Why no Mac support for Guild Wars 2?

As the title says, I would like some input as to why there won't be a Mac version of GW2.

It's probably not worth it for the 3 people that would buy it.

Apple shipped 2.1 Million Macs in the 3rd quarter of 2007. Their sales have been in the top 5 among all PC makers for the entire year of 2007. Even if I were to be conservative and estimate that only 5% of those people would game, that would be 105,000 potential sales. From a 3 month period. Now extrapolate those numbers out to the proposed release date of GW2, and consider that Mac sales are growing like 25-30% per year.

One reason:
Boot Camp.

There's really no good reason (financially) to support Guild Wars for mac users. They're more likely to spend more than they'll earn.

The new OSX comes with the finish version of bootcamp. Install xp/vista on it and make it duel boot OS/window. Work perfectly fine, I have it and I use it. GW run just like normal and all games I tested on it run just fine as well, so far.

Infact the new bunch of mac run window faster than pc.

I knew Boot Camp would come up. If I were planning to run Windows, I would buy a Windows computer. Dual booting is a crutch used by lazy developers.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Mac is a pc.
Mac pc doesn't exist anymore.
Mac have only MacOsx
Mac have a EFI bios but this not increase speed performance

well, take it or leave it, I guess. They have no plan for mac os but who know? Apple is taking a bigger share of the market everyday. Dont hold your breath though.

Too bad that no one buys a Mac to play videogames.

Also:

the mac-user demographic is trivial compared to PC-users. its not worth the time or money to put out a mac version. buy a PC like all the normal people in the world or QQ more.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/appl...ndows-in-japan

Isn't Japan like video game Mecca? Nobody buys Vista to play games either.

http://www.google.com/search?q=vista+game+performance

More likely to be a consol version than a mac version that is if a consol can handle the updates "which I doubt"

It seems to me Consols have the biggest games market then PCs then Mac.

I would have bought a mac years ago except the number of mac games I see for sale is tiny compared to the competition.

Read DarkNecrid's post. 5% is too high an estimate for Windows machines, and Windows is where the gaming is. Mac's aren't known for gaming, meaning the percentage will be lower than it is for windows.

So you need to reconsider your estimated number of mac players who will buy guild wars. Then you need to estimate how many of them will use bootcamp and subtract that from the rest because the bootcamp users will buy anyway.
Then you need to subtract the people who will use a windows emulator to run it, because they will also buy either way. Then you need to estimate how much a port will cost, along with the cost of keeping it up to date every time ANET changes something.

The best you can hope for is something like what CCP did with Eve Online where they picked a windows emulator* and decided to officially support it.

*I know that emulator isn't the correct term for the programs involved here, but its close enough for this thread.

Read the entire article please. Specifically the last paragraph.
How many of those Macs are being brought for business use ?

Also I thought that Japan was known for console gaming, not desktop. And for the port to be worth it you need to consider worldwide computer use, not a regional one.

Oh come on, that's just not a brilliant thing to say.

Avid gamers will always buy PCs... The number of games out there for Mac's is negligible at best. Mac's perform highly with graphic, music, and video programmes, far better than PC's, but PC's have games. I hate to say it, but people who buy Mac's know that their game choices will be limited. The number of gamers who buy Mac's is minimal indeed. There may be many mac's sold, but I guarantee most of them won't be used for gaming...

Blizzard thought Mac was worth it over and over again...

People like to say that Macs are meant for design, but that's not such a smart thing to say. Comparable Mac and Win PCs aren't going to handle design programs much differently! The difference is the user experience. Knowing Windows kind of makes you feel like a computer expert. It's not as user friendly as Mac, but many people are familiar with it anyway. Mac is very user friendly in comparison. For me, it's stuff like Exposé and all the system things made easy, such as giving folders (incl. burn folders in Leopard) icons.

Windows PCs sell more. The percentage of Mac sales compared to PCs with Windows installations is less, but if you look at the numbers, and ignore them then you're making a bad choice as a company.

Sure, there's Boot Camp. It works. But if I had a choice to have a Win client of have it directly in Mac, I would prefer Mac. I've used Win for something around 12 years and Mac since April, and I already prefer to be in OS X.

You're not looking at it from a financial perspective. ArenaNet would have to redesign the game from the ground up just for the small, practically negligible, group of Mac gamers interested in playing Guild Wars.

It's just not worth the cost.

Thought I would rebold your statement there. They shipped, not sold, 2.1 million macs. If we would continue to take your numbers, 105,000 potential sales is not enough of a buyer base for the work involved to make the game compatible with macs even if they were guaranteed that all 105,000 would buy the game.

It's also not just the cost of creating the game on two platforms, but also the amount of testing would double. Everything would need to be tested on both Windows and Mac.

There just isn't enough demand for developers to cover the cost it takes to create games on both Windows and Mac

Blizzard also rakes in over a billion USD per month (~1.1 billion) and has over 2,700 employee's.

Let me know when ArenaNet gets close.

EDIT: For the record, ArenaNet has 140 employee's atm