EA, id back gaming on the Mac

Well how about that. Not a few days after I announce that I'm going to be posting news about gaming on the Mac, we get the biggest announcement about exactly that since Bungie released Marathon: EA and id both showed up at the WWDC Keynote yesterday to promote 3D gaming on Apple's computers.

id went so far as to announce and show a new game engine called "id tech 5" (usually engines are named after games, but apparently we're in uncharted territory here), and EA came on stage to say it was going to start selling its most popular franchises, including Need for Speed Carbon, which has never been seen on the Mac before. Apple Insider points out that this isn't necessarily what we were hoping for (that is, games running natively and uber fast in OS X)-- instead, the EA games will be wrapped in Transgaming's Cider engine, which means the games will have to run on Intel-only Macs.

Tuncer Deniz, who's been covering Mac gaming for a long time at Inside Mac Games, says this is both good... and bad (figures, right?). It's good because EA using Cider means we'll see Mac versions come out faster. But it's bad because whatever EA expects to sell of these games, it's probably not as much as they want to. Still, id's engine looks pretty-- if gaming is going to make a comeback on the machine we love, this is as good a chance as it'll ever have.
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