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Two things killed Mac gaming in my mind: the almost extinction of Apple itself in the mid-to-late 90s, as well as the rise of 3D accelerated games on PC in the
by some-guy 10y ago
Two things killed Mac gaming in my mind: the almost extinction of Apple itself in the mid-to-late 90s, as well as the rise of 3D accelerated games on PC in the late 90s. Macintosh couldn't keep up in both price or performance.
I grew up on Mac gaming, being a cult-of-Mac evangelist, and most of the greats were cross-ported from PC (Blizzard, Maxis, id Software), or it had many gems of its own (Marathon, Bungie, Ambrosia). Once Half-Life came out however in 1998, I had to beg my parents for a gaming-capable PC. There just was no competition at that point.
- mikeash 10y agoI remember Half-Life as the demarcation point. Before that, we didn't have as many games and the scene wasn't as vibrant as it was on the PC, but we had high-quality stuff, often Mac-exclusive. When the Half-Life port was killed, it felt like we were definitively left behind. Stuff still showed up, but it felt like we were getting the dregs, late or poorly done or just not very many of them. Around this time, classic Mac game development houses like Ambrosia, Bungie, and Graphic Simulations folded, jumped ship, or just went into long decline. The Mac has seen a lot more games in recent years, and a big part of that is Valve's presence on the platform with Steam and, after all these years, Half-Life.
- some-guy 10y agoI think cross-platform development is a lot easier as well, especially with mature tools available for developers. (Unity, UE4, MonoGame, etc) I use Linux, Windows, and Mac regularly in my everyday life, and most of the games I play are available on Steam and cross-platform.