Valve's Gabe Newell on Apple's Gaming Failures

The site Kikizo has up a lengthy interview with Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve and one of the minds behind the Half-Life 2 games. Though their discussion centers around the Orange Box (slated for release soon) and the titles contained therein, the discussion kicks off with Newell's scathing dress-down of Apple's understanding of the importance of gaming: "We tried to have a conversation with Apple for several years, and they never seemed to... well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go 'wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming'. And then we'll say, 'OK, here are three things you could do to make that better', and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow though on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms."

Agreed

[hirschma]

Seriously, better gaming availability and I'd be running to buy a Mac. Like, tomorrow.

Of course, the same could be said for Linux. If the "bigs" showed up on Linux, I'd be dumping my Windows desktop, too.

Bottom line: first non-Windows OS with decent, supported, modern gaming and I'm off to the races.

I have a feeling that Shuttleworth isn't as silly as the Mac folks on this issue, wouldn't be surprised if he's had the same meeting, too.

Re:What Apple needs

[quanticle]

I haven't seen a home computer optimized for gaming since the old Amiga.

What about the original XBox? That was basically the same architecture as a PC, but optimized for games.

Yep. No games.

[CommandoCody]

Given that I've been able to run every Blizzard game since Warcraft II on my Mac, and that I've been able to run every Quake III- or Unreal Engine-based game that anyone bothered to port, the whole "Macs can't run games" argument is weak at best. Especially from Newell, who canceled a nearly-finished port of Half-Life I because he just didn't feel like supporting it.

It seems gabe newell...

[Clete2]

It seems that Gabe Newell wants to comment on every platform but Windows' failure. I remember a while back, he commented on Linux's gaming failures. Now, he's complaining about Macintosh's gaming failures.

Where's an article from Gabe Newell on Windows' gaming failures? Sure, there are many games on Windows, but the performance on some is horrible compared to the performance of the same games on Linux or Macintosh platforms. Windows takes up so much RAM, lowering overall game performance.

In my opinion, Gabe Newell thinks he is God and that he owns the gaming world. This is just what I seem to get from all of his articles.

Disclaimer: In general, I respect Gabe Newell and he did a wonderful job with Steam and the Half-Life series and their subsidiaries.

Re:What Apple needs

[nuzak]

Microsoft is in no way being short-sighted by locking down the XBox. Game licenses are what make them money, XBMC and homebrew doesn't. You may not agree with their decision, but it doesn't make them stupid for it.

It'd be nice if they let people freely mod the things once it was fully EOL'd in a few years, but that isn't really germane to the product strategy.

Re:What Apple needs

[Seraphim_72]

Gamers also have NO loyalty.

Eh? Where have you been during all of the PS/XBox/Wii/Cube/PSP/DS/Cedega SUX Wine is good enough/ flame wars? And besides, look at all the consoles I just mentioned, no bios to tweak, no video card to swap out. The group you reference are the ultra hardcore types. For every copy of Bioshock sold there were four copies of Sims 1/2. This isn't current [wikipedia.org] but if start to add the tweakers up, they aren't that big a bunch. All would take is a little initiative on Apples part and they could watch thier sales climb as the casual game crowd can get thier games working under Mac.

Sera

Can't play World of Warcraft with Mighty Mouse

[Myria]

In WoW, pressing both the left and right buttons simultaneously means "walk forward". The Mighty Mouse can't click both buttons simultaneously due to its physical design. The Mighty Mouse is a 1.5-button mouse.

(Yes, you can walk with the keyboard too.)

Re:Hey! They got games for Mac too...

[tepples]

but you know, when I go into a store now, there's only like six games for the PC too. Everything is for consoles now days. Gaming on the PC seems to be dying. :(

Do you code? Do you draw pixel art? Do you write music? If so, you can help fix this. Reply if you're interested.

Re:Yarr

[tepples]

The answer to the middle one: Two! on average.

Which also happens to be the typical number of players per arcade cabinet. So why don't more of the popular games for Windows or Mac support a 2-player split-screen or shared-screen (think Gauntlet or Bomberman or Smash Bros.) mode? And why doesn't Windows or Mac support two independent mouse-like pointing devices, so that some indie can make (say) co-op Centipede for two trackballs? (Or does it?)