 
Electronic Arts Publishes More Mac Games
Electronic Arts (EA) is a large and widely known company that is
behind some of the biggest titles in the computer game and video
game categories. Many die-hard Apple Mac computer fans were excited
when EA recently announced that they will be releasing Mac games
versions for many of their popular titles.
The company has already begun shipping some of its titles in Mac
games versions and will continue to roll out additional titles as
they are reworked to run on the Apple Mac computers. Some of the
first titles made available as Mac games were: Battlefield 2142,
Command and Conquer 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, as
well as Need for Speed Carbon.
Most of the Electronic Arts titles already have some type of history
on the Apple Mac computers. For instance, Command and Conquer
recently became available on Apple Mac OS X machines through an
Aspyr port, just as previous versions of Harry Potter and
Battlefield were, along with some other EA titles in Mac games.
However, the Need for Speed Carbon is completely new to the Apple
Mac computer game category and is the latest edition of the popular
street racing game.
One of the main challenges that has interfered with the publishers
of computer games in bringing the Mac games to realization, has been
the delay from the time that a new game is released to the general
market and when it is ready to be released for Apple Mac computers.
The delay means that the publisher loses crucial momentum in their
marketing campaigns because often several months, or even as much as
a year, goes by before the same game is ready to join the list of
Apple Mac games. By that time, a good percentage of the consumers
have lost interest in the game, have purchased it for a different
platform, such as a video game console, or are ready for the latest
and greatest rather than last year's news in video games.
In order to address this concern and achieve simultaneous release of
their titles as Mac games too, EA is collaborating with TransGaming
Technologies, who are developers of Cider. Cider is a technology
that enables Windows-coded computer games to be run on the
Intel-based Apple Mac computers.
Through Cider, several Mac conversions of popular games have been
brought to the market including such well-known titles as Myst
Online, X3 Reunion and the soon to be released EVE Online, which is
a highly anticipated multi-player, role playing game that takes
place in outer space.
The Cider technology uses what is called an abstraction layer that
works much like the other Windows-on-Mac OS X products. This
technology allows Windows to run in the Apple Mac OS X environment
virtually, such as Parallels Desktop and Codeweavers.
Cider operates rather differently from those other solutions to
running Windows on the Intel-based Macs, as it does not require the
installation of a separate partition on your drive. Via the Cider
software, the Windows applications can run just as if they were
native Mac games, with the same look and feel that Mac fans expect.
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