Steam survey finds more than 8% of gamers use Apple's Mac OS X - Page 2

I love this forum!

anybody here playing left 4 dead?

Steam is DRM.

The stats deal with OS. Have some Steam users been using a Mac only? Sure. What does that have to do with games on Steam for the Mac OS? You're mixing apples and oranges and grapes and whatever.

Go to steam.com and take a look. It will become more clear to you.

Is whether or not Valve gets enough revenue from Mac users to continue supporting the platform. I am thrilled that more games are coming to the Mac. I played portal for the first time on my Mac and I am playing through the HalfLife 2 games again.

I think 8% for a new platform is pretty huge. You have to figure that some Mac owners still don't know about it. I don't know how much it costs to support the Mac from here on out. Porting to the Mac I am sure to a lot of man hours. Supporting it going forward, I don't know how expensive that is. Plus more casual gamers may be tempted to buy a Mac as more and more games support it.

But the key is to have it be a big enough revenue source for Valve to continue supporting it. They have already spent the money to port it. Lets hope the get enough support from Mac users to keep it going.

I expect most of the 8% were already familiar with Steam and most of those already running Steam in Windows (vm or bootcamp).

There are very, very few Steam games available for the Mac OS. Unless the folks who were using Windows have decided to stop playing current games and only play the older games that are now just coming out for the Mac (and some second and third tier stuff that most Windows users ignore), seems obvious that adding Mac-compatible games doesn't replace the more current Windows-only stuff.

No, Apple's support of OpenGL is pathetic, and their drivers suck. My PC has better OpenGL support than any current Mac (full 4.0 support), and it gets better frame rates (part of the main thing that matters with games, especially current ones).

And all of Valve's games are OpenGL-based, always have been, and they still run worse on OSX, than Windows. For an OS that is wrapped around OpenGL, you'd think otherwise, but ATI and Nvidia have much better driver support for Windows, than what Apple currently offers.

http://gizmodo.com/5540716/steam-for...is-much-faster

Apple can't start using OpenGL 4.0, until they actually start using DX11 compatible GPUs (they have the same HW req's), and Apple has to step up their game on video drivers (BTW, OSX doesn't even support all of the features of Open GL 3.2/3.3 yet, even though the newer GPU's would support it). Most of that is driver-related.

And Steam on OSX is only as good as devs that releases OpenGL games; if most games are still DX-based, you'll still be dual-booting.

And if pure performance matters, you'll still be dual-booting, even for OpenGL games.

From what I've seen, it tries to be a combination of store and community.

You can check the list of available games & DLCs, search for games you might be interested in, check forums, download manuals for the games, and get automatic updates to games you have purchased, and the Steam application itself.

I haven't tried it, but there are prompts to start "live" chat with others who are currently online.

For the few multiplayer games which are Mac compatible, you can play against/team with players who are running on Mac or PC.

I just played-though Half Life 2, for the first time - and the game's save files are all saved to Steam's "cloud" each time you quit. So, I can play the game on a different Mac, or a PC, and be able to access all of my saved files - without having to start a new game.

They also have acheivements added to the games, so that any of your online "friends" can see what you have accomplished in the game. Based on my playing of HL2, some of them are basic mileposts that anyone would have to do to complete the game, but some of them are challanges that you would have to go our of your way to accomplish.

I just like the fact that it lets me play - so far - a couple of older PC-only titles that I always wanted to play, without also requiring me to buy a copy of Windows to install under Bootcamp, or a license to Crossover Games.

It didn't hurt that I got in early and so Portal was free, and HL2 at a slight discount [it was already cheap - since it is an old game].

I downloaded the trial of Crossover Games - to do a head-to-head OSX vs WINE comparison on Portal and Torchlight... and while the WINE version of Torchlight had an extra option in the video setting, missing from the OSX version, and the screen was a little sharper, I didn't think it was worth COG's $40 license fee to get that small improvement.

Not a lot of Mac titles yet, and a lot of them seem to be pretty light-weight games, so it has been fun to play some new-to-me, inexpensive games while I'm wating for StarCraft 2 to arrive.

