Filed under: Gaming, Multimedia, Rumors
Valve on Mac piques interest from other game developers
Now that Valve has committed to offering full support for the Mac for both its in-house games and Steam, its digital game delivery system, other developers are expressing interest in the Mac as a gaming platform, too. Gas Powered Games, creator of Supreme Commander 2, Kings and Castles, and Dungeon Siege, has said of the Mac: "We, as a developer, will include a Mac platform option in all of our proposals moving forward. We're in 100 percent support of it, absolutely." Chris Taylor, founder of Gas Powered Games, says that porting games over to the Mac is relatively easy since Macs and PCs now have largely identical internal architectures. Intel processors and ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards are common to both platforms, making game porting far easier than it was back in the PowerPC days. Taylor also says that recent rises in Mac sales are another contributing factor making the Mac a more attractive target for game developers.
Swedish gamemaker DICE, best known for the Battlefield series of games, may also be throwing more support behind the Mac -- one of the company's lead developers has said that "We're currently investigating the possibility of making [Battlefield: Bad Company 2] available on Mac." That's not as big or flashy a commitment as Valve or Gas Powered Games, but considering the popularity of the Battlefield series, it still goes a long way toward improving the state of gaming on the Mac.
Over the next year or so, many other developers are likely to be watching Valve's success (or lack thereof) on the Mac with a very keen eye. If Valve manages to make a healthy amount of money by selling games to Mac users, it may only be a matter of time before many more gaming outfits follow suit.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Otsego_Undead said 7:24PM on 3-10-2010
This is easily the best news for Mac gamers. I peed my pants today when I read Steam was coming! its the ONLY reason I hang on to my PeeCee!
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unkletubby said 7:45PM on 3-10-2010
the only reason i put windows on my iMac was to play torchlight and mass effect and a few other games.. using steam. be nice to get rid of that partition and do this natively..
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Edicius said 7:48PM on 3-10-2010
FINALLY!
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Gordraf said 8:35PM on 3-10-2010
I knew this would happen when I heard Valve were porting their games and Steam to OS X. I'm happy, and I shake my head at the same time :P
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balls said 8:40PM on 3-10-2010
This would be a nice cold bottle of STFU to PC users who always mention gaming.
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michas_pi said 8:52PM on 3-10-2010
@balls:
That bottle is coming to PC gamers seven years too late.
Welcome to 2003, Apple.
Form said 9:31PM on 3-10-2010
@michas_pi
Don't be mean… it's great new that more games are coming to the Mac (not using Cider, that is!).
I think "balls" is right; most people who know nothing about Macs give gaming as their last desperate argument as to why the Mac sucks.
Who cares if the PC has been a gaming platform for years. If more companies choose to develop natively for both PC's and Macs then everyone will be free to choose their favorite platform and be able to play games on it. It's great news.
I don't think Apple's got anything to do with games being stuck on Windows. I'd blame that on the Direct-X chokehold.
Here's an interesting read on that subject from independent developers Wolfire Games : http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX
Shunnabunich said 9:55PM on 3-10-2010
Oh, I didn't realize Left 4 Dead 2 was released in 2003.
michas_pi said 2:24AM on 3-11-2010
@Shunnabunich:
Steam was released in 2003.
C said 1:53PM on 3-11-2010
@micahs_pi - what, exactly, is your point?
The problem many PC gamers point to is that Macs don't have sufficient graphics cards to run many modern PC games. I think we have a conundrum here, though, as many people are not upgrading their PCs as primary gaming rigs as there used to be (me included). With the 360 and PS3 practically providing PC experiences for the majority these days, gaming on traditional computers is being taken out of the spot light. It's a sad state of affairs but it is what it is.
Anyone decrying it's stupid for Valve -or anyone else - to pursue Mac is missing the point: PC gaming's audience is DECLINING. They have to bring in new consumers in some fashion, and the easiest way to get that is to open up the floodgates to an entirely new platform. Why any PC gamer in the world thinks this is a dumb move lacks any kind of business sense or self preservation. This helps EVERYONE: pc gamers, developers and mac gamers all get the benefit of additional dollars flowing into the business. It makes an easier business case for companies to create pc/mac versions of their console ports because the audience now grows, and, ergo, gives everyone more games.
Yes, this audience may not be interested in playing Mac games, but how does anyone know that? Obviously Valve doesn't else it wouldn't be pursuing it. There has never been such a movement of sales behind Apple and it's the best time right now to try to breach this market before someone else does and takes that business away.
michas_pi said 5:44PM on 3-12-2010
@C:
>PC gaming's audience is DECLINING
Oh, right, I forgot that PC gaming has been "dying" for over a decade now.
Beanie said 9:32PM on 3-10-2010
Wasn't this supposed to happen like two years ago when they marched all the major developers out on stage during a keynote? What did we get? Sims 3, Spore? The whole time showing their crappy CIDER ports. If they can do it right this time and not use emulation like in the past, It will be awesome. Valve already has the right idea, like always.
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Joanna D said 6:46AM on 3-11-2010
This is Steam and a few Valve games. Valve have a LOT more to gain than any other developer has from doing a direct port. Don't expect many to follow suit as they don't have an entire digital distribution platform to back them up if things go wrong.
segaprophet said 1:37AM on 3-11-2010
Valve is easily one of the most relevant PC gaming publishers of the past decade.
So it's a little more than exciting when they decide to not only fully support the Mac with their entire first party catalog and Steam, but to do it legitimately, not opting for a simple Cider wrapper or the like for their games, but really porting their games, integrating important cross-platform technologies like OpenGL and Webkit.
Not to mention the myriad other developers who use Source in their games, for which porting to OS X will shortly be a cinch. This is big news, make no mistake.
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Joanna D said 6:48AM on 3-11-2010
What? Porting to Mac is a "cinch"?
It really isn't. Even ignoring all the issues which developers will encounter, users will have to put up with poor performance as a result of underdeveloped video drivers and an OS built for 'multitasking' rather than pouring all of the machine's performance into a single process.
Plus, Valve have a lot to gain from doing this. They're hoping that other developers will follow suit, which is why Steam is coming. However, if you're THQ, Ubisoft or even EA or Activision you don't have nearly as much to gain from spending a significant amount of time and money creating a dedicated port. They'd be investing a huge amount just to get a fraction of the fraction of the world's computer users to play their games as well.
Sorry guys, it's just not going to happen.
GlennAC said 3:14AM on 3-11-2010
Portal! Portal! Portal!
And now...Portal 2!
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Kelmon said 4:29AM on 3-11-2010
Come on, Relic, you know you want to bring the Dawn Of War love to the Mac...
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Joshua said 6:05AM on 3-11-2010
I can't help but think this has something to do with Onlive going live in June.
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Joanna D said 6:45AM on 3-11-2010
You guys won't be so happy when the benchmarks arrive in April. It's going to be very interesting to see how much worse these games perform on OS X thanks to a combination of a complex and unfamiliar coding environment and extremely poor video driver support.
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Beanie said 12:30PM on 3-11-2010
That's never seemed to be a problem with WoW. Which is a native game on OS X. It runs great on my Unibody Macbook Pro, and yes, it can be a pretty taxing game sometimes. That said, the OS X drivers are definitely way behind the Win 7 drivers.