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Steam is Coming Soon to a Mac Near You!

Li_AkahiLi_Akahi
edited March 2010 in Video Games
Most likely. Needless to say, I am waiting on the edge of my seat.
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Comments

  • AprecheApreche
    Doesn't matter because most of the games won't work. It will be like a separate Steam store for Macs.
  • AndrewAndrew
    Enjoy the rich library of OpenGL games. Oh wait...
  • George PatchesGeorge Patches
    Cause games developers are really going to go through the torture of programming OpenGL for the 5% market share the Mac/Linux users represent.
  • AprecheApreche
    Cause games developers are really going to go through the torture of programming OpenGL for the 5% market share the Mac/Linux users represent.
    Works for Blizzard.
  • SchnevetsSchnevets
    This better not be what all that Portal hype was about...
  • George PatchesGeorge Patches
    Works for Blizzard.
    Yeah, if your game prints money, it's fantastic.
  • SchnevetsSchnevets
    Cause games developers are really going to go through the torture of programming OpenGL for the 5% market share the Mac/Linux users represent.
    However, a large majority of that 5% market share is college students. If you decide to endure the obstacles, and make sure that the damn games actually work on Mac (I've helped friends out, and we've encountered some damn-weird problems installing things on macs), you could discover nice share of customers.
  • gomidoggomidog
    edited March 2010
    Doesn't matter because most of the games won't work. It will be like a separate Steam store for Macs.
    Guess who's game has a Mac build.

    image
    Post edited by gomidog on
  • Luke BurrageLuke Burrage
    I was about to buy crossover games, but I think I'll wait for a bit until.
  • SailSail
    Doesn't matter because most of the games won't work. It will be like a separate Steam store for Macs.
    But if Steam comes out for Mac, it means that Valve will be making its games compatable.
  • AprecheApreche
    But if Steam comes out for Mac, it means that Valve will be making its games compatable.
    Yeah,that will probably happen. They can make some extra bank that way.
  • SailSail
    But if Steam comes out for Mac, it means that Valve will be making its games compatible.
    Yeah,that will probably happen. They can make some extra bank that way.
    And the important part of that is that it will be opening the door for Mac gaming in the future.
  • sK0pesK0pe
    And the important part of that is that it will be opening the door for Mac gaming in the future.
    I laughed at this comment initially because usually gaming and Mac doesn't go together plus the percentage of gamers on Macs is zero except for the cutesy casual game crowd - read "Farmville".

    Big game companies / publishers seem to be catering to where the population is at - which seems to be consoles. Including going to the extent of writing games for consoles specifically and then porting them poorly to PC with delayed release dates e.g. Street Fighter 4. With much less infrastructure for multiplayer. I would suggest that the companies are not going to be thinking about Mac gaming immediately when producing games let alone in the future.

    This seems to be more of a pity play for Mac users who want to game on their Macbook Pro.
  • OmnutiaOmnutia
    edited March 2010
    .. I'll go fetch the fire extinguisher.

    Wait.. first paragraph.. last paragraph..
    Post edited by Omnutia on
  • George PatchesGeorge Patches
    Watch them only release the original Half Life. :P
  • gomidoggomidog
    edited March 2010

    I laughed at this comment initially because usually gaming and Mac doesn't go together plus the percentage of gamers on Macs is zero except for the cutesy casual game crowd - read "Farmville".
    It's a self fufilling prophecy. Mac gamer population is really low because there are very few decent games ported to macs. One of the largest reasons why Mac gaming = Farmville is because lack of alternatives on the OS to casual gaming. I know a bunch of people who use macs but if given a chance would love a few decent FPS games to come their way. It's not that there is no market, it's that it is an untapped market.
    Post edited by gomidog on
  • AprecheApreche
    edited March 2010
    It's a self fufilling prophecy. Mac gamer population is really low because there are very few decent games ported to macs. One of the largest reasons why Mac gaming = Farmville is because lack of alternatives on the OS to casual gaming. I know a bunch of people who use macs but if given a chance would love a few decent FPS games to come their way. It's not that there is no market, it's that it is an untapped market.
    It's not just that. It's also because developing serious games for Mac is really painful. Few existing engines work on the Mac, so anyone who builds a game on one of those engines will not have a Mac port. Most PC games are built on DirectX, because doing so will allow your game to work on both the XBox 360 and the PC. Therefore, it is a huge pain to rewrite the game to work on Linux/Mac.

    The Mac includes no support for joysticks or any other gaming peripherals and such. Try connecting a standard USB gamepad to your Mac and see what happens. At least Linux will try to handle the joystick the best it can with the available open source drivers. Windows has a whole joystick/gamepad suite in the control panel.

    Also, many PC games require a lot of horsepower to run well. The Macbook Pro has a GeForce 9400M, or a 9600M. The 27" iMac goes up to a Radeon HD4850 with 512MB of RAM. The Mac Pro, the best and most expensive Mac you can possibly buy, can come with either a GeForce GT120s or Radeon HD4870s.

    For the sake of comparison, the new HTPC I just built has a Radeon HD5570 with 1 GB of video RAM. It cost $85. All Macs across the board are woefully underpowered when it comes to 3D compared to PCs. Sure you can get the SLi going on in the Mac Pro, but that's just ridiculous, and Apple charges three arms and two legs extra for it.

