Valve ports Steam and Source to Mac OS X

[Humodour]

Between Valve, Blizzard and EA, gaming on Macs makes a lot more sense now.

 

And with that comes gaming in OpenGL. And with that comes gaming on Linux!

 

Wooo! DIE DIE DIE DIRECTX.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Ah, this is good news. Too bad those computers are so pricey though.

[Pop]

Not so fast bitches. Steam might be getting an OSX client but OpenGL compliance is a whole 'nother animal. Remember when... Alvin Nelson (I think) was talking about OpenGL and why nobody develops for it? Valve can bring the Orange Box to Apple PCs but not much else, without publisher cooperation.

[Nepenthe]

Between Valve, Blizzard and EA, gaming on Macs makes a lot more sense now.

 

And with that comes gaming in OpenGL. And with that comes gaming on Linux!

 

Wooo! DIE DIE DIE DIRECTX.

 

I dunno, EA uses Cider, and I'm somewhat... sceptical of it. Of course, neither does there exist a Mac with a decent graphics card, never mind at a sane price. The reason I went with Apple+consoles, shrug. I hope things change.

[Hurlshort]

Yeah, I have a decent MacBook, but the graphics card is pretty weak. Still, it will be nice to play some of the older games from Steam on it if they manage to make them OSX possible.

[Humodour]

Not so fast bitches. Steam might be getting an OSX client but OpenGL compliance is a whole 'nother animal. Remember when... Alvin Nelson (I think) was talking about OpenGL and why nobody develops for it? Valve can bring the Orange Box to Apple PCs but not much else, without publisher cooperation.

 

Lots of games (especially the vast majority of indie games) already have Mac ports.

 

But anyway, Valve is pretty good at getting publisher cooperation, especially if the main reason for not developing on Mac (harder to publish for and reach fan base) is removed.

[Humodour]

Between Valve, Blizzard and EA, gaming on Macs makes a lot more sense now.

 

And with that comes gaming in OpenGL. And with that comes gaming on Linux!

 

Wooo! DIE DIE DIE DIRECTX.

 

I dunno, EA uses Cider, and I'm somewhat... sceptical of it. Of course, neither does there exist a Mac with a decent graphics card, never mind at a sane price. The reason I went with Apple+consoles, shrug. I hope things change.

 

The Radeon 4000 line and the Geforce 9000 line are decent cards. Not the best, but they're certainly decent enough to play almost every game out there today (except Crysis).

[I want teh kotor 3]

Sweet. Hopefully this'll let me play Portal on my lappie.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Meh, I'd be more interested in a Linux version of Steam as I'm not a fan of Apple or OS X.

[Purkake]

Whatever helps pay the bills, I guess.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

This sounds like a better deal for Linux, honestly.

[Humodour]

- The following is a list of Source games which can be safely assumed to be ported to Mac:

Portal 1

Portal 2

Left 4 Dead 1

Left 4 Dead 2

Half-Life 1

Half-Life 2

HL2: Episode 1

HL2: Episode 2

HL2: Episode 3/Half-Life 3

Team Fortress 2

Counter-Strike

 

- The following is an incomplete list of high-quality indie games currently on Steam which have Mac versions:

Torchlight

Braid

Plants vs Zombies

World of Goo

Aquaria

Osmos

Machinarium

Darwinia

Multiwinia

Defcon

Uplink

Gish

Depths of Peril

 

- Some mainstream games currently on Steam which have Mac versions

Dragon Age: Origins

Bioshock

Tombraider: Anniversary

Civ 4

Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast

Jedi Academy

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

Freedom Force

Commandos 2

 

 

And of course, all the Blizzard games run on Mac, but it'll be a cold day in hell before Blizzard puts their games on Steam. Still, the point being that Blizzard + Valve/Steam on Mac is a potent force.

[Purkake]

Ooh those are some good indie games, I hope they have a special Mac sale and everyone who hasn't tried them yet will.

[Humodour]

Valve has officially announced this today. It's better than we hoped.

 

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/03/08/1...ames?art_pos=12

 

- ALL Valve games that exist, as well as those being made will be ported to OSX.

 

- If you already own a Valve game, you can now download the Mac version for free (once it is ported)! And this isn't a one-time offer. Games on Steam will be platform independent (assuming they run on multiple platforms). So you just buy a game, not a game that runs on Windows or a game that runs on OSX.

 

- They are direct ports! I.e. Every Steam game, and Source in general, will have a full OpenGL implementation and run natively in OSX!

 

- If a game is released on Steam, it is released for Windows and Mac at the same time, at least for Valve's games.

