From: "Rich Gauszka" 



http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2145462,00.asp

One of the most intriguing announcements made at this week's WWDC 2007
keynote address was the return to the Mac by Electronic Arts. EA is a huge
powerhouse within the gaming industry and its presence on stage with Steve
Jobs should not be taken lightly by anyone interested in Mac gaming.

But was the announcement of EA's return to the Mac market at WWDC 2007 all
it was cracked up to be? Did Apple intentionally mislead its customer base
by not divulging the details of how EA's games would be made to run on the
Mac?

...

Cider? What the Heck is Cider?

When I first heard the announcement at WWDC from EA, I assumed immediately
EA was going to be releasing native ports for OS X. That, unfortunately, is
not true but it was never mentioned at WWDC by Jobs or the EA executive
that spoke. The crowd at the show and those who watched the video via the
internet, were never made aware and probably never suspected that EA would
be going a different route to get its games running on Mac OS X. So how
does EA plan to get its games to run on Macs?

EA will be using a program called Cider. Cider is a product created by TransGaming.

TransGaming is famous for (or infamous, depending on how you look at it)
for getting Windows games to run on Linux. In the world of Linux gaming,
TransGaming is viewed with love and with loathing. Those who simply wish to
run Windows games on their favorite Linux distribution love TransGaming for
letting them do so. Those who loathe TransGaming tend to be either Linux
purists who want native Linux games only or are sometimes those who've
tried TransGaming's Linux gaming product and had a bad experience. Either
way, you tend to either love TransGaming or hate them.

How does Cider work? Here's the information from the TransGaming site:

    "Cider is a sophisticated portability engine that allows Windows games
to be run on Intel Macs without any modi.cations to the original game
source code. Cider works by directly loading a Windows program into memory
on an Intel-Mac and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs.
Games are .wrapped. with the Cider engine and they simply run on the Mac.
This means developers have only one code base to maintain while enjoying
the .exibility of targeting multiple platforms and, therefore, multiple
revenue streams. Cider powered games use the same copy protection, lobbies,
game matching and connectivity as the original Windows game. All this means
less effort and lower costs. Cider is targeted to game developers and
publishers."

So, in a nutshell, the games that use Cider will not be running natively in
Mac OS X. Why is this significant? Well there may be potential performance
hits compared to running the same game under Windows (which is obviously
now possible on a Mac given Boot Camp). How big a potential performance hit
might we be looking at? There's no way to know at this point. It could be
terrible or it could be small enough so it's not even noticeable.

..

Cider: Death for Native Mac Gaming?

There's another aspect of Cider that needs to be considered. What will be
the ramifications of it for those still hoping for native Mac OS X games?
If company's like EA can quickly and easily use Cider then why should
anybody bother to create native Mac OS X games?

In the past companies like Aspyr ported Windows games to run natively on
the Mac. What kind of future does Aspyr or similar companies have in the
face of the onslaught of Cider-based games headed for the Mac? Will there
be any room left for native Mac game developers? Or will Cider wreak havoc
and destroy any hope for native Mac OS X games?

I wish I knew the answer to these questions. I suspect we'll find out in
the years ahead and the end result might be a bloodbath for native Mac game
developers and porters. Not a pretty picture to be sure.

And what happens if Aspyr and the other companies that port games to Mac
are run out of business and then EA and other Cider-based gaming houses
decide to drop the Mac again? Where will the Mac get any kind of games at
that point? Cider has the potential to be either a very positive force for
Mac gamers or it could be something far more sinister and evil...the death
knell for all gaming on the Mac.

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