this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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After Apple originally announced the first version of Halo in 1999, Xbox apparently called Bungie and said "'Steve Jobs can't have that. We're going to buy you.'" (www.gamesradar.com)
submitted 5 hours ago by Agent_Karyo@piefed.world to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 5 hours ago (5 children)

Apple announced a game without securing distribution rights first? Seems a bit shady on Bungie's part for letting them, and negligent on Apple's.

Also, if we want to paint the narrative that a potential future of Apple in gaming was stolen by Microsoft, wouldn't that put Apple in the perfect position now to hit back? They've been toying with the idea of bringing gaming to macOS, but they seem to want someone else to do the heavy lifting. On Linux you have Proton, and on macOS we had Whisky, but the guy threw in the towel when he realised another company was making a commercial product out of it, he didn't want to take away from the work they were doing. (To be fair, they had been at it longer.) But it seems like if Apple wants to be serious about gaming, they need to build something like Proton. Maybe they should buy Crossover and make it part of macOS. Let just any Mac user run games made for Windows. But I'm also not saying non-gamer Mac users should bear any part of the cost of gaming, but something gotta give somewhere.

Microsoft is screwing up by running people off of Windows when PC building costs are at record highs and the economy is so low, and running up the price of the Xbox due to a situation they had a hand in creating (the AI bubble). While Linux will be a better target for people with perfectly good computers who don't want to build a whole new one to satisfy Windows 11's requirements, anyone looking at the end of the life of their gaming PC should be looking at the M4 Mac mini at $500 and at least considering it. And Apple can help them make that decision by appealing to gamers and actually being serious about it. Because if fucking Apple of all companies starts taking gaming seriously, maybe Microsoft will again, too.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 14 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Apple had a handshake deal with Bungie, until Microsoft bought Bungie and made the Mac exclusive an Xbox exclusive.

It came full circle when Halo CE SE was released ~~as a Mac exclusive~~ on Mac & PC. And it is arguably the best version of the original game on any platform (higher resolution textures without a complete remake, exclusive multiplayer weapons, etc.).

[–] vikingtons@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Can you elaborate on CE SE? Is this different from the 2003 Mac port? As far as I'm aware, the port to Mac had lower resolution textures on top of certain rendering issues, poorer AI behaviour etc.

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 1 points 18 minutes ago* (last edited 18 minutes ago)

Bungie made games for Mac originally. The 2003 Mac version isn’t a port, It’s the original game. The PC and Xbox versions are the port. That’s why it feels like it’s behind those. Because it literally did have less development time despite coming out later.

They released another Halo for Mac a few years later that I think is the one the other commenter is talking about. It came out around the time of the MacBook Air and as a result is the only game I know of that has an official no-cd patch.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I was not aware of any of those problems. And I played the Mac version. When I had an Xbox, I spent a lot of time looking at textures up close cause the quality was amazing to me. Once I played it on the Mac I instantly noticed how much cleaner and sharper everything was.

It was released during the PowerPC era, and the internet says it works on Intel Mac through Rosetta emulation. That might result in the graphical issues you mentioned. Having to run through Rosetta means Microsoft (or Macport) never issued a patch for native Intel compatibility.

I was wrong about it being Mac exclusive. I though the Windows PC version was a straight port from Xbox, but it’s the same “enhanced” version of the game that Macs got.

[–] nemith@programming.dev 13 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Hard to imagine but back in the day it wasn’t up to your operating system to distribute software. They were just a platform and you had open choice to obtain software.

Apple showcasing what their hardware and software was capable of was normal. I don’t think this was negligent but maybe naive seeing how things are run now. It was much better and we got better products and competition.

Budgie was an apple developer before with Marathon which was exclusive not because of any distribution rights but just preference for the platform.

Alas money talks.

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

There have been exclusives for a long time, even before Halo. Mostly console, because Windows hasn’t really faced competition. Macs could never decide on a chipset. First it was Motorola, then PowerPC, then Intel, and now Apple Silicon. It’s a moving target. Apple Silicon may not be forever either. If Apple wants to get into gaming, I can see them working with AMD, but not soon.

[–] v0rld@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

Apple doesn't even be arsed to support games that were released on their own platform like 5 years ago. Why would they suddenly start bothering to support games released for other platforms?

[–] nocturne@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

macOS we had Whisky, but the guy threw in the towel when he realised another company was making a commercial product out of it, he didn't want to take away from the work they were doing.

I misunderstood what happened with whiskey, I thought he was making a free version of a paid product.

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

No, he wasn't making a free version of Crossover, but it did the same thing as Crossover. They both use free software made by WINE. The Whisky dev was not stealing from Crossover. However, Crossover gives some of its proceeds to the WINE community, so the Whisky developer felt that users using Whisky were indirectly cheating the WINE community by getting a free ride. Note that Proton and WINE are free. Crossover is the outlier being paid, but Crossover also gives back.

There are no assholes in this situation whatsoever. Not the Whisky dev for giving us a free alternative and not the Whisky users not paying for Crossover. Not even Crossover since they contribute to WINE. If there are any assholes, it's developers who make games for Switch but not Mac (since they're both ARM64 platforms; obviously not counting first-party Nintendo developers), people who pirated Crossover, and developers not developing at all for ARM64. But that's a stretch and I'm not after any of those people, I'm just saying, if someone has to be an asshole, that's where I'd look, not at Whisky/its dev/its users, and not at Crossover/its dev/its users.

[–] False@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Valve pays Codeweavers (developers of Wine and Crossover directly), so it's not like using Proton takes money away from them.

[–] nocturne@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 hours ago

Thank you for the very detailed explanation. That really clears it up for me.

Mostly I only play games on my Mac that are available for Mac, with one or two exceptions. I used whiskey for one of them.

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 1 points 38 minutes ago

Bungie had always been a Mac first, PC/console later game dev up to that point.

[–] fox2263@lemmy.world 10 points 1 hour ago

The Apple event after was just insane. Jobs said about the previous announcement that Bungie is still making Halo for Mac. And Bungie and Microsoft reps came on and nervously said it is still being made.

It released in Xbox. And then PC. And then a long time later, a third party were hired to port it to Mac.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 9 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Having a nightmare vision of the future where Apple releases it's own gaming console

[–] radix@lemmy.world 12 points 4 hours ago

The Pippin 2.

[–] deranger@sh.itjust.works -1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (2 children)

How is this a nightmare vision? Proprietary bullshit, which is what consoles are, is what Apple does better than the others. M series chips seem ideal in terms of hardware, and a consolized Mac mini would be pretty dope.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 9 points 3 hours ago

It doesn't even exist and I'm already getting insufferably smug Apple heads telling me it's the best one.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

M chips are super expensive. They’re optimized for low clockspeed/idle efficiency and pay through the nose for cutting edge processes, whereas most gaming hardware is optimized for pure speed/$, with the smallest die area and cheapest memory possible, at the expense of power efficiency.

And honestly the CPU/GPU divide over traces is more economical. “Unified memory” programming isn’t strictly needed for games at the moment.

And, practically, Apple demands very high margins. I just can’t see them pricing a console aggressively.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 8 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

And Infinite is likely the end, at least for me...

[–] tacosanonymous@mander.xyz 1 points 50 minutes ago* (last edited 48 minutes ago)

Good on ya for sticking with it that long. I stopped at 4. Tried 5 but couldn’t get through it and I only had it bc it came with the wife's Xbox.

Edit: just to add, I’m not even sure what it is since I like some of the things they’ve tried. Like, I love the multiplayer bots. They’re just fun to mess around.