    Also, if you're a Mac purist, that means you use a chiclet keyboard and either the trackpad or a magic mouse. Those are basically impossible to play any serious game with.

    Unless you are developing on some cross-platform engine, developing for the Mac is a huge pain. The Mac also lacks the necessary horsepower to really rock the latest games. That's why the kinds of games you see released on the Mac are always going to be old games or games that are not graphically intensive. Also, games like Farmville and such make way way way more money than hardcore games. They also cost almost nothing to develop, and nothing (or next to nothing) to port to the Mac. A big expensive fancy 3D game costs a super lot of time, pain, and money to port, and the benefits of doing so will be very small. Even if there are people who will buy it, there aren't enough to justify the expense of doing so.
    Post edited by Apreche on
  • SchnevetsSchnevets
    All very true, Scott, but also excellent reasons why Half-Life 2 and other high-caliber but less resource intense games will do well on the Mac. If there's a company that can do a competent port, it would be Valve. I doubt this will end up being some groundbreaking event that will redefine what it means to own a mac, but it will should be financially profitable for the company.
  • AprecheApreche
    All very true, Scott, but also excellent reasons why Half-Life 2 and other high-caliber but less resource intense games will do well on the Mac. If there's a company that can do a competent port, it would be Valve. I doubt this will end up being some groundbreaking event that will redefine what it means to own a mac, but it will should be financially profitable for the company.
    Yeah, bringing the Source engine over to the Mac is a good idea at this point. It won't be too difficult, relatively speaking. The Macs have the horsepower for it. The engine also has a lot of games for it which are extremely popular. So porting just the one engine will get them sales of multiple different games. They will almost definitely do Portal and the HL games. I will be very curious to see if they bring Counter-Strike, L4D, TF2, etc.
  • gomidoggomidog
    DirectX
    This is definitely true. Also direct X11 sounds so...drool.
    All Macs across the board are woefully underpowered when it comes to 3D compared to PCs.
    This is annoying. It makes me mad.
  • SchnevetsSchnevets
    I think L4D and TF2 have already been hinted at (there are photos that tease them). Counter strike shouldn't be too tough.
  • AndrewAndrew
    All Macs across the board are woefully underpowered when it comes to 3D compared to PCs.
    This is annoying. It makes me mad.
    I think this is the most interesting point. It's indicative that Apple does NOT want to put the effort into promoting game playing on the Mac. Jobs had repeatedly said he does not want the Mac to become a game platform and honestly, without effort by Apple, I feel this is all in vain.
  • AprecheApreche
    I think this is the most interesting point. It's indicative that Apple does NOT want to put the effort into promoting game playing on the Mac. Jobs had repeatedly said he does not want the Mac to become a game platform and honestly, without effort by Apple, I feel this is all in vain.
    iPhone/iPod different story.
  • AndrewAndrew
    I think this is the most interesting point. It's indicative that Apple does NOT want to put the effort into promoting game playing on the Mac. Jobs had repeatedly said he does not want the Mac to become a game platform and honestly, without effort by Apple, I feel this is all in vain.
    iPhone/iPod different story.
    Very true.
  • CremlianCremlian
    I think L4D and TF2 have already been hinted at (there are photos that tease them). Counter strike shouldn't be too tough.
    Yay, Mac's are getting 2 to 10 year old games Yay!.........*goes back to his PC*
  • Dr. TimoDr. Timo
    Yay, Mac's are getting 2 to 10 year old games Yay!.........*goes back to his PC*
    For me it's not about how recent or how many games you can play on the mac, it's about the functionality of the Steam store. I don't do that much gaming, but when the itch hits me I don't want to have to go to a brick and mortar store and I don't want to go visit twenty different websites to try and pick out a game. If I can go to the Steam store and know that 95% of all available mac games are there, then that's a huge win for me. Likewise, if developers don't have to set up their own e-commerce site just to sell their game but can instead just put it up on steam, that's a win for them. And all Valve has to do is make a mac client and add a "mac" category.
  • sK0pesK0pe
    It seems that the source engine is being pushed to Apple.

    Left 4 Dead (but not 2?)
    Half Life
    Team Fortress 2

    Makes sense as the source engine scales down fairly well
    The slightly interesting point is that Blizzard was the only other big game publisher for Macs before this and Starcraft 2 has Battlenet which is going to be like Steam but just for Blizzard games.

    The new Steam beta also shows an apple like GUI with the album flick through like in iTunes or any other Apple product (I think, I don't know).
    I wish they would just make it like a regular Windows application to allow for the glass interface but whatever, as long as games are still being pushed out and trying to destroy brick and mortar physical distribution.
  • GreatTeacherMacRossGreatTeacherMacRoss
    I can't wait to play all the coolest games like Warcraft II....System Shock....Photoshop....
  • AprecheApreche
    Here are some of the details that we have been wondering about.
  • Luke BurrageLuke Burrage
    I like:

    "Our projections for Steam sales on the PC were horribly wrong. So, we'll just work diligently, skip the predictions (and embarrassment of guessing incorrectly), and see what happens."
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