Gabe Newell On Apple, Sony
October 15th 2007 12:12
Game developers tend to be the grumpiest bastards you'll ever see. They work hard, get paid shit and after all that they are insluted by the bigget douchebags anywhere for small shortcomings.
So what does the fatman say thats getting on the nerves of them Apple and Sony fanboys? Well lets start with Apple,
It was later 'revealed' (most likely false story) that Gabe 'demanded' $1 million from Apple to port over his critically acclaimed game(s) Half-Life 2 and others from Steam to the OS X platform. Apple apparently stopped there.
Fanboys everywhere (yes, Apple dipshits) were 'outraged' that Gabe would demand '$1 million' from Apple to port over one of the biggest videogame franchises ever. Whether or not this is true gauging the reaction is interesting.
Total bullshit.
Lots of complaints about how Gabe has no right to make such demands and that he can keep his games (clearly Mac owners have no idea just who this man is). Of course when you take a step back and look at the whole deal, whats $1 million? NOthing. Apple sneazes fifty million, whats the big deal with this million that makes Apple such a tight arse?
Put it into perspective, Microsoft has provided tonnes of developer support since the Windows 95 era for PC gaming, in fact one of the main reasons gaming on the PC is more common and standard today is because Microsoft helped developers. There would no more be a market for PC games than there is a market for Mac games if Microsoft had not provided the developer support it has.
From creating a graphics API to creating the best programming tools, Microsoft has without a doubt poured hundreds of millions (if not billions, consisder the Xbox) into helping its developers make the best quality games possible.
Now one of the biggest developers out there asks for $1 million from Apple and there is a right to be outrage? Does anyone realize how little $1 million is. Apple should have taken that deal and pissed on Microsoft and I should be writing about how bloody lucky and unfair Apples behaviour is, not writing how stupid they are.
On the topic of Sony and the Playstation 3, Valve says what everyone knows:
Source
Which has got the Sony fanboys fuming.
Theres a good point made by the inverviewer after that question, specifically on Gabe's hypocricy, as he also 'hated' the Xbox 360 not too long ago.
The answer he gives is pretty much to be expected, at the time of the 360s development it became apparent Microsoft was going for multiple cores on the same CPU, at that time the market was all single core and Intel had no plans to start creating multiple cored chips. This was of course annoying in the sense it seemed that consoles where going way too far the wrong way, though that wasn't true.
It became apparent to get more power out of CPUs the performance had to be given over to the programmer. Fact of the matter is double 10ghz does not mean double the performance of 5ghz, though a dual core chip at 5ghz could do double its capacity (if used properly).
Though on Sony's front they went the bitchy route making an overly complex system for multiple cores (the much hyped, little appreciated Cell processor). Developers have a bit of a right to be annoyed at the radically different and needlessly complex architecture of the Cell CPU, especailly since it is made in such a way that whats applied there is useless anywhere else.
That is, code written for the 360 can be ported to the PC with modifications but would have to be more or less re-worked to move from Cell to the PC.
In the end the hate thrown Gabe's way isn't that big of a deal, what he says is mostly true even if opinionated.
So what does the fatman say thats getting on the nerves of them Apple and Sony fanboys? Well lets start with Apple,
Kikizo: People keep asking you about a potential Macintosh version, and your stance is that this is a strictly Windows project...?
Gabe: Well, we tried to have a conversation with Apple for several years, and they never seemed to... well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go "wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming". And then we'll say, "OK, here are three things you could do to make that better", and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow though on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms.
Gabe: Well, we tried to have a conversation with Apple for several years, and they never seemed to... well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go "wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming". And then we'll say, "OK, here are three things you could do to make that better", and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow though on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms.
Fanboys everywhere (yes, Apple dipshits) were 'outraged' that Gabe would demand '$1 million' from Apple to port over one of the biggest videogame franchises ever. Whether or not this is true gauging the reaction is interesting.
Total bullshit.
Lots of complaints about how Gabe has no right to make such demands and that he can keep his games (clearly Mac owners have no idea just who this man is). Of course when you take a step back and look at the whole deal, whats $1 million? NOthing. Apple sneazes fifty million, whats the big deal with this million that makes Apple such a tight arse?
Put it into perspective, Microsoft has provided tonnes of developer support since the Windows 95 era for PC gaming, in fact one of the main reasons gaming on the PC is more common and standard today is because Microsoft helped developers. There would no more be a market for PC games than there is a market for Mac games if Microsoft had not provided the developer support it has.
From creating a graphics API to creating the best programming tools, Microsoft has without a doubt poured hundreds of millions (if not billions, consisder the Xbox) into helping its developers make the best quality games possible.
Now one of the biggest developers out there asks for $1 million from Apple and there is a right to be outrage? Does anyone realize how little $1 million is. Apple should have taken that deal and pissed on Microsoft and I should be writing about how bloody lucky and unfair Apples behaviour is, not writing how stupid they are.
On the topic of Sony and the Playstation 3, Valve says what everyone knows:
Edge: A while ago you said that you thought Sony should do a 'do-over' with PS3. Do you still think that?
GN: Absolutely. I think [PS3 is] a waste of everybody’s time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There’s nothing there that you’re going to apply to anything else. You’re not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they’ve created. I don’t think they’re going to make money off their box. I don’t think it’s a good solution.
GN: Absolutely. I think [PS3 is] a waste of everybody’s time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There’s nothing there that you’re going to apply to anything else. You’re not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they’ve created. I don’t think they’re going to make money off their box. I don’t think it’s a good solution.
Source
Which has got the Sony fanboys fuming.
Theres a good point made by the inverviewer after that question, specifically on Gabe's hypocricy, as he also 'hated' the Xbox 360 not too long ago.
The answer he gives is pretty much to be expected, at the time of the 360s development it became apparent Microsoft was going for multiple cores on the same CPU, at that time the market was all single core and Intel had no plans to start creating multiple cored chips. This was of course annoying in the sense it seemed that consoles where going way too far the wrong way, though that wasn't true.
It became apparent to get more power out of CPUs the performance had to be given over to the programmer. Fact of the matter is double 10ghz does not mean double the performance of 5ghz, though a dual core chip at 5ghz could do double its capacity (if used properly).
Though on Sony's front they went the bitchy route making an overly complex system for multiple cores (the much hyped, little appreciated Cell processor). Developers have a bit of a right to be annoyed at the radically different and needlessly complex architecture of the Cell CPU, especailly since it is made in such a way that whats applied there is useless anywhere else.
That is, code written for the 360 can be ported to the PC with modifications but would have to be more or less re-worked to move from Cell to the PC.
In the end the hate thrown Gabe's way isn't that big of a deal, what he says is mostly true even if opinionated.
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