Following last week's announcement that Apple is to use Nvidia GeForce 9400M chipsets and GeForce 9600M GT graphics cards in the new line of MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Airs, Nvidia has revealed that it’s looking to start significantly promoting the Mac as a gaming platform.
We went down to the GeForce 9400M launch and had the chance to pose a few questions to Rene Haas, Nvidia General Manager for Notebook GPUs, who revealed that Nvidia would most certainly be using the The Way It’s Meant To Be Played program to encourage developers to release more titles for Mac, with release dates for Mac games falling much closer to the PC launches.
Mac gaming has, of course, long been the brunt of harsh criticism from PC users due to the platform's extremely limited range of titles and lack of support for high end GPUs. What good was buying a Mac for gaming when you had to wait months, or even years after the PC release to play the handful of games that make the transition?
With the involvement of such a high profile partner like Nvidia, which has a large influence in the gaming industry, could Apple mend this particular chink in its armour and carve out a slice of the PC gaming market?
The rise of casual gaming and the continued growth of Apple’s market share certainly seem to make this so. The 9400M is a surprisingly capable chip, especially in comparison to Intel integrated graphics, and while it’s never going to be running games in 2,560 x 1,600 with 4x anti-aliasing, it should deliver playable frame rates at lower resolutions like 1,024 x 768 and 1,280 x 800 in most games.
Should Nvidia be pushing developers to make games for Mac, or are they sleeping with the enemy? Could the Mac ever threaten the PC as a viable gaming platform? Let us know you’re thoughts in the forums.
We went down to the GeForce 9400M launch and had the chance to pose a few questions to Rene Haas, Nvidia General Manager for Notebook GPUs, who revealed that Nvidia would most certainly be using the The Way It’s Meant To Be Played program to encourage developers to release more titles for Mac, with release dates for Mac games falling much closer to the PC launches.
Mac gaming has, of course, long been the brunt of harsh criticism from PC users due to the platform's extremely limited range of titles and lack of support for high end GPUs. What good was buying a Mac for gaming when you had to wait months, or even years after the PC release to play the handful of games that make the transition?
With the involvement of such a high profile partner like Nvidia, which has a large influence in the gaming industry, could Apple mend this particular chink in its armour and carve out a slice of the PC gaming market?
The rise of casual gaming and the continued growth of Apple’s market share certainly seem to make this so. The 9400M is a surprisingly capable chip, especially in comparison to Intel integrated graphics, and while it’s never going to be running games in 2,560 x 1,600 with 4x anti-aliasing, it should deliver playable frame rates at lower resolutions like 1,024 x 768 and 1,280 x 800 in most games.
Should Nvidia be pushing developers to make games for Mac, or are they sleeping with the enemy? Could the Mac ever threaten the PC as a viable gaming platform? Let us know you’re thoughts in the forums.
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