Remember those oh-so-elusive Mac games Electronic Arts promised at WWDC? The computer game giant has now partially fulfilled its promise, shipping four Mac titles: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Need for Speed Carbon, Battlefield 2142 and Command & Conquer Tiberium Wars. The first two should sit on an Apple store shelf in a couple of days, the others a week later. In fact, that’s the only place you’ll find them, save for the online Apple store: for now, the games are sold exclusively by Apple.
Ah, but now the bad news. At WWDC, EA also promised Madden NFL ‘08 and Tiger Woods PGA ‘08 on the Mac. Instead of appearing for OS X this month on the same day as other platforms, as planned, they’ll only land in Apple stores in September or October. So much for EA’s commitment to Mac gaming.
[via Macworld]
every is upset they are late but at least they are coming at all
So they have two now, two coming soon, and two more in a couple of months... and that's not good enough?
They're spending money, time, and resources to make this happen, with no guarantee their efforts will be profitable, and we whine about their "commitment"?
Sheesh.
Better late than never, right? Seems like a 1-2 month wait is nothing for Mac users.
I wonder if it is tied to Leopard somehow? Don't know how it would be, but it's a guess.
I think this will be more of a disappointment to Steve Jobs and the expectant gaming community, as it was he and those at that conference who were promised of great news about games to come, rather than say, most Mac users will be.
Honestly, I don't much care if the games are late by a month or so since that's typically a lot better than what we normally get. Sure, EA should have known better than to come out with big public statements if they weren't able to deliver (1-month before the stated shipping date should have been enough to know that they were/weren't going to hit it) and saying that the games were coming in August would have been just as acceptable. The most important question, however, is the most obvious:
Are the games any good?
If the games are good then all will be forgiven. If not then I'm sure we'll all meet back here for a good whine...
I don't think you should bash EA so harshly. Yes, they did make a commitment to July, which they haven't followed, but this is basically the first time that EA, or any big game publisher, for that matter, releases games for os x.
Apart from the fact that they are shipping the games now, even though its two months later than promised, they are shipping quite a lot of games. Even with Cider, EA has probably worked a lot of time on these releases. So no, EA will probably not start a native Mac game studio or start developing on mac, but they ARE showing a commitment to the mac.
It's their first time. Give them a chance. The technology will surely improve with time, and so will the experience.
We really need to congratulate EA for basically "betting" on the mac platform. Because, until now, no one (with the exceptions of id and blizzard) wanted to hear about mac gaming, but after the biggest publisher goes in, others will surely follow.
This is great and all but what about NCAA 08? That's really the only game that matters, after all.