Game developers eye the Mac after Steam's jump to Apple

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
The announcement that the Steam gaming service and Valve's line of games -- including Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 -- are being ported to the Mac has convinced major developers like DICE and Gas Powered Games to consider the jump as well.



Gas Powered Games just released its latest title, "Supreme Commander 2," for Steam, and founder Chris Taylor told The Escapist that as a result of Steam's move to the Mac, his development studio hopes to release future games for Mac OS X.



"We, as a developer, will include a Mac platform option in all of our proposals moving forward," Taylor reportedly said. "We're in 100 percent support of it, absolutely."



He noted that because Macs use Intel processors and rely on ATI and Nvidia for graphics, Apple machines are "very easy" to port PC games to. He also said the tremendous growth of the Mac platform in the last year has made it an attractive opportunity. In the last quarter alone, Apple sold a record 3.36 million Macs.



"It shows that the OS X platform is really picking up speed," he told author Greg Tito. "That's super exciting, we need that in the world. We need that kind of balance in our market."



In addition to Gas Powered Games, developer DICE -- maker of the recently released "Battlefield: Bad Company 2" -- is considering bringing its blockbuster title to the Mac. The developer last supported Apple hardware in 2007, when it released "Battlefield 2142."



Karl-Magnus Troedsson, lead developer with DICE, wrote on his Twitter account this week that "Bad Company 2" could find its way to the Mac at some point. "We're currently investigating the possibility of making BFBC2 available on Mac," he wrote.



On Monday, developer Valve revealed that it was bringing its Steam game downloading service to the Mac in April. In addition, its popular titles powered by the Source engine, including Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2, will be available for OS X. Future Valve games will also ship simultaneously on the Mac.



Steam users who own games for the PC will be able to download and play the same games available on the Mac for free, and the new "Steam Play" feature will allow gamers on both Windows and Mac OS X to play online, with or against each other, cross-platform.



Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve, said partners who sell games through the Steam service are "very excited" about embracing the Mac, implying that even more top-tier titles could be ported. The company has made its tools, in the form of Steamworks for the Mac, available to its partners to make the transition easier.



"Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac," Holtman said. "We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 64
    igeniusigenius Posts: 1,240member
    Wow. It looks like maybe the Mac OS is reaching some sort of critical mass.



    Can a good selection of other software categories be far behind? About time!
  • Reply 2 of 64
    knightlieknightlie Posts: 282member
    If only the forthcoming Thief 4 was being built with the Source Engine, I would be in Mac gaming heaven and would die a happy man.
  • Reply 3 of 64
    mr. kmr. k Posts: 115member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by knightlie View Post


    If only the forthcoming Thief 4 was being built with the Source Engine, I would be in Mac gaming heaven and would die a happy man.



    Hey there. A Thief fan? Hover around the official forum much?



    I doubt that T4 will be using the Source engine, but then again it hasn't been disclosed what engine EM is using for that project. It will be interesting to see what they do with that. I'll put in a word with René next chance I get.



    On topic: It's about damned time.
  • Reply 4 of 64
    -ag--ag- Posts: 123member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by knightlie View Post


    If only the forthcoming Thief 4 was being built with the Source Engine, I would be in Mac gaming heaven and would die a happy man.



    This can only be seen as a good thing.



    Its one of the only real areas where Windows has a huge advantage over OS X.



    Once that gap diminishes maybe we will see more advanced graphics put into the MBPs. The ultimate lan party gaming machine
  • Reply 5 of 64
    igeniusigenius Posts: 1,240member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by -AG- View Post




    Once that gap diminishes maybe we will see more advanced graphics put into the MBPs. The ultimate lan party gaming machine



    Do the Mac desktop machines have decent graphics cards?
  • Reply 6 of 64
    Cool thats another game developer on the Mac, only how many more to go?
  • Reply 7 of 64
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iGenius View Post


    Wow. It looks like maybe the Mac OS is reaching some sort of critical mass.



    Yeah, it's about time!



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iGenius View Post


    Can a good selection of other software categories be far behind? About time!



    What's missing?



    There's always been great Mac software available.



    In the Windows underworld, with the huge numbers of users a developer can release a piece of crap, sell to a tiny percentage of the market and still do well. It can be deceptive, certainly self-deceptive, to the developer.



