Among the games we see arriving for the Amiga towards the end of '97 and into '98 are games from the Mac. After all, the Mac has plenty of these 'high (?) spec' games like Myst, Phantasmagoria, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, etc... But I can't help thinking; if these games are ported to the Mac, then why doesn't the Amiga get them anyway?
Let's face it, the Mac has never been the games machine of choice. Games companies may choose the PC and Playstation because their markets are now far bigger, but surely, the Amiga games market is far bigger than the Mac?
From sales figures and chart positions, it was probably only around mid to late '95 that the PC really started outselling the Amiga (and this was after Commodore had been bust, and bought out, and after what some said would be the Amiga's last Christmas (!) ) But whenever it was, I always remember that Mac games were virtually zero (trace, if you like) in comparison. Now over that time, I presume this hasn't changed, it has probably got slightly worse in fact. Of course, the Amiga's situation has got worse, but surely not so bad that less games sell on it than the Mac? So why don't we see these games that get ported to the Mac on the Amiga also then?
The answer, as you have probably guessed, lays in the specifications required for these games... and what games companies believed to be the average Amiga specification owned. Sure, if a game requires only a base A1200 (or can be cut down to work on one), then fine, port it to the Amiga. It'll sell enough easily to make it worthwhile, and a lot more than on the Mac. But...
If it requires fast '030 (or more), 8MB RAM, CD ROM, then forget it - if all the games companies think virtually all Amiga owners have a base A1200, then we won't see these games.
Let's take it to extremes - if we have a game that requires PowerPC (okay, let's consider before the PPC accelerators were released!), then the game can't be ported to the Amiga, because there is no market for it - but the game might be ported to the PowerMac.
But as we all know, there are plenty of Amiga users with '030/8MB/CD, and hopefully enough to make ports of games worthwhile.
This has come about because companies like ClickBOOM and Vulcan have realised that there is more to Amiga than a 2MB floppy-only A1200, and are prepared to invest in that. Not developing for high specification Amigas has always plagued the Amiga, since the days of the A500. This time, it was the PC that was the 'minority games machine', but that didn't stop companies making them as high spec as they could.
You might say that it was Commodore themselves who were responsible, by not pushing the high end of the Amiga enough - and, without Commodore that this problem may finally be broken?
I hope that games companies do push the limits on the Amiga - '030 isn't really high spec. I have a friend who owns a Mac with a 33MHz '040, and he wouldn't even consider running the latest Mac games. And remember that's equivalent (very roughly) to around a 486SX40/50; how many PC games will run on that now?
PowerPC must be supported; people will only buy these accelerators if games like Quake, Tomb Raider, etc are available for them. We don't want a situation where you buy a 175MHz 603e, but the only Amiga games available won't even take advantage of the power of the 'fallback' '030...
Of course, there is the question of whether there is a big enough market for high spec games on the Amiga. Well, we shall have to see.
Mark