One of the big reasons that I decided to port Depths of Peril to the Mac was that apple hosted a downloads section linked directly off of their own website. I knew going in we would have a nice big, focused source of traffic for Mac gamers. At the time I didn't know if this would make up for the differences in the size of the Mac and Windows markets though. Note: there are many other reasons to have a Mac version, this just happens to be a big one.

Well I did decide to port over to the Mac despite it being somewhat risky. Using our 20/20 hind vision, it was a very good decision. The porting work paid for itself a long time ago (I wish I could say this for other things). What I have found out since then is that the apple.com downloads section is where most of our Mac gamers come from. It is pretty important to Soldak's Mac sales.

Unfortunately, here's where the problem is. Along comes the iPad and apple replaces the download link on their main page to an iPad link. This has already significantly reduced our flow of Mac gamers. Even worse is that apparently as of late March they have stopped updating the downloads section at all. This is going to make it much harder for new games and updates to get noticed.

I really have no idea what Apple is thinking over there. I really hope they plan on replacing the downloads section with something at least as good, because I can't imagine this is going to do anything other than hurt Mac gamers. :(

Anyway, despite what Apple does or does not do, indie companies like us need to find other ways to attract Mac gamers. I have gotten the Din's Curse demo on macgamefiles, macupdate, versiontracker, and iusethis. Where else do you guys find Mac games? What else can I do to get noticed in the Mac gaming world?

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