apple posts

While Microsoft has its own game development and publishing arm, one of its biggest rivals, Apple, has long been rumored to be in the running to purchase a game publisher like Electronic Arts. But according to a new report at IndustryGames that isn't likely to happen.

The story quotes Panoptic Management Consultants analyst Asif Khan who states he spoke personally with Apple founder and head man Steve Jobs at Apple's shareholder meeting. He states, " ... I can tell you with confidence that Apple will not acquire a game company. They would rather rake in the 30 percent of App Store sales that they currently have set up with developers."

The article points out that Apple does have a war chest of $60 billion in cash that could be used to acquire companies. But if this report is true, game developers and publisher shouldn't look to Apple for a big payday anytime soon.

As promised, Apple has now launched its Mac App Store for owners of Macintosh-based PCs. Much like the App Store works for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad devices, the Mac App Store allows Mac owners to directly purchase and download software programes to their Mac PCs. Developers can also publisher their programs directly through the new Mac App Store and set their own prices.

The Mac App Store launched with over 1,000 software programs and as expected there are a number of games available to purchase and download via the store. For example the casual game publisher MumboJumbo has a number of its games on the store including its popular Luxor arcade title.

Last week, Apple announced its latest financial numbers for the past quarter. As part of those results, Apple revealed that it has a pretty nice cash reserve; $51 billion in fact. During the company's financial conference call Apple CEO Steven Jobs hinted that Apple could be looking to go into acquisition mode, saying, "We'd like to continue to keep our powder dry because we do feel that there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future.

The New York Times reports that financial analysts are already speculating on what companies Apple might want to buy. The article states that analyst Shaw Wu of Kaufman Brothers has put Electronic Arts as a possible target. Apple, however, has shown little interest in the game industry in the past aside from putting John Carmack on stage at a Mac event to show off a new game engine.

Earlier this year Valve launched a Mac version of its Steam game download service. So far the evidence says that moving to the Mac platform has been successful for Valve. However it looks like Apple is looking to offer a software download service of its own for its Mac desktops and laptops.

This week Apple announced plans to launch the Mac App Store which expands on the App Store features found in its iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad products. Users will be able to download games and other software programs for Macs and the store will keep those downloads up to date with the latest versions. It's not yet clear what games will be available on the Mac App Store and Apple announced no deals with game publishers. However Apple will start taking submissions for apps to be included in the store next month. The Mac App Store is scheduled to launch within the next 90 days.

[Via Engadget]

Last week, Valve released the fourth and final part of the free online comic book adaptation of Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice. The massive comic, drawn by Michael Avon Fleming, serves as a companion to the just released DLC campaign for both versions of Valve's zombie shooter series.

But if you don't want to mess with checking out each page of the 178 page comic on its official web site or download the PDF file, you can now check out the entire four "issue" saga on your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch device. The comic is available for free via the Comixology app for all three of Apple's portable devices.

The saga of failed game developer Realtime Worlds is apparently taking another turn. Develop reports through unnamed sources that the bankrupt developer has found a buyer for its social gaming-city simulation title Project MyWorld. The game was first announced just a few weeks before the developer went into administration in August. The buyer is said to be an US-based company but no further info on the interested party was reported. It's also not known if the new buyer will keep the 23 developers who are currently working on the game.

In the meantime, Realtime Worlds' higher profile game, the FPS MMO All Points Bulletin, is still looking for a buyer, according to the article. Despite the administrator saying that the game has about 130,000 registered players there doesn't seem to be as much interest from potential buys.

Valve made a big move a few months ago when it launched its Mac game download service on Steam. However some people have complained that some of the Mac ports of Valve games such as Half-Life 2 have not been as solid as the PC versions. Now the Steam web site has detailed some of the performance improvements that Valve has made to the Mac versions of its games.

Valve says it has worked with Apple to get the improvements in the Mac ports, saying, "In addition to low-level implementation changes which have improved performance across the board, Apple has also removed some implementation inefficiencies which allow us to improve visual quality, most notably in the area of GPU occlusion queries." So not only should Valve's Mac ports run better they should also look better. On newer Mac products Valve states, "Depending on the game, video settings and the hardware, we have measured frame rate improvements from 15 percent to 120 percent on these systems." There's a ton of technical stuff on how Valve manage to get more performance out of its Mac games in the post.

Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell is never shy about expressing his opinions. Now Wardell, the head of a company that publishes Windows-based PC games like Demigod, Sins of a Solar Empire and the upcoming Elemental along with the Windows PC-based game download service Impulse, sees a big threat to the OS where he makes most of his money from.

In a new editorial on the Impulsedriven.net site, Wardell states that after owning and using the recently launched iPad from Apple, " . . . I have to say that the iPad and other devices like it are going to murder large sections of the Windows based market. And as a Windows software developer, that doesn't make me happy." His reasons include faster performance and the iPad's "instant on" capabilities compared to Windows-based notebooks, saying, " . .. the iPad (and future devices of its class) are just much more convenient." The app store's features and its way to allow developers to make cool programs and charge money for them is also cited as a big advantage.

Wardell states if Microsoft doesn't try to address the problems with Windows in comparison to the iPad's features, " . . . I predict Windows will become purely a content creation device whose content is primarily consumed elsewhere." He adds, "The iPad is only the beginning. Once Android devices and WebOS devices show up, it could spell the beginning of the end of Windows dominance."

The world of Mac gaming may change quite a bit on May 12. That's the day that Valve has just announced will be the time they will launch the native Mac version of their Steam PC game download service. Previously Valve announced that the Mac port for Steam would be released in April.

No other info about the Mac Steam launch was announced in the brief email press release. We do know that Valve's own games (Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2) will also be ported to run natively on Apple's machines. There's no word yet on what third party games will be included in the Steam Mac launch.

While we are still waiting for Valve to release their games and the Steam platform for the Mac as they promised a month ago, other game developers feel Apple isn't all that excited about bringing high end graphical games to the Mac platform. One of them is Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli who actually owns a Mac.

However, as he told Kotaku, getting his studio to port their upcoming first person shooter Crysis 2 to the Mac is not likely to happen. He states, "If Apple would really push then we would probably think about it." He adds, "Any time we talk to Apple, they're like 'Yeah we're excited' but then they pull back. I just [sense] a lack of enthusiasm about Apple for this.' Perhaps if the Mac Steam port is successful we could see Apple changing their tune.