If you have access to Windows-only games via Bootcamp, Parrallels, VMware, or Crossover Games - then Steam will be a non-starter for you - unless you like the online community, and save files in the "cloud".

And this is supposed to be a good thing?


I already have, and it hasn't. Based on what has been explained here, it doesn't seem to have any value at all. If it has value, nobody has been able to say what that value is.

I suppose all of this seems to be of limited value to me. It appeared to be a somewhat exciting development for Mac gaming but once I saw how little new it offers, I could not see how it will do anything to bring more games to the Mac except for some really old titles perhaps.

Yes but like I said, with Valve helping Apple to develop the drivers this will be an inevitability. Valve's games still play awesomely on my MacBook Pro compared to EA's Cider wrapped DirectX games. I see no drop off but then I don't have the graphics cranked up to high because I don't need them to be.


Yes and when you see an OpenGL game beside a DirectX game the difference is hugely in favour of the OpenGL which was my point about DirectX sucking.


They are. They're the same video cards as what's in PCs. Why do they have to support DirectX when OpenGL has nothing to do with DirectX? That's just clutching at straws.


Or wrapping them in Cider. There's no need to dual-boot.

When you look at it nuts and bolts you're going to make more money from consoles and Macs which have lower numbers than you would with PCs. Why? Because on Mac and console owners are willing to spend money which is what I said except you decided to partially quote me which removes context. Good for you. You really are intelligent.

There's a whole culture of piracy on the PC platform. For every 1 title sold on a PC there would be 10 on consoles and Macs. Meanwhile there would still be 10 PC gamers playing that game. Tell me how that makes great business when only 1 in 10 people buys your game? (I am pulling these numbers out of my bum but you get the point).

My point which you choose to ignore is that PCs have never been a great gaming platform. People think it is because you have the potential to sell lots of titles but the reality is you sell far less than you should and it can be a complete pain in the butt to set the games up. Hell, you only have to look at how difficult it was back in the day when the best graphics you could get were 8bit with crapy audio. As soon as the better graphics and audio cards came along it was a complete nightmare to get them running and then even more of a nightmare to get the game to run. It's not much better today. The more people have to mess around with their computer to play your game the more they are going to give up and play something else. Controlled hardware is ALWAYS a better way. It worked for the Amiga, it worked for the Atari ST, it works for consoles and it is now working for the Mac.

It's the same as XBox Live or Sony's PSN in that it's both an on-line community (much like Gamespy) and it records your gaming achievements, but it's also a digital store. There's no subscription and Steam client is sort of the gatekeeper to your whole games library. You can install the steam client on any of your PCs and have access to your entire games collection and are able to re-download past purchases.

Same for me, actually.

I've wanted to go back and see how well Deus Ex holds-up [I think my copy needs OS9 to run], but just couldn't bring myself to pay for the game - again - plus the cost of Crossover Games or an OEM copy of Windows 7 (since the Steam version isn't currently ported to OSX).

I got Portal for free, Torchlight on sale for ~$10, and HL2 on sale for ~$8 - so it wasn't very expensive to try the few Mac-compatible games I was interested in.

It will be interesting to see what Portal 2 sells for, when it is released.

[QUOTE=lowededwookie;1647187 For every 1 title sold on a PC there would be 10 on ... Macs.[/QUOTE]

You are completely incorrect. Indeed, likely you have things exactly backwards, with PC software selling 10 times more volume than Mac software, but I don't have the figures handy.

This is objective reality. There is no need to "figure things out" to arrive at the answer. This is simple fact-based stuff.

What confuses me is this concept of a "Steam version" of a game. Apparently there is no such bird. From what I am hearing, Valve only sells games which the developers have already ported to the Mac. How this is supposed to lead to more Mac games mystifies me greatly.

Actually many game developers go with DirectX because it is in fact better than OpenGL, especially when you're designing a game for Windows. Microsoft has always been great about working with other companies, and I've heard they don't fall short in this quality when helping developers get their games running correctly with DirectX.

It does seem to me that there needs to be an open standard for 3d rendering, but MS has had directX for a while now and they won't let that go easily.