 

- Due to the above, porting any Steam game to Linux will be trivial for Valve, and even if they never do it, all such games should run near flawlessly in Linux under WINE due to OpenGL (edit: although they run fine under WINE anyway so maybe a moot point).

 

- Updates won't lag either - patches are deployed to Mac Steam games at the same time as they are Windows.

 

- Another benefit to this is that Valve will have accurate stats of the number and nature of Mac gamers, which I imagine many publishers will be keen to buy (assuming Valve doesn't release the data freely as it may well do).

 

- Portal 2 for Mac is at the same level as Portal 2 for Windows - i.e. we'll see Portal 2 for Mac this year.

 

Also, here's a list of Steam games that could be immediately put on Steam Mac, since they've already got Mac ports: http://savygamer.co.uk/2010/03/03/here-is-...t-in-existence/

Edited March 9, 2010 by Krezack

[Purkake]

I really hope they'll bring it up during the next keynote, Valve could use some actual promotion for this.

[Humodour]

Somebody on Slashdot pointed out this tangent:

 

"Just to let people know, Blizzard also allows for unlimited downloading of the Windows and OS X version of any game you have ever purchased. Even if you bought the game in a store you can still register the CD key online at battle.net and it will be available to download in the future."

[Humodour]

My bet is that Valve sees well over 1 million Mac Steam users this year (currently 25 million Windows Steam users). Steam adoption on the Mac will far outpace the rate of growth on PC because Mac gamers are richer yet have far fewer avenues for purchasing Mac games. Not to mention that Steam is now a mature platform on Windows so adoption should be smooth for Mac users.

 

More info: "Mac versions of leading internal titles such as Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal and the Half-Life series will be available for purchase this coming April."

 

Also, Mac and Windows users will play and join the same servers and games in multiplayer.

Edited March 9, 2010 by Krezack

[Humodour]

Also, I imagine Steve Balmer is throwing quite a few chairs right now.

[Purkake]

I sincerely doubt that, MS has shown little interest in the PC as a gaming platform recently.

 

Also, edit function, try it.

[Humodour]

I sincerely doubt that, MS has shown little interest in the PC as a gaming platform recently.

 

MS also showed little interest in the internet as a platform until Mozilla popped up and started eating IE market share. In fact until then, Microsoft said no further development would occur for IE (IE6 at the time). Then it started developing IE 7 and 8 due to Mozilla/Firefox, but the damage had already been done - people ditch IE every day, and the same trend has been happening to Windows in the OS market for a while now, too (though obviously to a far lesser degree).

 

One of Windows's few remaining 'killer apps' (gaming) is going cross-platform in a big way. In fact it may be the only remaining killer app. The office suite market is being squeezed something chronic by Mac, OO, and "the cloud". Oh, I remember the other one - Exchange. But it's being chipped away at by the Linux crowd.

 

If I sound dramatic, it's only in the sense that "Microsoft is doomed, just like IBM". Microsoft will never fold, but it will become reasonably irrelevant, and its competitors will be just as strong as it (truth be told, that's already happened).

 

Also, edit function, try it.

 

Maybe when they remove the ugly "this post has been edited" message.

[Purkake]

We'll see, but the evidence is inconclusive at best. Microsoft's primary focus has always been businesses and they still enjoy a huge majority there.

 

Also, edit function, try it.

 

Maybe when they remove the ugly "this post has been edited" message.

I second this notion. Add the message if you edit it more than ~5 minutes after posting.

[Humodour]

Anyway, Gas Powered Games and EA DICE have said they are in lockstep with Valve on the move and will release all future games on Mac.

[Bos_hybrid]

Microsoft will never fold, but it will become reasonably irrelevant, and its competitors will be just as strong as it (truth be told, that's already happened).

 

This is a joke right? Sure MS could become irrelevant in the future(very, very doubtful), but as of now? No.

[Humodour]

Microsoft will never fold, but it will become reasonably irrelevant, and its competitors will be just as strong as it (truth be told, that's already happened).

 

This is a joke right? Sure MS could become irrelevant in the future(very, very doubtful), but as of now? No.

 

Read the sentence more carefully. It has already happened that Microsoft's competitors - Oracle, Apple, Google - have already become roughly as powerful as Microsoft (and certainly as a combined force overwhelm Microsoft).

[Purkake]

Let's not turn this into another platform war.

 

This is a great boost to the PC platform as a whole especially if Apple throws even a little of their advertising weight behind this. It might very well be the biggest thing that has happened to the PC platform in a long while.

Edited March 11, 2010 by Purkake