and only 1 ammo per life with grenade launcher and RPG, or one extra nade with the perk... but even then that would mean some jerks would have 2 explosives per lives...

The damn air strike, and chopper can also be disabled.
They are fun at the start, but they get old quick, unlike the rest of the game.


RE: A top Online FPS
By ajfink on 1/16/2008 9:49:18 PM , Rating: 2
It would be much more viable of Apple offered even a 3850 as an option.


RE: A top Online FPS
By thartist on 1/17/2008 11:45:25 PM , Rating: 2
Just try something a little less than maximum. Specially the special settings like the smoke stuff and such. TRY.

You don't need maximum settings to play COD looking nice. Nor any other game of these days. TRY being humble.


RE: A top Online FPS
By T4RTER S4UCE on 1/16/2008 5:50:08 PM , Rating: 3
Frankly I don't understand what's so great about COD4, I mean the single-player is top notch, but the online gets old. I prefer TF2.


RE: A top Online FPS
By Jedi2155 on 1/16/2008 5:59:30 PM , Rating: 2
Actually, I can't stand the single player....after beatin CoD2 I just couldn't take another CoD single player. Much prefer Crysis, and World In Conflict single player myself. TF2 is an excellent multiplayer game but I still think the Battlefield series is one the kings....


RE: A top Online FPS
By Anosh on 1/16/2008 8:22:28 PM , Rating: 2
you should really try the single player mode in COD4 cause it's really good.


RE: A top Online FPS
By ImSpartacus on 1/16/2008 9:17:28 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, It's excellent. Much better than Halo 3's campaign (Even this Halo noob had to see the light eventually :( ).

The multiplayer is pretty good too.


RE: A top Online FPS
By ajfink on 1/16/2008 9:51:40 PM , Rating: 2
I prefer CoD4's single player over Halo 3's, but I also prefer Halo 3's multiplayer over CoD4's. They have their niches. It's not to say either single player or multiplayer is bad. I'm an old school (if one can even be considered old school) Halo multiplayer fan, so it's sort of ingrained.


RE: A top Online FPS
By djc208 on 1/17/2008 9:24:27 AM , Rating: 2
I'm not a big online FPS fan (mainly cause I suck at it) but I do enjoy TF2 and play regularly. Someday I might even be good.


RE: A top Online FPS
By 4wardtristan on 1/16/2008 6:02:42 PM , Rating: 2
i have been meaning to buy cod4, but have yet to take my eyes off of tf2 (its so much fun)


RE: A top Online FPS
By PrasVT on 1/16/2008 6:32:09 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah I've been pondering whether to buy COD4 or not too. I'll probably get it for the single player, but I'm so used to BF2/BF2142 and I've heard mixed things about the online component of COD4. In fact I'm going to re-download BF2142 when I get home from work as I haven't played in a few months.

Meanwhile, will an 8600GT (mobile, that too) cut it? One of my friends had a regular 8600GT and it struggled a little on FEAR with everything turned up (core 2 duo system). I've been happy with my xfx 8800GTS 320mb xxx edition, until of course I bought Crysis. 4GB of RAM, 3.2ghz C2d and *wham* 8800gts falls to its knees..


RE: A top Online FPS
By Hydrofirex on 1/16/2008 6:40:05 PM , Rating: 2
And see, I don't really care for either! I played CoD on a console so perhaps that's why it didn't impress. I wanted to like Team Fortress, but I feel too limited by "class" based combat.

Now, the new Unreal is fantastic - they just keep refining a great concept, but FEAR Combat is still my favorite. It's fast paced, and the weapons and levels allow you to use differing strategies without the annoyance of being necessarily limited to a particular play style. I wish they would update with the weapons from the new expansions - but, then again the mutliplayer stand-alone is totally free.

HfX


RE: A top Online FPS
By Anosh on 1/16/2008 8:24:14 PM , Rating: 2
First of all consoles don't make FPS justice! You really need a mouse.

Second COD4 is really good. Especially the single player mode.


RE: A top Online FPS
By ioKain on 1/17/2008 9:37:34 AM , Rating: 2
lol, TF2 is horrible, game is so spammy. I bet you're one of the guys who sits in a corner with an engineer pounding on his turret and health machine all game. COD4 is years ahead of this crap game. I guess COD would get old getting your ass handed to you cause your used to having a turret doing all the shooting for you.


Macbook Air
By JoshuaBuss on 1/16/2008 7:05:36 PM , Rating: 2
lol.. too bad apple doesn't seem that interested in releasing computers with any real graphics power




RE: Macbook Air
By Anosh on 1/16/2008 8:27:39 PM , Rating: 2
Well, the Macbook Air is not made for gaming.

Besides if Apple made drivers for the 8800 or 38x0 series they'd have a great gaming machine in their Mac Pro


RE: Macbook Air
By solgae1784 on 1/16/2008 9:41:51 PM , Rating: 3
Mac Pro now has the 8800GT 512MB option. And 8600M GT that current Macbook Pro has isn't exactly a slouch either.

My only concern is how well it'll run on Macbook, iMac with Radeon 2600 Pro, and older Macbook Pros with Radeon X1600 graphics. But remember that OS X uses OpenGL, unlike Windows which uses Direct3D.


RE: Macbook Air
By jtemplin on 1/17/2008 7:59:07 AM , Rating: 2
8800gt is a pretty good GPU. People make it sound like apple is years behind in acquiring their GPUs...

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A...

Of course its overpriced. Price to make money in a low volume market.


