EA makes play for Mac gamers
By Peter Cohen
Electronic Arts (EA), the video and computer game publisher behind some of today’s most popular games, has announced its direct support for the Macintosh. The company will begin releasing Mac versions of some of its biggest games beginning in July.
Taking the keynote stage with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, EA co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Bing Gordon told attendees of this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) that EA would return to the Macintosh beginning in July with four of its most popular franchises: Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars, Battlefield 2142, Need for Speed Carbon and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In August, EA will ship Madden NFL 08 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08.
The plan is for EA to release the Macintosh versions of all of these games simultaneously with their PC and console counterparts, said EA spokesperson Tammy Schachter.
“We want to capitalize on the marketing momentum for these games,” said Schechter. That’s a distinctly different approach than in the past, where EA has licensed out Macintosh versions of the games to Mac-specific publishers, like Aspyr Media.
http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/06/11 ... /index.php
Edit, nvm man sorry to get your hopes up
An explanation of how EA games will be ported and non Intel based system will be left out.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07 ... stems.html
EA's new Mac games will demand Intel-based systems
Many are lauding Electronic Arts' decision to actively support Mac OS X games as a significant boost to Apple's software lineup. Some legacy Mac users, however, will be left in the dark.
For instance, each of the new Mac games announced thus far will be converted using TransGaming's Cider engine, which -- unlike direct reprogramming efforts -- wraps a layer around the game's original code. The interpreter translates all of the normally Windows-only system calls made by a game (including DirectX and Win32) to Mac calls with a minimal overhead.
Doing so not only cuts down on development time, the company says, but also guarantees equal support as multiplayer games, patches, and other features will always be shared between Mac and Windows versions. All of these have been chronic difficulties for games in the past, as developers had to convert code both to a new OS and a new processor architecture at the same time.