DirectX at the moment does not suck, and it is definitely not considered a joke.

I'm not sure you can install things like Half-Life 2 and Left4Dead without Steam, so steam helps bring access to those games at least.

What I like most about steam is having all my game purchases tied to a single account so I can easily download them to whatever machine I want (just can't be logged into the steam account on two different computers at the same time.) I also like how it automatically applies updates. It's basically the app store of computer games lol

if it got to 8% with just a few games, it will probably hit 10 when they port Team Fortress 2 and Counterstrike. All signs point to those coming out in a relatively near future.

Still, the fact that 8% of steam gamers own macs is kind of amazing. Of course, the Valve guys knew this beforehand (from hardware profiles), which is likely why they bothered to start supporting the mac.

My guess is that the percent will end up a bit shy of 15% once more games come online.

Because if it is successful it means that more developers like THQ, 2k and EA for example will start to develop for the mac meaning when they create a new game they will release it at the same time on a windows and mac. You have to remember that the pc game market is basically moving, if it hasn't already in terms of majority of sale, to digital. Steam basically holds the vast majority of that market share, I have heard from some of steam competitors that Steam holds around 70-75% of the digital market share for pc games.

Valve currently right now is porting their back catalog of games to mac, there games are some of the most popular games right now on the pc. Valve right now is working on a new game called portal2, portal 2 is going to be released at the exact same time on windows, mac, and 360.

So how does this lead to more mac games? Basically is this, the industry is watching how successful valve games are on the mac, valve is a huge player in the pc games market. If valve games take off on mac it means that developers will take the mac platform more seriously and when you factor that mac uses pretty much the exact same hardware and you factor in that they have the biggest digital distribution system for games(Steam) and you have Mac os x sales growing at phenomenal rates its like a perfect storm in terms of incentives or a list of why they should be developing for the mac. What ever steam does basically dictates in some ways how the industry and or market is going to move. Steam could signal the beginning of mac being taken seriously for development of AAA games.

This sounds more like a restriction than a feature.


If you play on more than one computer, I suppose it might be a cool feature.

For anyone who doesn't know the backstory. When counterstrike was a huge gaming phenomenon, mac users switched to PCs in droves (I know, at one point ALL my mac friends got PCs and ditched their macs just to play counterstrike.) A lot of people moved back to the mac because of Bootcamp and the ability to finally play Counterstrike (among other games). That steam is going OSX native is HUGE in terms of OSX and gaming. Apple has never had decent gaming support and getting some would make the platform hugely more attractive to a lot of folks.

That's why this is a big deal. It has the potential to give apple 5% increased marketshare. Maybe more.

It makes it so you don't need to keep around old gaming disks. The OSX versions of Steam games are free to use if you already bought the PC version, so there is no reason for bootcamp. The service isn't perfect, but it's very convenient for buying online stuff.

I really don't want to belabor this subject, but honestly, this makes zero sense to me. It seems to me that the things which brings games to the Mac platform are either (1) Bootcamp, so Mac owners can run it in Windows, or (2) the developer's willingness to port it to the Mac. How its availability through Steam made a big if any difference to either development is what I don't get.

I would say my previous post in the last paragraph answers it and that is if Valve does well in terms of selling its game and then you bring the steam platform that they created along and you combine the fact that mac's and pcs have pretty much the same hardware along with having macs selling in record numbers pretty much creates a perfect storm for motivating other game developers to start developing for mac.

I will say this, if valve games don't sell well on mac it most likely will not cause a shift in terms of development but if valve games do sell well on mac it most likely convince other developers to begin development of mac games and the steam client makes it even easier to deliver content to mac customers then through retail.

Might not have value to you. If you play online games that have a limited number of gamers per game (Team Fortress 2, Left for Dead, counterstrike, etc.) Steam will help you find the games they are in. Doing this otherwise requires some other tracking software or using ip addresses.

It also centralizes your game purchases and the licenses never expire. There is no maximum number of times you can download a game or a limit to a number of machines. Steam also often has a lot of deals, where you can get games for like 1/2 price or less. They do this to try and get a critical mass of people playing online titles.

