Systems Preferences on Mac games compared to Windows

Question

Hello,
I am wondering why Mac games have higher system preferences compared to Windows games.
For example "The Movies" game on Mac requires:
Mac: OSX 10.4 Tiger or later,
PPC G4 1.67 GHz,
512MB RAM,
64MB video card,
DVD drive (minimum)
Whilst on Windows:
PC: Windows 98SE or later
800 MHz CPU
256MB RAM
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound and video card.
Now anyone can see the amount Windows needs compaired to Mac but why such a huge leap.
And this isn't only on "The Movies" it's the same with "Sims 2" and "Age of Empires"
If you know why could you please respond.
Thanks,
James

Answer 1

And to do with the OS under which they are released.
For "The Movies",
an 800MHz CPU under Win98 is pretty **** fast, but load 2000 Pro, XP or Vista on an 800MHz and you're toast, even before you try to run the game.
On the Mac, "The Movies", released 5-6 years after the windows version, has either been written to take advantage of OSX 10.4, or maybe just tested under OSX 10.4, but in any case, because of the modern OS, it needs a lot more CPU.
It's also entirely likely, that because of the years waiting, the Mac version is better than the Windows version released all those years ago. This was true for all the SimCity versions up to SimCity 4 (SimCity 3 was awful on both plaforms) and the Civilization games. It may also be true for some of the Aspyr original games, rather than the vast number of ports they've written, ie. The Movies.