    Of course, there aren't the huge number of titles available for the Mac, but in the MacUniverse, if someone writes shitty software, word spreads quickly and it will die... MS Office being the exception.



    There's also a large shareware/freeware selection of Mac software that is largely overlooked. There are some wonderful, beautifully designed, powerful and extremely useful titles out there. (I'll spare us all a list ) I think some users fear the legitimacy or worth of software from small developers.



    Personally, I hope the trend is toward software PARITY. How many releases of supposedly cross-platform Mac software are a shadow of the Windows counterparts, or simply way late. LATE especially for games. We Mac users might get a popular Windows title a year or 2 after the Windows release.
  • Reply 8 of 64
    ghostface147ghostface147 Posts: 1,629member
    I don't care what platform it's on, just finish HL2: E3 Valve.
  • Reply 9 of 64
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member
    Do you think they'll slow down the game speed by about 70% for the Mac verison of Left4Dead? Maybe it will then be playable? (Maybe).



    The game is a twitchy mess. It was tolerable on the Xbox with a real controller. PC, forget it. What a joke.
  • Reply 10 of 64
    esummersesummers Posts: 953member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iGenius View Post


    Wow. It looks like maybe the Mac OS is reaching some sort of critical mass.



    Can a good selection of other software categories be far behind? About time!



    What software categories? Aside from games and a few very specific vertical markets, I think there is more selection of quality software on the Mac then on Windows.
  • Reply 11 of 64
    knightlieknightlie Posts: 282member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mr. K View Post


    Hey there. A Thief fan? Hover around the official forum much?



    I've been and lurked a few times since I heard about T4, and I lurk at TTLG forums in the editing/mod section. I'm just keeping up with news right now.



    Quote:

    I doubt that T4 will be using the Source engine, but then again it hasn't been disclosed what engine EM is using for that project. It will be interesting to see what they do with that. I'll put in a word with René next chance I get.



    I suspect they'll go with the Unreal Engine, if only because they don't have the resources to create a new one from scratch. Personally I think an updated Dark Engine would be great if they hadn't lost the damn source code. I'm playing T2 now and it still holds it's own against modern games for atmosphere and playability, even after a decade. Best game ever.



    Back on topic: One of the advantages of the Source Engine is its modest hardware requirements - perfect for graphically-challenged Macs.
  • Reply 12 of 64
    woohoo!woohoo! Posts: 291member
    Mac 1985, Windows 1995, Mac 2015!!





    Of course the last time game developers got excited about the Mac as a gaming platform was with the dual processor PowerMac G5's.



    There was ads in all the Mac magazines for 3D games coming to the Mac, I got myself a nice rig and it was able to run two 3D games at once in windows on my 30" (with some frame rate loss as it only could use one video card.)



    Then of course IBM couldn't make cool G5's anymore and well we got hobbled Intel processors.



    My current MBP has a single 800Mhz bus for two cores, my PMG5 dual processor had 1GHz per processor!! Bandwidth to burn INDEED!! RAID 0 a pair of Raptors and there was virtually no lag to disk, apps would launch with one bounce.



    The reason there are so many more Leopard users than Snow Leopard users is because Apple sold A LOT of G5 machines. People are loath to give up those babies, especially since they resale for little now because Apple won't support them anymore in the new OS releases.





    Heavy duty games need a lot of performance on the device, that isn't the road Apple and device makers are going down anymore. They are opting for lower performance to create light, cool, thin and portable devices, shifting any heavy processor needs to the "cloud" or desktop machines like the Mac Pro via the internet.



    The iPad is proof, it's only got a 1Ghz, most likely integrated graphics. It won't even run Flash or if it can, creates too much heat.



    I very highly suspect the new iMac's coming will support a very thin design like the iPad, even a dual touchscreen UI/cursor UI and use the less powerful A4 processors like what the iPad has.



    Apple has spent a lot of money for the A4, needs a OS X hardware lock again and most likely will put the A4 into more Mac's and create slimmer, cooler devices in the process. Not good candidates for serious 3D games. Nvidia might be in trouble.



    So for serious gaming on Intel processors, that leaves the Mac Pro and perhaps the MBP only and it's looking like Apple will be pushing the A4 in more and more of their products.