Overall, if you are into gaming, it's a decent service. The DRM terms are lot better than a lot of other things.

One more point - Valve ported their Steam Engine to the Mac. This might be a bit misleading - the Steam Engine is the 3D graphics engine that is the backbone of a large number of game titles. This means that most of the major Steam titles will be available for the mac in short order. To put this into perspective - at any time up to 2 million people are logged into Steam. Those people will now all see that Valve is supporting Macs. How many unique people that is, i'm not sure, but it's at least 2 million and probably more like 5-10 (how many people are logged into steam 24/7?

That's a huge audience of people who until now would never consider a mac because they can't play the core of Valve games.

Are you seeing how this is a big deal yet? We can keep discussing it.

I have to ask: since when do software licenses expire? Isn't this a solution looking for a problem?

I'm not a big online gamer by any means. The only game I do play has GameSpy built in, which does exactly what you say Steam does, as nearly as I can tell. Maybe Steam does this a whole lot better. I don't honestly know.

Price of course is an advantage, but I suppose I'm operating under the assumption that games aren't going to sell for less just because they are selling on Steam... the publishers have to go along too.


This is a technical reason nobody has mentioned before. This point I certainly get.

The point about sales is this: when you log into steam, there are usually a few news updates (these are sometimes pushed to you if you are already logged in). These updates will be ads mostly that say things like 'get this game for 75% off'. So the whole system is a really effective way of advertising and selling software.

My point about licenses never expiring was more that you don't ever need to worry about keeping around the disks and license info. It is all stored for you on steam. Of the hundreds of games i've bought over the years, the only ones that i can currently reinstall are those from steam. The rest have disks that are long lost or tossed.

But the biggest point here is simply the size of the audience. 8% of steam users represents at least 200,000 people and maybe up to a million. Those people are active gamers. A million is a number that all of a sudden makes porting worthwhile - a game won't come close to be worth porting until you can ship ~20k units? Steam makes that a lot easier since it will have most active mac gamers logged in.

As someone else mentioned the unreal engine is also ported to OSX natively - so all games built on that engine can also be quickly ported. So this is a huge win for Apple, Mac gamers, and the platform overall. We all know that the one thing that holds back OSX is software. The tides are turning and its suddenly becoming worthwhile to support Apple.

OpenGL 4.0 has the same HW requirements as DX11; they're basically linked. If you want OpenGL 4.0, you need the HW and the SW extensions, neither of which Apple has, heck OSX doesn't even have the complete extensions for GL 3.2/3.3, even though the current Nvidia and ATI GPU's are capable; ie Apple writes terrible video drivers, but given how slowly they roll out HW updates, and the small subset of GPUs they support, that shouldn't be. There is no clutching at straws, Apple is way behind of PC's in graphics.

And it doesn't matter how much of a supposed advantage OpenGL has over DX, if most games are still written in DirectX. MS spent a ton of money and effort on making the programming tools and documentation available to developers, Apple has done nothing of the sort. If they want to take gaming seriously, they need to get off they asses, spend that pile of money they're sitting on, and hire programmers and engineers to get things up to snuff.

If Apple has to rely on Valve (a game dev) to help them write drivers for them, that's not very good IMO. Apple should be able to do all that themselves.

I don't care about Cider; it's a crappy emulation/translation layer, SW emulation almost universally sucks, and EA is a lazy dev, regardless of OS or console.

And Valve's games should play well, most of them use the Source engine, which while continually updated, HL2 and Portal came out nearly 6 years ago; I can play HL2 with decent frame rates on my 3 year old laptop, and it could probably run L4D decently too - kudos to Valve for making games that scale well though.

this is 100% true. Apple's drivers blow for gaming performance. They have for a long long time. Since there is zero competition for GPU upgrades, neither NVidia or ATI have any interest in improving them either.

I remember way back at the end of the 90s, ATI had one dude working on their video drivers. One.

If Valve can put some pressure on Apple to put pressure on the guys writing the drivers, that would be great for the platform.