RE: Macbook Air
By mmntech on 1/17/2008 2:41:27 PM , Rating: 2
Tigerdirect was trying to pass off an "overclocked' PC version of the 8800GT for that price.
I don't think it's really Apple's fault that they don't have the same GPU selection as PC users do. Rather nVidia and ATI just aren't publishing universal (ie all GPU's supported) Mac drivers for the cards. I was told that the GPUs used on both Mac and PC cards are pretty much identical. It's just Apple can't execute DirectX code for obvious reasons.

COD4 looks good. Critics are noting it's good SP campaign I'll pick up the PS3 version if I end up getting it. I'm not much into the online play either since I would probably get my butt kicked. Being cannon fodder is not fun. lol.


RE: Macbook Air
By dcalfine on 1/17/2008 12:41:51 AM , Rating: 2
Can we please save this for the MacBook Air article?
If you want a mac that can play Call of Duty, you're obviously not going to buy the Air.

Are you familiar with the concept of a 'niche'? Or should there just be one product that everyone buys? One that does a little bit of everything. . . poorly.


RE: Macbook Air
By JoshuaBuss on 1/17/2008 1:06:03 AM , Rating: 2
my point is that the air is apple's newest product. thus, they aren't really working towards making more 'gaming capable' computers at this time.

hell, it's arguable that the 8600 was a step backwards from the x1600 in the MBP..


RE: Macbook Air
By dcalfine on 1/17/2008 7:51:32 AM , Rating: 2
No. That's not arguable.

The MacBook Pro can be configured (for a price) to be identical (on the hardware level) to the XPS M1530. Would you buy that for games? No, you'd buy the heavier, bulkier M1730. But is the M1530 that horrible for gaming?

Think of a different issue to troll about. No one takes mac gaming as seriously as PC gaming. You say Apple's not working towards making more 'gaming capable' computer s at this time. The MacBook Air is one computer. Meanwhile, Apple is at least conscious of the desire for casual gaming (http://www.apple.com/macpro/performance.html scroll down to where it says Graphics Cards) and offers good functionality for that application when it's practical.


RE: Macbook Air
By XPguy on 1/17/08, Rating: -1
RE: Macbook Air
By kelmon on 1/17/2008 3:23:36 AM , Rating: 2
? Do you spend much time on planet Earth? Kindly indicate any ultraportable computer that has "any real graphics power".


Also good news 4 us linux users
By JoeBanana on 1/17/2008 11:45:49 AM , Rating: 2
The port 4 mac is a port 4 linux. I am glad apple choose unix to be the core for macOS. This will add a lot of software to linux and a lot of linux software to macOS. I am sure that list of the games under macOS is longer than that mentioned in the post upstairs because even I played a lot of games under my ubuntu machine(cs, hl, hl2, quake3, tremulous, oblivion,...)




RE: Also good news 4 us linux users
By robertgu2k on 1/17/2008 2:51:44 PM , Rating: 3
I was under the impression that OSX was based on BSD which is not a Linux breed. Won't a port to OSX (BSD) be useless in trying to run the program under linux?

This is not a flaming attempt, I'm genuinely interested in knowing if a OSX (BSD) port can run under linux without a major re-porting effort needed.


RE: Also good news 4 us linux users
By JoeBanana on 1/17/2008 4:09:51 PM , Rating: 2
MacOSx is unix based. I dont know if it is BSD based but BSD is unix based(so either case). MacOSx programs run on linux or vice versa with simple recompile. BSD also shares binary compatibility(no recompile) with some linux distros. I am trying to say that no extra work(just compile and some minor fixes) is needed for running a program on either of the OS.


RE: Also good news 4 us linux users
By PB PM on 1/17/2008 5:27:36 PM , Rating: 2
10.5 is UNIX 03 spec, and is used upon OpenBSD, although runs off Apples own modified version. Any UNIX apps require X11, or knowledge of Terminal (UNIX) command line.

The problem in terms of games is not just the porting, but the graphics API. Some games for example cannot be ported to OpenGL, which OSX uses.


By JoeBanana on 1/17/2008 5:48:18 PM , Rating: 2
Of course some cannot be ported. There are two graphic APIs in general use today OpenGl and DirectX. OpenGL and Linux implementation is not an issue. Of course X11 apps can't be run on macOSx without X11 window manager(which can be installed in macOS).


Power
By stonemetal on 1/16/2008 9:32:05 PM , Rating: 1
Yeah but will it work on PPC macs?




RE: Power
By PB PM on 1/17/2008 2:04:01 AM , Rating: 2
Considering that Call of Duty 2 for OSX only supported Intel Macs, what do you think the chances of a newer game supporting outdated PPC Macs?


RE: Power
By PB PM on 1/17/2008 2:40:01 AM , Rating: 2
Okay, double check, I was wrong. COD2 did support G5 based PPC systems (1.8Ghz or higher), but for COD4, I think that the lower spec G5 system would struggle with it, due to the GPU if nothing else.


RE: Power
By kelmon on 1/17/2008 3:26:10 AM , Rating: 2
Potentially, yes, but in practice I think that's going to be a "no" because the system specifications for COD4 will be too high for the old PowerPC-based Macs. For Spore, while probably not as graphically intensive as COD4 (note: I honestly don't know much about Spore so I may be wide of the mark here) it is going to be delivered using Cider technology and that's Intel-only.


Cider used to "port" Spore
By proflogic on 1/17/2008 11:39:20 AM , Rating: 2
I guess we'll get to find out how inefficiently the call translation is done and what performance delta to expect out of EA's lazy ports...




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