Now that there's a Mac App Store, catering to a lot of the same gaming audience as touchArcade, selling a lot of the same games from the same developers as the App Store, wouldn't it be an idea for MacRumors to start to fit touchArcade into a wider Mac gaming site? The introduction of editorial reviews would also be welcome, there's currently not really any good source of these due to the likes of IGN really not having picked up the ball on iOS gaming and their Mac site being essentially dead.
The Mac App Store is actually part of our plans for the future of TouchArcade. I'm surprised just how much crossover there is between both stores. I have a feeling our coverage will still be primarily iPhone/iPod touch focused while highlighting interesting Mac App Store developments... Kind of how we do iPad-exclusive stuff now. We also plan to have a way to just completely turn off any Mac App Store stories from appearing for you in the future, so if you find yourself enraged by Mac App Store stories like some commenters have... A solution just may be coming!
It's good to see that TouchArcade is plannning ahead to support the Mac App Store. I would also be interested in seeing some editorial/opinion pieces in the future.
I would love to see Toucharcade become the dominent site for Mac Store games, the way IGN is for console games (with better quality reviews, of course).
This. I come to this forum for iDevice News and Reviews. I don't wanna have to see Mac Reviews and news popping up all over the place. This is probably because I don't own a Mac.
Looking forward to more Mac App Store stuff... I don't know if you'll be able to tackle one of the issues I'm finding with the store at the moment though, how well a game will run on the entry level Macbook. There are no minimum requirements as with the iPhone store, yet some of these games, while playable, are likely to melt my cheap Mac through the desk. It makes pretty much every purchase a bit of a gamble since I don't like straining this thing too hard, I can't afford a new one if it breaks.
I don't own a Mac, but I still think there's benefit in reading MAS news. We've already seen games go from iOS -> OSX, and there's no reason why we shouldn't see the reverse. For the same reason, I also occasionally read news on iPad-exclusive games, because there's some possibility that the developers will create an iPhone/iPod version of the game. That being said, as long as iOS game news makes up the majority of the news on TA, I'll be content.
The Mac App Store deserves it's own little niche in the TA community, same with the iPad. We need an upcoming MAS section and releases section as well. My first impressions are, it has potential to be just as good as the iTunes AppStore. It's simple and easy to use, you click to download and it moves down to your dock and downloads like on your iDevice. It's much easier to just download Stuffit Expander through there than going to their website and downloading the Disc Image, then opening and copying it into your Applications, THEN cleaning up after all of that. This is way simpler, and offers an easy way to get games on your Mac. I have so far only bought "The Incident" and gotten a few free games. I can't wait until it gets fully fledged and has some more good games in it. My one complaint is that the pricing is screwy, we have The Incident at $2.99, then Angry Birds at $5.99, then Peggle for $9.99, then Bejeweled for $19.99, and at one point there was Lego Harry Potter for $50! I would hope developers find a range of pricing that is good, I'm thinking $1-$20 is a decent range, but no $50 games. I'm also hoping that there can be Universal games that go on the MAS too, or come with a free code for the iOS version.
I think restricting the pricing to $1-20 could potentially kill the store. We're not just talking indie games anymore (the same goes for the iOS store but no one cares), we're talking fully-fledged PC and console game equivalents as well and they need to be priced the same way they've always been priced if developers are going to use the service. By all means include a ton of cheap, short and cheerful games, but let's have the whole range now, from the bottom to the very top. The point about installing is good, I hadn't thought of it before but now you mention it, it's always been slightly odd how a company that prides itself on simplicity had such a convoluted process for downloading and installing applications. Even Windows was considerably easier in that aspect.
No, I think that's an appropriate price range for games, never said there would be an actual restriction.
Hopefully this clears things up a bit regarding our coverage of the Mac App Store- http://toucharcade.com/2011/01/10/mac-app-store-editorial/ If you find yourself getting worked up over not wanting to read about the Mac App Store on TouchArcade, I highly recommend reading that article and giving it some thought.
Well each to their own but I would never ever buy a mac if I was given one free I'd sell or trade it. I think they are suited to certain people but I'm not one of them I don't think their bad just not for me. I have to say though reading the comments on that article I did find it quite funny people are giving angry birds low scores because their macs aren't up to running it. I'd prefer not to have mixed sections myself as far as I'm concerned it's unrelated to IOS and I have no interest in reading about it. No complaints at all about giving the mac it's own section from me though it could be a way to boost growth of the site. To summarize my opinion mac app store pretty cool for people that use macs which is the minority pretty boring for everyone else.
Yes that is what my entire post was about. Just giving my opinion I'm sure anyone who likes macs opinion is different of course but I've zero interest in them as far as I'm concerned their just a locked down restricted version of BSD.
OK but you do understand that the Mac App Store likely will be loaded with upcoming iOS games, yes? And you don't feel that's relevant to iOS gamers because...?
One interesting thing about the Mac App Store that's already emerged, is that thanks to every user having a keyboard, there are a lot of meaty user reviews being submitted. It appears that percentage of users submitting written reviews is much larger than for for the typical iOS app. Does any developer have hard data to confirm this?
If anything it will lead to worse overall games being quickly ported to each other just to try and cash in which offers nothing significant to either platform except bad games. I never said I was against the mac app store though I couldn't really care less about it I'd say if anything it's probably a good idea although I do think it's a little insulting to mac owners to give them IOS standard games when they should be getting PC equivalents but it's their money to spend. Just can't see games like infinity blade working well on a mac and I can't see games like fallout 3 working well on a phone truely I think far more IOS games will be ported to mac than vice versa.
As long as Super Meat Boy is ported to the MAS, I'll be happy. Since I can't buy it on any other of my devices. Still trying to contact them over Twitter to ask, sadly they're not responding, they have even responded to one of me tweets at them before.