    In fact that little Intel leak of i5 or i7's in MacBook Pro's might have been a clever move designed to get a response from Apple, perhaps they didn't put in a call for those processors and Intel was getting worried.



    Serious gaming has firmly gone to consoles, the PS3 is the ultra machine, the detail is incredible, the processor is very hot and powerful as it needs to be.
  • Reply 13 of 64
    ilogicilogic Posts: 298member
    Can we get a Mac Apps Store please?



    It would be nice so I don't have to worry about license keys anymore...
  • Reply 14 of 64
    knightlieknightlie Posts: 282member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Woohoo! View Post


    I very highly suspect the new iMac's coming will support a very thin design like the iPad, even a dual touchscreen UI/cursor UI and use the less powerful A4 processors like what the iPad has.



    Apple are not going to drop Intel chips. Don't forget, any replacement is going to have to emulate x86 processors a la Rosetta, and as good as the A4 is, it's not going to do that.
  • Reply 15 of 64
    zandroszandros Posts: 537member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by macadam212 View Post


    Cool thats another game developer on the Mac, only how many more to go?



    Relic would be nice.
  • Reply 16 of 64
    chronsterchronster Posts: 1,894member
    "after Steam's jump to Apple"



    cmon, they didn't jump to Apple. They expanded to Apple. I see what's happening here. You guys are going to start to try and make it sound like Valve is moving to Apple and dropping the "ever dying" PC community.



    Perhaps I just read it wrong, but generally when someone jumps somewhere, they are no longer in the place they once were.
  • Reply 17 of 64
    brucepbrucep Posts: 2,823member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by chronster View Post


    "after Steam's jump to Apple"



    cmon, they didn't jump to Apple. They expanded to Apple. I see what's happening here. You guys are going to start to try and make it sound like Valve is moving to Apple and dropping the "ever dying" PC community.



    Perhaps I just read it wrong, but generally when someone jumps somewhere, they are no longer in the place they once were.



    http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/02/news...anies.fortune/







    steam has joined apple at the hip



    gaming in the clouds will be open to all platforms



    life just got sweeter





    9
  • Reply 18 of 64
    brucepbrucep Posts: 2,823member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ilogic View Post


    Can we get a Mac Apps Store please?



    It would be nice so I don't have to worry about license keys anymore...



    ??

    we have one already dude

    7 yrs ago
  • Reply 19 of 64
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jeffharris View Post


    Yeah, it's about time!









    What's missing?



    There's always been great Mac software available.



    In the Windows underworld, with the huge numbers of users a developer can release a piece of crap, sell to a tiny percentage of the market and still do well. It can be deceptive, certainly self-deceptive, to the developer.



    Of course, there aren't the huge number of titles available for the Mac, but in the MacUniverse, if someone writes shitty software, word spreads quickly and it will die... MS Office being the exception.



    There's also a large shareware/freeware selection of Mac software that is largely overlooked. There are some wonderful, beautifully designed, powerful and extremely useful titles out there. (I'll spare us all a list ) I think some users fear the legitimacy or worth of software from small developers.



    Personally, I hope the trend is toward software PARITY. How many releases of supposedly cross-platform Mac software are a shadow of the Windows counterparts, or simply way late. LATE especially for games. We Mac users might get a popular Windows title a year or 2 after the Windows release.



    This annoucement is significant. Valve is one of the leading ISVs for Windows and traditionally diehard loyalist to MS. Most of them are ex-MSFT so this is huge. And the timing is no small matter. This is just in time for Holiday 2010 titles in development to make the decision to "port" to the Mac and have a same time release as Windows with the buy on both platforms for one price plan from Steam.
  • Reply 20 of 64
    brucepbrucep Posts: 2,823member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Osirisani View Post


    This annoucement is significant. Valve is one of the leading ISVs for Windows and traditionally diehard loyalist to MS. Most of them are ex-MSFT so this is huge. And the timing is no small matter. This is just in time for Holiday 2010 titles in development to make the decision to "port" to the Mac and have a same time release as Windows with the buy on both platforms for one price plan from Steam.



    NOT PORT

    but BRAND NEW re writes for APPLES intel/snowy platfrom's
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