Apple at E3

SteveMeister said:
Well the only problem with that statement is that I believe they sold more Mac Mini's in the first 20 minutes than they sold Pippins in its entire life span :D
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Wait, Pippin actually came out? @_o I thought it was aborted before shipping. :lol
 
In a perfect world, Nintendo and Apple would be in a joint relationship, yeah. The two companies have a lot in common, even if most of it falls under their sometimes irritating penchant for going against the grain. The two of them combined would produce two things:

1) A black hole. You can't combine egos that large without some kind of anomaly forming.
2) A very powerful, very nice looking console that's probably a bit overpriced, but everyone would probably want.
 
Shogmaster said:
Wait, Pippin actually came out? @_o I thought it was aborted before shipping. :lol
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Yes it came out, but it is super rare. The Japanese version was much more prevelent, and it actually had game software (the US version mostly had edutainment).
 
I don't think Apple would neccessarily need to be involved with the console side of stuff.

Aside from the design of the casing, Apple really couldn't do much.

Portables on the other hand would be a totally different story.
 
Shogmaster said:
Wait, Pippin actually came out? @_o I thought it was aborted before shipping. :lol
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yeah, Pippin came out in late 1995. it's kinda rare though.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=2&c=855

The Pippin @World (black model) is the US version of the Pippin Atmark (white model), which was sold in Japan. Apart from the different colored case, both systems are identical.

In the early 90's, several companies tried to market videogame systems based on their computers' technology as those were not selling as much as they should have to. Apple was one of them and designed the Pippin upon the hardware of their second generation Macintosh, like Commodore did with their CD32 based on the Amiga hardware.

The Pippin was first marketed as multimedia / game a machine, but after the flop of the 3DO, they re-launched the Pippin as an an internet appliance that also played games. That didn't work either, because, by the time the Pippin was ready to go, PC prices had dropped a lot.

By the way, pippin is a type of apple.

Technical Information
NAME Pippin @World
MANUFACTURER Bandai
ORIGIN U.S.A.
YEAR December 1995
BUILT IN SOFTWARE / GAMES Modified version of MacOS
CONTROLLERS The controller has a direction pad, 4 buttons on the face, two on top, and three on the bottom along with a track ball in the center.
CPU PowerPC 603 RISC Microprocessor
SPEED 66 MHz
RAM 6 MB combined System & Video Memory
64 kbyte SRAM Store/Restore Backup
VRAM 1 MB
ROM 4 MB, 128 KB flash ROM
COLORS Up to 16.7M colors
SOUND Stereo 16 bit 44 kHz sampled output & input
I/O PORTS Geoport for telephony, 2 x Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) connectors, 2 x standard Serial Communications port (RS 422/232), Stereo audio input & output, PAL / NTSC video outputs (VGA, Composite, S-Video), 2 x controller ports, 1 x phone output, 1 x PCI slot
MEDIA Built-in 4X CDROM drive
POWER SUPPLY Built-in power supply unit
PRICE 600$
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Pippin's biggest technical shortcoming was the lack of dedicated 3D processing hardware. something that also plauged Project X aka Nuon. because of this, Pippin, although it had a superior CPU, the same as used in Sega's Model 3 board, the Pippin was unable to compete with even the N64 or PS1, making it more of a CDTV, FM Towns Marty, CD32 class system. I think even the 3DO 1 / REAL / M1 could outperform Pippin in 3D.


it was the Pippin2 that was aborted and never released. kinda like Atari's MidSummer (Jag 2) was aborted.
 
Celicar said:
They're probably just showing off another iteration of the ipod. No more, no less.
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Apple keeps announcement like that strictly to the MW Expos. If they're at E3, you can bet that it has something to do with games. What is anybody's guess. I do agree that an alliance with Nintendo is pretty far-fetched, so they're most likely just going to be showing off some new Mac games.
 
Nash said:
The 4th Gen Clickwheel gives you up/down/left/right with fire button in the middle, plus it can do analog left/right for things like Tempest/Breakout etc.

Be fine for simple stuff, and more comfortable than a mobile phone for games.
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That would be insanely uncomfortable for more than five minutes...and you'd destroy your clickwheel with any kind of prolonged use. That sounds like a pretty bad idea.
 
FortNinety said:
I wonder if Apple's loss of Halo has made the desire to get involved in games any stronger or weaker?
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You mean their "loss" of Bungie? They never owned Bungie. Bungie was just a mac developer, that in fact ported some of thier games to PC. There still isn't a single game that Bungie has ever made that hasn't been released on Mac yet, except for Halo 2. I'm sure that's in the pipeline along with the PC version of Halo 2.

Edit: Forgot about Oni, I don't think that's on OS X.
 
StrikerObi said:
You mean their "loss" of Bungie? They never owned Bungie. Bungie was just a mac developer, that in fact ported some of thier games to PC. There still isn't a single game that Bungie has ever made that hasn't been released on Mac yet, except for Halo 2. I'm sure that's in the pipeline along with the PC version of Halo 2.

