Cider: Is This the Death of the Mac Game House?
Seems TransGaming is working on a technology similar to WINE (which it was based on originally) that will allow PC games to run on a Mac, without being ported.
Sounds interesting, but I'll believe it when I see it. If the library will have to be modified to support each game that works it probably won't amount to much. This would have to support pretty much ANY new PC game, when it's launched to really be a hit. I'm also reminded that marketing statements always make things sound like they'll be a lot better than they are:
If this is for real, there will really not be much need for Mac porting any longer...
Read more here: 'Cider' makes Windows games run on Intel Macs
Coming soon: Windows games that will run on Intel Macs thanks to TransGaming’s new Cider software. There’s no rebooting involved and no separate Windows partition to be installed. It all happens transparently.
Sounds interesting, but I'll believe it when I see it. If the library will have to be modified to support each game that works it probably won't amount to much. This would have to support pretty much ANY new PC game, when it's launched to really be a hit. I'm also reminded that marketing statements always make things sound like they'll be a lot better than they are:
Gupta said that PC games running using Cider on an Intel-based Mac provide near-native performance. “The average user won’t be able to discern any difference,” he said.
Though in some cases, Gupta indicated users are bound to see 10 to 15 percent lower frame rates than they would in a truly native game.
If this is for real, there will really not be much need for Mac porting any longer...
Read more here: 'Cider' makes Windows games run on Intel Macs
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posted by Michael on Thursday, August 03, 2006
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1 Comments:
When I saw this press release, I was pretty skeptical as well. I've dealt with frameworks trying to emulate MFC/Win32 before and they have performance problems.
"If the library will have to be modified to support each game that works it probably won't amount to much. This would have to support pretty much ANY new PC game, when it's launched to really be a hit."
Very true, and it should be noted that those are opposing goals. Its hard to target all possible apps (even games) and still get good performance out of the framework. Typically, some sort of assumptions will have to be made to squeeze some speed out of it. If those assumptions don't match up with the assumptions your app makes, then you have to modify it.
At a previous company, we looked into WINE to get Linux support for our product. One the of the major problems was performance, and our product wasn't even a game.
At best, the framework will probably make it easier to port from Windows to the Mac. Unfortunately, the press release makes it sound like a silver bullet, and we all know how well those work out.
Andy Finnell, LosingFight.com
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