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

[delericho]

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.

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.

I do however agree that the DI would be much better served to be platform-neutral (hey, it's not as though it that hard to do).

 

[GlassJaw]

Developing software for PC only, especially the initial release, is fairly common in the software industry.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I'm sure they just want to discourage those arrogant "My Mac is so much better than your Windows" bastards from playing D&D.

 

[hexgrid]

I'm sure they just want to discourage those arrogant "My Mac is so much better than your Windows" bastards from playing D&D.

More likely, they knew they weren't up to the challenge of creating software that would be acceptable to the more discerning and sophisticated Mac user base.

 

[RigaMortus2]

I think you should blame Apple, not WotC...

 

[Nifft]

Developing software for PC only, especially the initial release, is fairly common in the software industry.

So is delivering buggy software, and so is failing to deliver anything.

Good practices are depressingly uncommon.

Cross-platform development is surprisingly easy, it just requires some forethought, which is depressingly uncommon.

Depressed, -- N

 

[Mercule]

Does not follow. You've assumed that the distribution of Mac users is even across gaming groups.

Exactly. There is at least one poster 'round these parts who has been banging his drum pretty loudly over the fact that his entire group, or nearly so, is non-Windows users. That right there frees up another dozen groups to use DDI.

Besides, as has been stated, the target audience for the VTT isn't groups with a currently functional membership. It's groups with a scattered membership that can't get together to game. My college group had one guy who loved Macs. Given the choice between gaming with 5 of my best friends and leaving one guy on the sidelines or not gaming with any of the 6, I'm going to go with the former option. If/when WotC makes a Mac-compatible VTT app, that 6th will be welcome to join. Ditto if he jumps to PC for his next upgrade.

Either way, there is no impact to a currently enabled group. A certain set of new groups/players are enabled, however.

The only other significant item that is Windows-only is the chargen tool. Paper has worked for a thirty years. It'll continue to work for the forseeable future. If you've gotta have your computer toy, though, I'm sure PCGen will make itself compatible with 4E.

 

[hong]

I don't think Charles - or anyone else - has missed out on that. Meeting regularly or not, if 10% of the population uses Macs, and WotC assumes group of 5-6, then the Math is simple: around half of the groups (new or not) will likely have at least one non-Windows user.

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.

 

[Wombat]

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.

 

[CleverName]

Prepare for flip-floppage:

I do hope that Wizards will quickly make the decision. I use Windows, SuSE (a little) and a Mac -- my macbook pro is hands-down my best machine. I understand why WotC would start out with a windows product, but I hope they will quickly change -- based on market data.

I think that, for the most part, since we are really talking laptops here, Wizards may be using old data:

According to NPD, Apple’s U.S. retail notebook market share for June 2007 was 17.6 percent, an increase of 2.2 percentage points over the same period last year when Apple posted a 15.4 percent market share.

As well as the notebooks are doing, Apple’s overall standing among computer makers is up too.

According to data from research firm IDC, Apple’s continued rise in computer sales puts it in third place overall among all computer makers in the U.S. This is the first time since 1996 that Apple finds itself this high on the list of top selling manufacturers.

Dell took the top spot with HP coming in second place of total unit sales. With Apple taking the number three spot, Gateway and Acer round out the top five.

The good news continues for Apple — with increased notebook sales pushing it forward, the company now has an overall market share of 5.9 percent, up 1.1 percentage points from the 4.8 percent it posted this time last year.

FYI