Interesting article. I really wonder how true the last comment is about people finding themselves preferring OS X over WinXP when having both on one system. I really fear that hacing the two, big, commercial OSes on the same hardware (read, same computer) could potentially point out many of Mac OS X's performance issues. I won't get into details as I'm likely to be totally wrong!

As for games... I hardly play any computer games. I'm a console guy. What I'd like to do, though, is develop (or, just be involved in game development) for the Mac (exclusively), with an emphasis on bringing some of the elements of console games to the PC gaming world.

But, personal opinions and dreams aside, how will BootCamp really affect Mac OS X and gaming? While the potential to run both WinXP and Mac OS X on one machine must be quite appealing to some, is it really worth the cost? We all know that the Intel switch has done nothing to improve the cost of Apple Macintosh desktop and laptop computers, so having to then go out and buy a copy of Windows as well? Hmm. Plus, I feel sorry for Apple in advance when people start calling them or going to their stores because their Windows partition is messed up. It'll happen. Sure, right now, with BootCamp not being part of OS X (it's beta right now), the dual boot capability is pretty much left to the geeks, but in the future, when it'll be accessible for all... *shudder*

I'm a pessimist, tried and true. That in mind, I believe BootCamp will have a negative impact on Mac gaming, at least in terms of ports. Gamers want things ASAP, which is part of the problem with the video game industry in general. Not so much for computers, but definitely with consoles - the demand forces publishers to give developers insane deadlines. The insane deadlines result in games with numerous flaws.

Then, you also might factor in that with potentially a couple million Mac users using BootCamp and a number of them becoming interested in buying games to run on their WinXP partition, that the demand publishers are seeing will increase slightly. That's never good.

Of course, I don't know what I'm talking about since I don't work in any aspect of the computer or gaming industries. Woo!

In closing, I have zero intention of trying BootCamp or using it when it's a full-fledged feature in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

I wonder what percentage of game players on the Mac play casual-based games compared to $40-$50 (ported) games. I feel that BootCamp won't change too much for the Casual game market. If anything, it'll make the market bigger, since more people will buy Macs. However, I do feel that within the next 2 years 'game porting companies' will be affected since most "hard-core" gamers that have a Mac will most definitely be willing to install the XP operating system.

On a personal note: When I get a new Intel-based Mac (possibly whatever new incarnation the iBook turns into), I'm definitely going to purchase and install the XP operating system since I spend a great deal of time doing web development. It'll be a huge savings compared to buying a PC. I just hope that Mac OS 10.5 has a virtualization component so that I don't need to re-boot between operating systems.

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