Amidst rumors that Apple may buy E.A and that its building the next big console, one wonders what will happen to the gaming industry if the rumors come true. Traditionally, Apple has never been pro-gaming, as evident from its poor support for gaming hardware or software. But now that Apple has held itself together and posted a good profit during these hard times, and that its fanbois are crazy enough to catapult any minuscule product launch into a glitzy media event, getting into gaming might seem as the next logical step.
There are two basic problems with this:
1. Apple isn’t known for gaming. Rather some may even say apple is anti-gaming
2. Anything and everything associated with apple is ridiculously priced
Both problems are hard to solve. You cannot just buy a game developer/publisher and change your image overnight. It will take months if not years for both the developers and the gaming community to start believing in Apple, and that will not be easily accomplished either. That will mean more advertisement campaigns, and counter campaigns by Microsoft, which means expenditure running into millions. And Apple’s pricing will not help their cause either. With the popular “Laptop Hunter” campaign by Microsoft focusing on pricing, and support for gaming; and both being genuine reasons to chose a PC, it is going to be very difficult for Apple to post good sales numbers unless they retain the old pricing. Which is very unlikely to happen.
On the other hand, it will be a very smart move if Apple manages to do everything right. EA is well established, and with their popular titles grossing millions in sales, it already has a well established, faithful user base. By retaining the original team and pricing, Apple can get a head start into the billions worth gaming industry. It will also be a big plus that they can start developing quality titles for the Mac, something which is lacking for a long time now. It will be interesting to see how they handle the hardware support for the Macs though.
Whatever said, this is an interesting development that everyone in the gaming industry will watch. Hopefully, Apple will not screw this one up.
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