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Valve to release GL code, games on Mac see sales bumps

by Mike Schramm Jul 30th 2010 at 8:00PM

Boy, if you had to choose one company (including Apple) that has really led the charge for Mac gaming recently, I'd have to say Valve takes the cake, and that's no lie. Not only has the company brought an unprecedented set of quality titles to the Mac with Steam, but it's now announced that it will be sharing some of its graphical code for the Mac with Steamworks developers. That graphics layer coding is apparently the "real hard work" in making a game for the Mac, and Valve is trying to make that as easy as possible for its partner developers.

Why? Because -- and get this -- games sell more when they're on the Mac. Games that have added a Mac version since Steam went live on the Mac are seeing a 15 to 20% sales increase. That's actually for both platforms -- most Steam games available for the Mac share ownership on both Mac and PC, so they're not really tracking sales of one platform or the other. Still, having a game available on the Mac is a big bonus, as not only does it make Mac players possible, but it drives attention for both platforms (as you may have even seen here on our site -- when we post that a game has finally come to the Mac, even PC gamers consider going back to check it out).

Excellent news for developers already working with Steam, and also good news for those of us who enjoy running our favorite games from the dock rather than the start menu. Even Apple hasn't put the kind of work into reviving Mac gaming that Valve has in just the past few months.

[via Joystiq]

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Boy, if you had to choose one company (including Apple) that has really led the charge for Mac gaming recently, I'd have to say Valve...
 

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Leiwei

regarding mac gaming, anyone tried Eschalon? Is it good? Book 2 just came out and I'm curious about the game.

August 01 2010 at 3:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
michas_pi

>Macs
>games

July 31 2010 at 7:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Steve

Even with so many games coming out on Mac now, I'm still dual-booting. For example, Portal runs about 30 fps on my Macbook Pro at 1280 resolution on OS X, but about 50 fps at 1680 resolution when running it in Windows on the SAME machine.

Until Apple or someone does a better job of drivers, performance sucks on the Mac, and I won't be doing the majority of my gaming in OS X any time soon.

What really sucks is the Macs perform so much better for high-end video and audio editing and other things, but lag so far behind in gaming.

July 31 2010 at 1:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Steve's comment
woody

You state the oft-quoted truism that macs perform so much better for 'high end' audio and video work and ok - tell me why...I personally use a quad core windows 7 x64 PC with Adobe cs4 for professional video editing and with the exception of FCP only being available on mac (Premiere Pro/After Effects is equally capable). So what is it about macs that makes you say this? I'm getting tired of hearing this.

August 03 2010 at 9:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ryan

**Groan** That cake pun killed me.

July 31 2010 at 9:51 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Norman

NOW ccp should really release a native EVE ONLINE client! :D

July 31 2010 at 6:53 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris

While I won't disagree that Valve has done a ton to encourage gaming on the Mac, let's not forget about the company that IMO has kept Mac gaming alive, namely Blizzard. Sure, most peoe focus on their latest releases, but I can't remember the last Blizzard game that didn't ship PC and Macat the same time, normally even on the same disk. So kudos to Blizzard for keeping Mac gaming alive and to Valve for showing people that it can be profitable even when you don't make WoW.

July 31 2010 at 3:18 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tim

Keep it coming developers!!! The Macs are fully capable, if only they'd write for them. If the market share ever get to the right threshold, we could se a tip in the Mac vs PC percentages. Sadly though, the world runs on Windows, and switching is something people are afraid of.
If Steve would have never been fired in 1985, the world would quite likely be a lot better. Or not...

July 31 2010 at 1:00 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
boil

Well, Joshua beat me to it in the previous post, but I still gotta say…

"…Valve takes the cake, and that's no lie."

I see what you did there…!

;^p

July 30 2010 at 11:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
roffel

srsly valve has done EVERYTHING BUT release left 4 dead on the mac :(

July 30 2010 at 11:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to roffel's comment
Dance Love Pop

I'd rather have Half-Life Source than either Left 4 Dead at this point. I've already played them to death, and it's been too long since I've played the original Half-Life. Was quite disappointing it was missing from Orange Box.

July 31 2010 at 9:36 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joshua

Lol, nice cake reference ;)

July 30 2010 at 9:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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