No Macs? Holy crap did WotC do the math wrong!

[JDJblatherings]

According to the San Francisco Chronicle's Business section earlier this week, Mac sales last quarter made up about 2.8% of the U.S. market.

At that point, it simply is not economically feasible to cater to them.

Tell that to the companies I paid over 2 grand for software in the past year.


There are over 20 million macs in the world. Not a small market.

 

[Aeolius]

I recently started a new 3.5e campaign, which I run via IRC. As a Mac user, I cannot use the D&DI applications, thus 4e already is already alienating me and, by default, my gaming group.

Should I get the urge to try a virtual tabletop, klooge.werks coupled with dundjinni and CrystalBall should suffice.

Whether 4e will work for a campaign set entirely underwater, using monster PCs in the World of Greyhawk, is another matter altogether.

 

[Irda Ranger]

How's about you just get your silly little white plasticy computerbox to run DirectX? Isn't there also that fake Windows environment you can run so that your computer will run Windows based utilities? Heck, I had that on an iMac back in 1998; it can't be *that* difficult to do on a new Macbook.

-TRRW

Sure, it just costs $200+. You have to buy the emulation software ($80) and a full Windows licenses ($ depends on version).

No, M_R is right. The DDI is aimed at helping people who don't have a group meet up for gaming. In this circumstance, the fact that one person can't use DDI won't cause the rest of the group to also abandon DDI (because there is no group); it just means that _if_ a group gets formed, that one person won't be in it.

The geographically distributed group still has the fun time of excluding one or more of its possible members.

The OP is right. Because DDI must be used in groups, a significant number of groups will always be looking for alternatives to DDI - one that doesn't make them exclude some of their friends. I really think it's a bad business decision.

 

[green slime]

Please, please, don't be a fish in a barrel.

It's not that hard to write good software. Why don't more developers do that?

Cheers, -- N

Once again, I find myself agreenig with Nifft.

 

[billd91]

Does not follow. You've assumed that the distribution of Mac users is even across gaming groups. However, I have frequently seen people thinking of buying a new computer advised to look at what the people around them are already using, and buy accordingly (to facilitate sharing of software, and so forth). If this advice is actually taken, the effect would be a 'clustering' of Mac users, which means some groups would be entirely, or almost entirely, comprised of Mac users, while a great many others have no Mac users at all.

That's happened to us mostly with just console games. Most of our preferences for Mac vs PC were already being set through our experiences in high school, college, and work. In the groups I play with, I can pick out only one platform switch that occurred after the gaming groups were formed (with the exception of shifts from early use of the Apple II) and that was for work and personal reasons, not to facilitate sharing of software. The rest of us, it seems, are pretty set in our ways.

 

[WizarDru]

What you need to do is try to find a market figure that is specifically counting JUST home and personal purchases -- that's the number you want to look at as those folks are going to be your customers. I'm pretty sure WotC has already done this, and still for some reason decided it's not fully worth it (my guess is the already-created DX engine played a large part in that decision, moreso than market numbers), which is why I and others are pointing out tools that will make the cost of conversion reasonably trivial.

While I'm willing to believe that 2.8% figure is not relevant to the installed D&D user-base who would potentially use the DDI stuff, I think even if the installed percentage of mac users were radically higher, say 28%, that it still would be economically more viable to make it PC only, at least at first.

Can't newer mac users make their intel-based mac dual-boot? I mean, mac users have been the red-headed stepchildren for years, in this respect. Just ask folks using Tivo Desktop, Microsoft products or the vast majority of game software.

 

[variant]

How's about you just get your silly little white plasticy computerbox to run DirectX? Isn't there also that fake Windows environment you can run so that your computer will run Windows based utilities? Heck, I had that on an iMac back in 1998; it can't be *that* difficult to do on a new Macbook.

-TRRW

These new Mac users could probably just install Windows.

 

[Horacio]

Nothing, delete, please

 

[CleverName]

They have decided to use the last DirectX iteration that doesn't work in virtual machines or emulators yet

Actually, I stumbled upon this yesterday: CodeWeavers

They have a directx engine built in and it does NOT require you to run Windows at all -- or more importantly to buy windows, at all.

Still, we are talking about spending ~$60 to run DDI or other windows apps, but it may be a workaround until WotC ports the software.

 

[SteveC]

So we all know that the mac is a minority OS. WotC says that their market research indicates that only a small minority of their gamers use macs. If their data matches other data sources, the size of that minority is less than 10% of home computer users.

Great. DDI can be a success with only 90% of the market.

But for DDI to work (or, at least, for the online tabletop to work), and entire group needs to access DDI. WotC is now building the game around the typical group of 6.

That means that somewhere around 50% of D&D game groups include at least one mac user.

Can DDI be a success with only 50% of the market? Or is WotC expecting these groups to say sayonara to their mac-using buddies?

Either way, for a company that's normally very good at recognizing the gaming group--not the gaming individual--as the key unit, I think they've made a fairly serious miscalculation.

I have to call shenanigans on your statistics. If 10% (or any percentage) of the market uses a Mac, that has no bearing on how many gamers, who play D&D, and are interested in the Online tabletop use Macs. Simple statistics like you're using have little if any bearing on software development like WotC is doing.

I manage a website for a non-profit organization, and our webmaster gives me statistics on the browser and OS of most people who visit us (I say most, because it is possible to use security to mask this). I am sure WotC has many of the same tools (better ones, actually) so they have an idea of the kind of people who visit their site now. Based on that, .8% of the people who visit our site use a Mac. If I were developing software for our group (which is unlikely, but possible) I would design for the PC, because that's who my customers are.

Beyond the simple numbers I have, WotC actually has the ability to do market research on who uses what platform and plays D&D. I would say that they have a pretty decent handle on their market as a result: far better than any other gaming company.

Based on the numbers, they've made a decision. There is no snubbing of Mac users, it's rather an issue of numbers, money and priority. If you're a Mac user, you should already know about the tools out there to allow you to run PC software. Heck your Mac may have the same video card in it as the PC I'm writing this on right now.

I don't want to sound cruel or anything, heck, I was an Amiga user for many years, and appreciate how annoying the second tier status can be. At the same time, no one made you buy a Mac...that was a decision you and others made for yourselves. For all of the great things about the Mac, the problem is software in certain areas, especially in game terms. It's not WotC's fault, it's not the gaming industry's fault...it's an issue of size and numbers, and that's it. If I were working in video editing, complaining that I couldn't get software on the level of Final Cut Pro for my PC would be much the same thing.

So I would not hold my breath waiting for a port over to the Mac, unless there are some far more significant numbers involved.

--Steve