Sales for video games and hardware took a nose dive during the month of April.

Bad Game Sales: April 2010

Surely this is just the time of year? Starting to warm up and people are playing games less?

Well, if May's anything like it, Rockstar should rightly own it. I mean, RDR is basically a GotY already (although it does face some competition later).

Episodes really could have made a larger impact. Roll your eyes if you will, but Rockstar has isolated itself from Mac and Linux long enough. I know they make up a very small slice of the home computing/gaming market. But they are unrivaled passion-wise. Call of Duty Modern Warfare is available for Mac for Pete's sake. Rockstar likes to hold itself up as a maverick among mediocre steeds, yet it has avoided these two computing communities, with similar or greater claim to maverickhood, like the plague. Call of Duty devs have not been so discriminating. And that is why it will always be a greater franchise that GTA is willing to be. Would it be financially smart? Perhaps. But it would be the right thing to do regardless. Who else is willing to shell out for hardware and software? Mac users. I have done the homework. Aside from CoD there are very few marquee titles available for Mac. Let me spell this one out. L I M I T E D C O M P E T I T I O N. Unlike the PC landscape distracting gamers with Mass this or Gears that the Mac catalog is really only awash with your garden variety RTSs and puzzle games. If you don't believe me please browse the games section in the Apple Store sometime and tell me if that ranch isn't a few studs short of an outhouse.

"But what about boot camp?" You might ask. Sure Mac users can play PC games on their Apple rigs as sure as booting into a second OS. But how many actually go to the trouble to install it. To many Mac users the thought of putting Windows on their rig is akin to purposefully exposing it to herpes just to score with the whore next door. This is a large chunk of the Mac market. Call it small if you will. We're not talking dollars here, we're talking passion. Five gamers with passion eclipse 50 without it. GTA has a large fanbase already, true. But without a quality product made by passionate people GTA would be that title you can't remember. Brining Mac users aboard is bad how?

A lot of you just don't like Mac users. You consider us vain, snobbish and/or smug. I won't deny that many of us are. But we know style, sophistication and quality when we see it. Rockstar is just too Mac. How much longer will they ignore that elephant in the room? I know RS likes to put all their eggs into one basket, but they can only field that play so many times before they get blitzed. Hut Hut. 2 cents.

Excuse me JR, but calling Macs the elephant in the room is an exaggeration. How many gamers do you know among Mac people? I have no doubt that the percentage is extremely small, for the simple reason that Mac does nothing to appeal to gamers. People who buy it invest in stylish laptops for work or media entertainment. You can't get real gaming out of it (out of the hardware, too). Plus, even PC gaming is... well if it isn't in decline, it certainly was pushed to the second row by the consoles.

I don't think that a market study would show any results positive enough for companies to invest in this. Unless Mac does something about it, though, but that's going to be a surprise in a way, its image is much more mainstream than that of gaming. If I'm wrong, and you've seen data to the contrary, then I'd be happy to learn something new about the industry. But for some reason, when I see companies that like to expand everywhere and release some games on all available platforms (from mobile to the PS3) and not even take a look in the direction of the Mac - well, it says something. Sure, Valve's move with the introduction of Steam is interesting, but results remain to be seen. I'm sure other companies are watching these developments with keen interest, and perhaps it's too early to be so dismissive, but it's not wrong to be sceptical, either.