For Mac, EA's 'Spore' requires Leopard, Intel chip

For Mac users, one of the best pieces of news of the year was the announcement in January by Electronic Arts that it would be releasing a version of its long-awaited evolution game, Spore, on their beloved platform.

But if you're one of those Mac users who is shaking with anticipation at playing the new game by SimCity and The Sims creator Will Wright, and you don't have both an Intel-based machine and the Leopard version of the Mac OS X operating system, I'm afraid you're out of luck.

This news isn't new, as it's been listed on the Spore system requirements for some time. But having noticed it Tuesday morning, I did a search and didn't quickly find any stories out there that talked about it. So, I thought it was worth a quick mention.

On Windows machines, it requires XP or Vista, so a much wider range of fans will be able to play on that platform. But on the Mac, only those that have pretty much the latest hardware and operating system will be able to do so.

Still, that number is probably in the millions, so there's a big market there. It's just a shame those other Mac users are locked out. On the other hand, as one Mac user friend said to me Tuesday, it's an excuse to upgrade.

[RJSUSC]

Uegh...How funny, I just downloaded the Spore Creature Creator free trial only to find out that it would not install on my old iBook G4 12" (although I do have Leopard). Soon after, I stumbled upon your article...It would be nice to upgrade to an intel mac, but I'm a broke college grad. Shame, was looking forward to this game. Thanks for the article.

[hawaiiinsomniac]

ha! I was looking forward to this game, but I don't plan to upgrade yet... my iBook g4 has been kicking for 3.5 years and still going strong.

Hmmm... maybe when iMac gets BluRay support.

[Sporkicus]

It looks amazing on my new iMac. Honestly, I always look at the requirements first, just to avoid a let down :( Sorry guys, but an upgrade is DEFINATELY worth it!

[DaveB1980]

Not surprising... Odds are, EA doesn't want to put in the extra development time to get the game up and running on a different processor architecture.

[dslieker]

This is a non-issue:

Only Intel-based mac users really game in any serious capacity because they need to boot into windows to play windows-only games. In order to boot into windows the way you're supposed to, you need boot camp. Boot camp comes for free, only in Leopard.

Therefore, the vast majority of the mac gaming community has an Intel machine with Leopard.

[JimMcDish]

What? Video games for Mac? Since when????
http://www.privacy.mx.tc

[iSynic]

This is due to the fact that EA is lazy and instead of properly porting the title, they've taken the easy route and outsourced it to TransGaming for use with Cider (http://www.transgaming.com/).

TransGaming "ports" frustrate me for a few reasons. First, it means that once a game is "ported", it receives little to no support for bugs. Second, the "ports" aren't really ports. They're the Windows title wrapped in a compatibility layer like Wine with a few tweaks to add a Mac UI and config file that tells your computer exactly how to behave. This is good, in that it means Windows games are easier to bring over; but if producers are going to be that lazy then they should just let people buy Crossover (http://www.codeweavers.com) once and have access to all of their titles via the Windows versions. Third, it means that these titles don't have any legacy support for PPC machines.

It's a heavily mixed bag, and I think Mac users should loudly voice that they want proper ports. The hurdle is much smaller now that Apple is running on Intel chips.

[DanGx]

Im thinking about making a blog page just to gather Mac users to raise their hands against that stupid method of "porting". Transgaming is making the gaming experience crappy into our Macs, we need higher resouces (computer specs) than PC users to play games, like Need for Speed Carbon. EA is being lazy and releasing those bad ports of their games, and there are other companies.

Transgaming is the bad way to release mac games, everyone should learn from companies like Blizzard and Id software...

So, who joins me?

[modsuperstar]

The reality of this is that the writing is on the wall for PPC users and has been for quite awhile. I made the jump from a still serviceable iMac G5 to an intel aluminum iMac a couple of months ago for this very reason. Less and less programs will be released as Universal. Face it, PPC is dead and you can't expect companies to dwell on making things backward compatible.

[t_obryan]

Completely agree with modsuperstar.

I have Macs dating back to the G3 PPC days and write this on an Intel Core 2 Duo powered iMac. Why in the world would a company develop a new piece of software for an old defunct platform. Although not directly the same, it's as if you're asking a company to continue writing software for a Pentium II. What's the point?

[moonflash]

Or for a better example, continuing to support DOS in Windows. Windows has always been the king of backward compatibility and even they have ended all support/emulation of DOS in Vista. Apple were always a little more forward-thinking - they got rid of Classic OS support in the Intel transition.

[jelloburn]

"...only those that have pretty much the latest hardware and operating system will be able to do so."

That's funny. I don't have one of the "latest" Macs, but I easily run Spore Creature Creator on my 2006 iMac Core Duo. Since that time, the iMac has gone through a number of hardware revisions, making my 1st generation Intel-based Mac not "the latest hardware."

This is pretty much a non-issue. If you are using an iMac much older than a 1st gen Intel, you probably aren't playing too many of the latest games anyways, nor were you ever because of the few games made for the PPC platform (relative to the PC game market.)

[goodspeed8701]

mac users are so stupid... you always want the best and when developers upgrade their software making it more powerful you say they are lazy cos you want to use those old mac to run todays program well its clear that you guys are still not certified with the amount of dollars you spent to get a crappy mac.

[jamilway]

Hey buddy you have no room to talk about how dumb mac users are look at vista they seriously messed up there and you want to come here and talk about how bad macs are when you don't even have one. You're walking a fine line where you shouldn't even be.

[dathke]

People aren't calling them out on laziness because it won't run on an old machine. The issue is that, instead of an actual OSX version, the mac version is just an emulated pc version. Commands are constantly being translated between two different systems, so you need more juice to run it that you would on a pc.

[jscott418]

I would have to say to that PPC is dead and if the next OS X release supports it I would be surprised.
If it does it will certainly be the last. The power PC is not the only problem. Most lacked video cards that are fast enough for much of todays content. Even though I myself keep a old iMac going for posterity. I know it fading fast into the Apple relics of the past. That too me is how the tech world works. Here today, and gone the next.

[LarryLe]

I bought Spore, upgraded to Leopard on my INTEL Macbook PRO, and Spore does not recognize that my system has been upgraded to Leopard. Reading the other comments, this is starting to look like a Microsoft style roll out disaster....

[buggermenot]

It's because of DRM - they have to install kernel extensions which are very platform- and system-specific.