Andy,
Yea I'v basicly given up on the whole Mac side, for the time being. Ill just have to wait till the PC version is out. I really can't see any reason to own a Mac on the low and mid end, so It really looks like a poor game market no matter how you slice it. But since MAX will allow easy compilation to all three, I guess we can compile for mac if we want. Although, that is not all that is required. Since support is such a big role for any software, I can see alot of distributors and indies alike avoiding MAC simply because of the lack of knowledge base and the extream cost in hardware to develope that knowledge base. At least with Linux you get the advantage of no additional software and hardware cost, but still need that knowledge base.
I see alot of people think they can just recompile to a new platform and gain a new market. But no one seems to be pointing out the support issues associated with those new markets. There are alot of reasons why game houses don't do cross platform, its seldome due to development cost, as most of the cost is in media, these days, and that ports just fine in most cases. The actuall source is C++ and moving from Windows to other platforms is not really that major of a effort. The biggest problem is that the MAC and Linux markets are just too small to cover the cost of the support they will need, especially the Linux side where, just about, everyone has a unique configuration.
You know that would be a good topic all to itself.
Yea I'v basicly given up on the whole Mac side, for the time being. Ill just have to wait till the PC version is out. I really can't see any reason to own a Mac on the low and mid end, so It really looks like a poor game market no matter how you slice it. But since MAX will allow easy compilation to all three, I guess we can compile for mac if we want. Although, that is not all that is required. Since support is such a big role for any software, I can see alot of distributors and indies alike avoiding MAC simply because of the lack of knowledge base and the extream cost in hardware to develope that knowledge base. At least with Linux you get the advantage of no additional software and hardware cost, but still need that knowledge base.
I see alot of people think they can just recompile to a new platform and gain a new market. But no one seems to be pointing out the support issues associated with those new markets. There are alot of reasons why game houses don't do cross platform, its seldome due to development cost, as most of the cost is in media, these days, and that ports just fine in most cases. The actuall source is C++ and moving from Windows to other platforms is not really that major of a effort. The biggest problem is that the MAC and Linux markets are just too small to cover the cost of the support they will need, especially the Linux side where, just about, everyone has a unique configuration.
You know that would be a good topic all to itself.