Filed under: Gaming, Multimedia, Rumors
Gameinformer: Portal 2 confirmed for Mac, Steam on the way for May
Scans from the April 2010 issue of Gameinformer have confirmed that Portal 2, the sequel to Valve's wildly popular and critically acclaimed game Portal, will be released in fall of 2010 for the Xbox 360, PC, and Mac (as reported on MacRumors). No, your eyes do not deceive you: Portal 2 is coming to the Mac this fall.More on the Valve front: TUAW reader Jason let us know that Gameinformer's April 2010 issue also confirms a May launch of Steam for the Mac. This was rumored several weeks ago based on some WebKit & Mac-specific content in the Steam beta, and pretty well locked in by Valve's viral leaks of Mac-themed 'reimagined' advertisements last week. (The final one is a bit of a give-away... read the copy.)
"There is an article on page 22, News, 'Mac Gets Its Steam On' - Valve preps May launch on Apple platform," Jason tells us. He also says the article itself states, "Valve will start a beta program this spring, with a full launch targeted for May [...] If you already have a Steam account but want to use it on your brand-new Macbook, for instance, your Steam keys will still work."
That last part is pretty huge; from the sounds of it, if you already bought PC versions of games on Steam, you won't have to pay again to download Mac versions of the same games. That should be a huge relief to Mac gamers who've been booting into Windows to get some gaming done.
We haven't been able to confirm this reader tip, so if any of you have access to the same issue of Gameinformer and can confirm what Jason's told us, let us know in the comments.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
ElevatorHappyFun said 4:36PM on 3-07-2010
I've said it before but it is worth repeating.
Goodbye Bootcamp!
Thank you dev's for seeing that although a minority in computers we still like games also. Who wouldn't want 8% more gamers PAYING for your games.
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tombonez said 6:42PM on 3-07-2010
And what about all the mac incompatible games im guessing you've already purchased?
tombonez said 6:50PM on 3-07-2010
btw, I am looking forward to steam on mac myself, but I own over 90 games which will never get ported to a mac.
Craig said 7:40PM on 3-07-2010
@tombonez
Steam games don't use an executable AFAIK...The Steam interface has an executable but then loads game data from game cache files (the files in your Steam folder with the .gcf extension). So, assuming that's right, all they need to do is rewrite Steam to work on OSX, and any game Steam loads via .gcf will work.
Assuming what I'm saying is right, of course. I could be way off. But I'm definitely excited for Steam to come to OSX, no doubt about it!
Shunnabunich said 8:05PM on 3-07-2010
@Craig
The game data still needs an engine to interpret it and present it as a playable game, and Steam isn't a game engine (it distributes games based on many, many different engines, in fact). Said engine would need to be either Mac-native or Cider-wrapped to run under OS X.
Yuusharo said 9:16PM on 3-07-2010
Its a business decision - if it costs more to port a game than the expected returns, its not worth it. Keep in mind, Macs still barely make 10% in the US and less than 4% worldwide, and only a small fraction of those will actually want to buy the game.
The only reason we're seeing this now is Valve has finally found a cost-effective way to port the Source engine to the Mac, like how they did with the Xbox and PS3 two years ago. Good for them, I'm glad they're expanding to a new territory. But understand that it is definitely *not* easy to develop one game on several different platforms, especially between OSX and Windows.
Ed said 11:53AM on 3-08-2010
Consider Apple have much more than 8% (or 10% or whatever) in Consumer sales - and these are the sales that matter to games companies. I've no idea what the figure would be but it must be around 20%?
Yoshi1080 said 1:39PM on 3-08-2010
@Ed: And how many of those Macs are capable of even running video games?
artifex said 4:43PM on 3-07-2010
Would this be the April 1st issue? :)
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T.J. Simmons said 4:47PM on 3-07-2010
I haven't read GI in a while, but if I remember correctly, they do a section called Game Infarcer to help delineate between content and farce.. I don't think they'd pull this one off as a joke, not given the campaign Valve's been running.
??? said 6:12PM on 3-07-2010
You haven't been reading the news lately, have you...? ;P
Lumi said 4:51PM on 3-07-2010
Hmm, may?
Valve, I'd like a beta, actually! I mean, seeing as how Crossover and Windows 7 support for bootcamp are pretty much beta's as well...
Or have I misread, and there's already a beta out there? Because... Do want!
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divigation said 5:01PM on 3-07-2010
No more Windows. The sole reason for Bootcamp on my machine is Steam, gimme zombies and portals in OSX and just in time for my graduation when I will have more game time. So exciting.
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grantcrockford said 6:32PM on 3-07-2010
one word: superb :-)
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Skoalbandit said 6:56PM on 3-07-2010
Thing is there are so few mac games to begin with. If Value ports everything to mac that is great. But I don't see them doing that. Everything I play on PC is not going to get ported to mac so boot camp is still going to be the way to get your game on.
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Dan said 9:24PM on 3-07-2010
Will portal two run on the upcoming iPad? Moreover, will the steam engine run on the ipad?
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jonwil2002 said 8:59PM on 3-07-2010
If Valve ports the Source engine to the mac, they would be able to port all the Source engine based games (CSS, HL, HL2, Portals etc etc etc) to the mac with very little effort.
If they wanted to, they could even port the Source SDKs to allow mods of all kinds to port to Mac (given how pro-mod Valve is, doing such a thing makes sense for them)
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WysiwygVonTash said 9:02PM on 3-07-2010
If it's just a cider port then I don't care. These games runs terribly slow in OS X anyway and I already have Boot Camp installed for that. But if it is native, then we're talking.
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JeremyT said 12:57AM on 3-08-2010
Keep Valve Time in mind when reading release dates...
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time
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balls said 1:26AM on 3-08-2010
This is great for the casual games, like Peggle etc that I already own for the PC via steam that have mac counterparts, but for the hardcore games like MW2, BC2 etc that require real horsepower, Windows is still the way to go.
Reason: Nvidia/ATI release updated drivers for their cards so frequently to squeeze every bit of extra performance of their cards for new games. We don't get that on OS X. We're stuck with whatever Apple puts out in their OS updates.
Yeah I can play games on OS X, but tweaking, drivers, overclocks, etc, is a very PC experience, which is going to be hard to replicate on the OS X. For me, since I'll want to play all the best games I can, I'll still be BC'ing on the MBP.
Valve can port the Source engine all they want, but it's old and out dated. Look at Frostbite 1.5 or the Infinity Ward engine for the new hotness.
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