Comment by bangonkeyboard
8 years ago
> Actually I struggle to think of a single major component to a game that must be platform-specific.
Different platforms often have totally different graphics APIs. Even when platforms share APIs, driver quality, compliance, and fast paths vary greatly. The Mac still used a completely different processor architecture from the PC at the time of this story, requiring platform-specific optimizations and approaches.
Games, particularly cutting edge ones that demand performance, and especially from that era, are much more likely to need to be tailored to their platforms.
These are semi-good reasons for games of the past but I thought this was actually less of a problem these days with the rise of cross-platform game engines. If you use Unity or something, porting your 2018-era game to Mac or Linux should be a recompile at most.
The other thread mentions the business cost of releasing and supporting these other platforms, which I totally understand.