Diablo 3 shipping simultaneously on Mac

Get a real mouse? They're not PC exclusive.

You go out and buy a normal, logitech mouse, hook it up to your Mac and regal in the fact that the Mac does have right click functionality and support for scroll wheels.

Mighty Mouse?

Never...ever... get a mighty mouse... save your money and get something with a real scroll wheel and right click.

@Rask

OS X has supported right click functionality for a while now? I'm not a fan of their Mighty Mouse, but even that has scroll and right click, although I personally like my Razer mouse better.

Two fingers if you're using a trackpad. You're probably not.

Diablo 3
Starcraft 2
Spore

:D

Or you could just upgrade to a new Mac? Same logic. But do whatever makes you happy!

Well yeah, but I do prefer Windows. My old XP was fried when unbeknownst to me, a virus scan started running at it's scheduled time at 2 in the morning once a month, and I happened to be playing TF2 at the time. My computer just up and died. I'm resorting to my somewhat lame PowerPC 512mb RAM 10.3.9 iMac.

Don't count on it. WoW came out in 2004, and you can barely run it. Diablo 3 is coming out in 2008 or 2009. That's a 4-5 year difference...

Well, maybe you'll be able to run it, but really, I would be surprised. =/

@Vault, gotcha. I'd be suprirsed (like... jaw-drop) if that Mac could run Diablo 3... If anything I'd guess Blizz would drop support for 10.3, and possibly 10.4 depending on how far in the future the release is.

I really, really hope it can't. Nothing against you but I want this game to kick ass and if they dum down the visuals I'm going to be pissed.


I don't mind if blizzard disables some of the whiz bang for lower end systems but if they simplify the models and animation just to satisfy pathetic systems, I'll be disappointed.

It's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. People don't think Mac users game, and so companies don't make games for Mac users, meaning Mac users can't game.

It's kind of dumb because most Macs are very capable of gaming, especially now, as they are medium- to high-end computers and don't really target the entry level consumers (per the 80-20 rule). People claim there aren't enough Macs to justify making games for them, but the irony is that 90% of Macs are powerful enough to play a lot of games, while probably only 40% of PCs are equally capable (those $300 Walmart specials can barely run Solitaire). For an analogy, that be like a tire (or tyre) company saying that they are only going to make racing tires for Dodge vehicles and not for Porches because there are so many more Dodges on the road even though most Dodges wouldn't need such tires (slightly different percentages, but it's the same concept). Games that come to Mac sell relatively well, as MacSoft and InterPlay have made their entire business strategy porting games to Mac. Now that the CPU architecture is the same, it's dumb for any company to forgo the possible profit of selling to both systems (when the development costs of going multi-OS are going down since Apple is trying to work with game developers to make things easier - look at EA). I'm not saying that all Macs are super powerful and capable of playing every game at maximum settings, but most standard PC's aren't either, and both are pretty upgradeable to achieve your desired result. It comes down to developers acting like fanboys about their platform of choice (see Mark Rein) and publishers not saying "Look, it'll only cost $X more but it will make $XXX more, so do it."

Since the Intel transition, and with Macs once again the number one computer on college campuses (I get the impression there might be a decent number of gamers in higher education?), there is no responsible reason not to develop for Mac simultaneously (unless you're going the Crytek route and don't really want anybody to be able to play your game). An upgraded Mac can be equally powerful to any upgraded PC.

If I were a stock-holder in Blizzard, I'd be very happy that they've always understood getting your product out to as many people as possible, regardless of system or computer speed (they've always had great scaling to system specs).

Well put, aristokrat. Add Aspyr and Feral to the list of porting houses!

I think some of the problem is that some companies don't even bother trying the Mac market. I can understand though that not all developers have the resources to program 2 platforms simultaneously, and they'll obviously go with the route with the most potential customers.

Apple also needs to get its act together before Mac gaming can really flourish. Their GPU drivers are not always good...

Oh well, I knew what I was getting into when I got a Mac - gonna take whatever games I can get!

The main reason most other companies can't do what Blizzard does is because they don't make a bazillion dollars every month.

@aristokrat

I couldn't agree more. I happen to be a great example of what you're talking about. I'm getting a Mac for college and I couldn't be happier that Diablo III is coming to Macs. Not to mention, I also plan on picking up Spore. And I'm hoping Red Alert 3 comes to Macs too. If developers make the games I'll buy 'em. I haven't done any computer gaming in a while since my PC hasn't been capable of that since 2004, but with developers like Blizzard offering games for Macs with reasonable system requirements, things are looking good.

@aritokrat
Wow, I got my mac for college too.
Still, I can always just- run windows on my mac..

Its too bad for them. I, on my Windows laptop, can play Windows games!

I assumed it would at least be made for Intel-based Macs running 10.5 too. Its good to see the trend continue. This means I won't have to take Oblivion off my partition running XP.

Yeah, that will not work I regret to say.
Boot camp doesn't use the native graphics card of the system, rather a "virtualized" graphics card that is designed only to run windows apps that aren't 3 dimensional, with a non-existent physics engine