Mac Games

Apple Sold on id Tech 5, Wants More Games on Mac

id Software's Todd Hollenshead claims the Mac makers are now more serious about games

By Filip Truta, Apple News Editor

10th of July 2008, 13:30 GMT

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During an interview with the folks at Kikizo, id Software's CEO, Todd Hollenshead, shed some light on exactly how Apple sees gaming and why it has never managed to up this segment throughout the years. Moreover, the renowned game developing company is truly glad that Apple is moving away from the PowerPC architecture, something seen by id Software's CEO as "weird Apple-only benchmarks."

Before sinking their teeth into the Mac-gaming topic, the interviewers made a reference to an older chat of theirs with Valve's Gabe Newell. Valve's MD and co-founder had

some pretty interesting things to say about Apple's "gaming" department, like how it was not "able to follow through on even simple programs in the game space." Hollenshead agreed:

"It's a true comment. I think historically, Gabe is absolutely right. The Apple guys will probably frown to hear me say that, but I mean there are facts and there are facts [laughs], and the fact is, that over the years Apple has shown an interest in gaming and then not followed through on it. Certainly our hope is that they are going to follow through. I do think they have made a significant investment [...] not only did [Steve Jobs] give time to id, he gave time to EA, and I do think that it demonstrates at least a commitment at a high level to sharing the platform's face, if you will, with games."

According to Hollenshead, Apple is giving more serious thought to gaming this time around, thanks (in part) to id Software's astonishing id Tech 5 engine. "Now Apple was great to work with us; we were in some dialogue and they asked what we thought of having [the id Tech 5 engine] on Mac, they sent some engineers down and they made a commitment about drivers and how they were going to support this stuff in the future," he explained.

Hollenshead added that he hoped Apple follows through on its efforts to leave the PowerPC behind, going Intel-only on all of its hardware, because, as he noted, "you're not having to deal with this weird Power PC architecture; they have Intel chips and all that stuff, and it does make it a whole lot easier for us to work with it." "I don't think that they're hamstrung at a performance level - they don't have to create these weird Apple-only benchmarks," Hollenshead concluded by saying.

TAGS:

id Software | interview | Todd Hollenshead | gaming | Intel

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