Valve to release GL code, games on Mac see sales bumps
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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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
captain said 8:29PM on 7-30-2010
Great - if the hard work is done it must be time for L4D and L4D2 to come out on the Mac... right?
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Shunnabunich said 8:51PM on 7-30-2010
"Even" Apple? You're saying it as if Apple's ever given a rat's ass about Mac gaming.
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Joshua said 9:32PM on 7-30-2010
Lol, nice cake reference ;)
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roffel said 11:27PM on 7-30-2010
srsly valve has done EVERYTHING BUT release left 4 dead on the mac :(
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Dance Love Pop said 9:36AM on 7-31-2010
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.
boil said 11:35PM on 8-02-2010
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
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Tim M. said 1:00AM on 7-31-2010
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...
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Chris said 3:27AM on 7-31-2010
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.
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Joanna D said 6:23AM on 7-31-2010
The company holding Mac gaming back is Apple. Valve can do what they can supporting developers, but if Apple keeps shipping computers with awful GPUs and doesn't help ATI and NVIDIA to improve performance on OS X, the games will always be like slideshows.
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Norman said 6:56AM on 7-31-2010
NOW ccp should really release a native EVE ONLINE client! :D
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Ryan said 9:53AM on 7-31-2010
**Groan** That cake pun killed me.
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Vertigo said 1:59PM on 7-31-2010
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.
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woody said 9:36PM on 8-03-2010
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.
michas_pi said 7:22PM on 7-31-2010
>Macs
>games
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Leiwei said 3:55AM on 8-01-2010
regarding mac gaming, anyone tried Eschalon? Is it good? Book 2 just came out and I'm curious about the game.
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