GameTap No Longer Compatible With Mac OS X

Why?

The current player works, why discontinue it?

WHAT?! What gives? That’s completely backwards and totally unfair, is there a reason?

My guess is MacOSX support was costing more than what they were bringing in from people playing exclusively on OSX.

Irrelevant since they were using Cider to translate a Windows program, the same one used by Windows users on OSX. It wasn’t even native, despite using OpenGL and Qt toolkit. The cost is negligable to pay Transgaming for the license considering how many vendors big and small use it to provide the poor users a subpar experience. The marketshare is 10% confirmed by multiple sources, and the main demographic for obvious limiting reasons would invest into Gametap for arcade, console, and classics.

The web plugin approach is supposed to cut more costs and make it easier to manage and more transparent to the user, but as a result of poor planning they are gimping features with the first iteration. Let’s see how bad it plays out… public beta testing would had saved them the trouble of losing 500 customers, and I can be that such a number is rather conservative considering how sudden and blunt these changes came.

I won’t be ditching it because of this, because I still find it to be quite efficient versus outright acquisition of said titles offered by the GT catalog. I hope they listen to customers from now on, ignoring what these overpaid marketing folks say, as time and time again through iterations of the standalone player history has shown they are next to clueless about topics ranging from efficiency and satisfaction. Quality is all people buy, so everything you do forward must focus on it and not incur additional costs to the pockets of customers or expect them to flood out the gates in droves.

I have no idea how anyone who is seriously into playing games would even buy a Mac.

They have their uses and I am not bashing Macs but playing games is not one and considering how much more expensive they are then a PC I just don’t get it.

Lets face it, Steve Jobs is way more of an evil dude then Bill Gates could ever have even tried to be.

I’m a huge 80s arcade game fan, and was very happy with the $5/month classic service news announcement. You guys just had to go and ruin it, didn’t you? I would have subscribed for life.

I’m gutted! As long time user (free service only sadly due to the crime of my living outside of the US), I’ve always appreciated the Mac client and would have gladly bought the service if given the chance… but as a Mac-only user I’m forced to abandon the service.

I hope this is only a temporary measure… but it doesn’t sound like it.

I’m amazed this has got so few comments. Perhaps that, in itself, justifies the snip.

» Voltron said: Mar 8, 2009

I have no idea how anyone who is seriously into playing games would even buy a Mac.

They have their uses and I am not bashing Macs but playing games is not one and considering how much more expensive they are then a PC I just don’t get it.

Lets face it, Steve Jobs is way more of an evil dude then Bill Gates could ever have even tried to be.
»

First of all if you prefer a MAC over a PC “which I do hands down” for what ever reason and I do own both. You should then NOT have to also go and buy a PC just to play games? Now that’s stupid!

Why are MACS so more expensive in the first place? It has absolutely nothing to do with EVIL intentions. It’s all about but consumer consumption. Bottom line here is there are way more PC users VS MAC users, thus causing MACS to cost more then PC’s. It’s called product and demand if their were just as many MAC users things would be different.

-=R!P=-

64-bit operating systems are becoming more popular, and so is OS X. You can’t just hide in your 32-bit Windows XP turtle shell forever, Gametap..

Let’s be honest, it’s not impossible for Mac users to play in Windows, just burdensome. I’m a Mac user, but I’ll keep my subscription a while longer and see where this goes. If classic gaming absolutely won’t work in Fusion/Parallels, then I may cancel. Honestly, Fusion/Parallels isn’t that bad of an option; it’s pretty much what we had anyway, only now there are a few more clicks.

Voltron ==> I see your point, but we just want our classic games, which is ideal for casual gamers. To be perfectly honest, most of the classic games could be completely cross-platform if they built a solid emulator in Flash. I don’t think we’re being too demanding, we’re not asking for a hardcore gaming experience, we just want to play some Galaga

What I wanna know is… why? The Gametap player was working just fine for Macs. Couldn’t you at least keep this for us? I never really supported the browser plugin approach because the Player was awesome, especially the random game selector.

The bottom line: It wasn’t broke, so why’d you try to fix it? Why?

It’s just lazy on the part of whatever corporate conglomerate owns Gametap. Macs are a superior machine that operate on intel based chips. If given a choice to buy a Microsoft machine or a Mac, it will be the Mac every time.

Microsoft has cost the world an enormous amount of productivity with their lousy operating system.

Productivity is a good thing?

They’re not superior, they just don’t have the market share for people to bother messing them up. Even Linux and it’s various distros have a larger market share than Mac. Besides, Mac OS is just an extremely closed, super expensive *nix variation now. Maybe if Apple allowed more control over the OS and lowered the gigantic markup over the parts they used, they’d actually be considered a viable platform by game developers.

Penquin, I’m sorry, but you’re completely out of line. You have no idea what you’re talking about, and your information (wherever you claim to be getting it) is COMPLETELY inaccurate. To start, Linux has nowhere near the marketshare (let alone the mindshare) of ANY Apple product, least of all their computers. Second, Apple is the most ‘open’ proprietary system on the market. It is more open than MS’s lowdown OS ever has been, is now, or ever will be. To see an apparent Windows user bashing Apple for being closed is just ridiculous. Third, I really wish this whole “Macs are SOOOOOO much more expensive than PCs, zOMG!!!11!” thing would just die already. A comparable Wintel system (comparable hardware AND software) cost just as much, if not more, and there are plenty of sources to back me up on that, just Google it. As for ’super expensive,’ Mac OS X is cheaper than ANY version of Vista by damn near an order of magnitude. Once again, to see an apparent WIndows user bust down Mac OS X on price is simply ludicrous. Their markup is no more than that from HP, or (blech) Dell, it’s just that Apple actually uses quality parts in their products, unlike the cheap crap in Dell and HP boxes (used to maintain their razor-thin margins, just so they can stay in business), to the point where you NEVER KNOW what parts you’re getting when you buy a Dell or HP computer; it’s made up of whatever parts were cheapest that day.

The main reason that Apple is not more of a gaming system is not quality of the hardware or the OS; it’s not even entirely to be blamed on the 10% (yes, I said TEN PERCENT, and that’s a conservative estimate; their marketshare of laptops worldwide is more like 20%) marketshare. It’s mostly because MS has desperately worked for years to tie gaming to their own OS through use of proprietary (and might I add, lackluster) developments like DirectX. That makes it very difficult to port the games to ANY other system, processor differences notwithstanding, and THEN (and ONLY then) do the marketshare issues come into play. Now, however, major game shops (EA being one major example) are leading the way, and beginning to start the operation of porting their newer titles to OS X. Are you going to see every Windows game on OS X? Of course not. Not for a long while, anyway. But it’s a step in the right direction. Apple had a lower marketshare for so long that game houses kind of forgot about them. But now, they’re starting to remember, especially with the marketshare brought on by the iPhone/iPod halo. Speaking of which, you DO know that Halo was developed originally for the Mac OS, by Bungie, who, until a scheming MS bought them out, was primarily a Mac gaming house. They lost some of their good designers/programmers in that purchase.

Anyway, the point is, get your information straight next time. Sorry for the rant/long ass ramble, everyone.

Actually, a custom made Windows gaming box is much cheaper than a Mac of equal cost. Besides, EA is DRM heavy, and do you want that coming to your OS of choice? Besides, for core Mac users who want to run Windows games, there is always Bootcamp.

*Correction: In the first sentence, I meant to say powerful than a Mac of equal cost.