Edit: Forgot about Oni, I don't think that's on OS X.
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I'm just referring to that vid from 99 where Halo was unveiled as the "killer gaming app" for the G4.
 
doncale said:
Pippin's biggest technical shortcoming was the lack of dedicated 3D processing hardware. something that also plauged Project X aka Nuon. because of this, Pippin, although it had a superior CPU, the same as used in Sega's Model 3 board, the Pippin was unable to compete with even the N64 or PS1, making it more of a CDTV, FM Towns Marty, CD32 class system. I think even the 3DO 1 / REAL / M1 could outperform Pippin in 3D.
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Wasn't the 600$ price a little prohibitive to compete with any consoles? :P
Anyway, powerwise PPC603 was basically Pentium class, so it should be capable of decent enough 3d still.
 
SteveMeister said:
Well the only problem with that statement is that I believe they sold more Mac Mini's in the first 20 minutes than they sold Pippins in its entire life span :D
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fun fact: Mac mini is actually smaller than xBox :lol
 
FortNinety said:
I wonder if Apple's loss of Halo has made the desire to get involved in games any stronger or weaker?
Click to expand...
Halo was never Apple's ... technically they never have it and they never lose it.

Anyways, Apple is better positioned to regain market share with a really strong Console market, since gaming won't be a concern anymore.
 
The iPod already ships with a simple game or two already on it. I think they have a breakout clone and something else. I could see Apple adding more simple games to the iPod, but nothing beyond what you can play on a cell phone. The interface just isn't good for games in general.

As others have already said, Apple puts in an appearance all the time at E3. They're probably just going to support the Mac developers and encourage others to make games for the Mac.

BTW, which would you rather have, an MP3 player that can play games (iPod) or a portable game player that can play MP3's (DS or PSP). Give me dedicated gaming hardware for more sophisticated games, with the ability to play music if I want.
 
Kung Fu Jedi said:
BTW, which would you rather have, an MP3 player that can play games (iPod) or a portable game player that can play MP3's (DS or PSP). Give me dedicated gaming hardware for more sophisticated games, with the ability to play music if I want.
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Honestly for convienance sake, I would actually take a game-enabled i-Pod in that scenario, even if it was just GBA level games.

Because I never really know when I leave the door what I'll want to do, maybe listen to music (or which music) or play some games to burn time.

If such an i-Pod could also play video ... that would seal the deal. The HDD just offers way more flexibility in what you can carry around in a small device.
 
Kung Fu Jedi said:
BTW, which would you rather have, an MP3 player that can play games (iPod) or a portable game player that can play MP3's (DS or PSP). Give me dedicated gaming hardware for more sophisticated games, with the ability to play music if I want.
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Given that I've officially crossed the hal way mark on my 20GB iPod, I'd have to say that I'd prefer a dedicated music device than some gaming/music hybrid where I'm sacrificing both functionality and storage space for the convenience of only carrying one thing instead of (*shock*) two.
 
Apple is probably going to show off the growing collection of games for Macs to show that you can 'reasonably' be a mac gamer. They are also likely to go out of their way to show off Doom3 and WoW running on OSX.

Apple has been recruiting J2ME (Java2 micro edition) folks for a while now (which is how most phone applications are written) which gives credibility to Apple perhaps revealing some games/game functionality for the iPod, but I wouldn't hold my breat :D
 
Ok, I can definetly see your point on having a hard drive. I have a HD based mp3 player and it is wonderful as I have my whole CD collection on it and I love having the option to choose what I want to listen to.

But I'd much rather play games on dedicated gaming hardware, such as the DS or PSP, then on something like the iPod. When I play games like Breakout, which I know is on the iPod, or games on my cell phone, I quickly lose interest and want something with more depth and a better interface. A PSP, with a decent sized memory stick would still offer a nice variety of music while providing a much better gaming experience, although it does come in a much larger package.

I guess it comes down to what kind of experience you want to focus more on, music, games, video, etc. I typically throw several devices in my backpack when I head out the door in the morning, but if I could only take one with me, personally, I'd probably lean more towards a PSP.
 
indextop20050111.jpg


Smaller than a GameCube (I own both). If game developers can see the potential that this computer have, we might end up with an interesting turning point in Mac games development...
 
Laurent said:
indextop20050111.jpg


Smaller than a GameCube (I own both). If game developers can see the potential that this computer have, we might end up with an interesting turning point in Mac games development...
Click to expand...

One idea I've got is that Apple could sell some variation of the Mac Mini as a home video game console if they did the following:

1. Developed something like DISCover has done for PC games, where you have a BIOS and a set of profiles to automatically recognize and install Macintosh games. In short, you would buy a computer game disc, stick it into the machine, and the machine itself would take care of the dirty work for you.

2. Offered cheap and easy cables to hook the machine up to composite, S-Video, and component inputs on the typical TV that the typical consumer in the year 2005 would own.

3. Included one or more memory card slots (preferably an existing and popular standard like CompactFlash, SD, or Memory Stick) so that consumers could transport data between machines, and also with other computers and electronic devices (PDAs, digital cameras, etc.).

4. Produced some easy-to-use wireless joypads in a matching design, along with a convenient DVD remote.
 
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