EA's Sim City for Mac release pushed to August as game quality issues continue
Kevin Bostic
Game makers Electronic Arts and Maxis delivered some bad news for Mac gamers on Thursday, alerting them that the release of the Mac version of SimCity has been delayed until August.
SimCity was originally set to land on the Mac on June 11, giving Mac gamers a chance to experience the gameplay that had garnered EA some three million units sold when the title first released for PCs in March. A post on the SimCity blog, though, dispelled that notion, explaining that the quality of the game was an issue:
[W]e are announcing that we are moving the release date of the Mac version of SimCity to August. We have made this tough decision because we do not believe it is ready for primetime yet. We want to ensure the Mac is a great experience for our players and that is why we are taking more time.
To make up for the delay, EA and Maxis are extending the availability of the SimCity Launch Park to all players that have purchased the Mac version.
Maxis rewrote the entire software renderer for the Mac version of SimCity, using OpenGL in order to make sure it would run smoothly. It allows for competition and collaboration between players, even if one is on a Mac and the other a PC.
Thursday's delay announcement was just the latest in a series of problems for the popular title. SimCity launched to poor reviews and widespread complaints over EA's decision to require a persistent Internet connection in order for the game to function. EA also lacked the server capacity to handle the heavy user load, resulting in many customers being unable to access the game shortly after its release.
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
Marko Zivkovic
David Schloss
Wesley Hilliard
Mike Wuerthele and Malcolm Owen
22 Comments
I have both the Mac and Windows versions of many games, especially those on Steam; Civ V, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, Portal, Dragon Age and others. In every case, without exception, the game runs better under Windows on the same hardware. In some cases, on my hardware, the game needs higher specs than I have for OS X (DiRT for example won't run on my GT330m in my 2010 MBP) but does so just fine in Windows. I've had twitter exchanges with developers that tell me the issue is with nVidia, offering poor and buggy drivers. However I've also know that Apple won't allow GPU drivers between OS X point releases, and often not even in smaller releases sometimes, so if nVidia ship a slow driver for a particular chipset, you're stuck with it. Anyway, that was a long was to saying EA are probably finding it very hard to get this game to run acceptably on a Mac. OS X needs to avoid becoming a slouch.
Meh. Who wants to play 'Sim City' when 'The Last of Us' for PS3 has garnered over twenty-five "Perfect 10 out of 10's" from numerous game reviewing sites! http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/the-last-of-us I know which one will be occupying my time in the near future.
I hear they are having problems with the maps ... :D
[quote name="Zoolook" url="/t/157901/eas-sim-city-for-mac-release-pushed-to-august-as-game-quality-issues-continue#post_2340247"]I have both the Mac and Windows versions of many games, especially those on Steam; Civ V, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, Portal, Dragon Age and others. In every case, without exception, the game runs better under Windows on the same hardware. In some cases, on my hardware, the game needs higher specs than I have for OS X (DiRT for example won't run on my GT330m in my 2010 MBP) but does so just fine in Windows. I've had twitter exchanges with developers that tell me the issue is with nVidia, offering poor and buggy drivers. However I've also know that Apple won't allow GPU drivers between OS X point releases, and often not even in smaller releases sometimes, so if nVidia ship a slow driver for a particular chipset, you're stuck with it. Anyway, that was a long was to saying EA are probably finding it very hard to get this game to run acceptably on a Mac. OS X needs to avoid becoming a slouch.[/quote] I wish Apple would remove the graphics issues from the equation somehow. For the last few decades most of my Mac related hardware problems have been either NVidia cards or their drivers.
Meh.
Who wants to play 'Sim City' when 'The Last of Us' for PS3 has garnered over twenty-five "Perfect 10 out of 10's" from numerous game reviewing sites!
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/the-last-of-us
I know which one will be occupying my time in the near future.
Looks like another stupid zombie game. What is with all this stupid shit about zombies? Resident Evil was the only cool game and now even that is all played out.
Have fun playing your zombie game.