[Gache]

Kind of surprised no-one else posted this yet

From Valve to Deliver Steam & Source on the Mac:

Quote

March 8, 2010 - Valve announced today it will bring Steam, Valve's gaming service, and Source, Valve's gaming engine, to the Mac.

Steam and Valve's library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April.

Quote

Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve [said] "Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge."

Nice touch.

Quote

"We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said John Cook, Director of Steam Development. "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360. Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth.
[...]
Portal 2 will be Valve's first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. "Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."

(Emphasis mine.) Native not emulated, cross-platform code, simultaneous builds. Yep, that's how to do multi-platform development effectively

No more excuses: as of now, it's as easy to do Source on Mac OS X and Windows as just Windows.

- Gache

This post has been edited by Gache: 08 March 2010 - 11:56 PM

[firefly2442]

Now if they can only add Linux to their list...

[CR6]

I guess the issue is that probably not many people in the past considered the Mac as a serious gaming platform. Most "gamers" will buy a game on the PC or console and not wait for 6-12 months it takes to port to Mac OS.

However, with the Mac's market share going up it seems Valve figures it is financially worth it to release Steam for the Mac.

Interestingly, I think the iPhone platform will sell more games than the Mac will. (I own both and have purchased games for my iPhone but not for my MacBook Pro)

[Gache]

firefly2442, on Mar 9 2010, 12:45 AM, said:

Now if they can only add Linux to their list...

I think that will take a while

The 'tipping point' before everyone starts to treat a platform (such as a web browser or an OS) as an essential seems to be around 10% installed base... which OS X has now passed (at least in the US, and it's close in Europe).

We're not quite there yet on the desktop. But we'll get there

CR6, on Mar 9 2010, 12:48 AM, said:

I guess the issue is that probably not many people in the past considered the Mac as a serious gaming platform. Most "gamers" will buy a game on the PC or console and not wait for 6-12 months it takes to port to Mac OS.

Well, as Valve pointed out in their announcement, if you use good development practices, there isn't any delay. So hopefully that will hammer the point into people's heads that the delay only exists because you treat OS X as an afterthought

If there is a delay, it's squarely the fault of the devs, not the platform. Perhaps studios that have a 'console first, PC later' attitude will still release the OS X version later; probably studios with an ingrained 'OS X later' process will still do so; but I'd honestly be surprised if, in a few years time, the studios that do simultaneous releases and used Steam+Source to get into OS X for the first time are still delaying one platform over the other.

Or maybe I'm just an optimist.

- Gache

This post has been edited by Gache: 09 March 2010 - 02:28 AM

[Gache]

firefly2442, on 09 March 2010 - 01:45 AM, said:

Now if they can only add Linux to their list...

Maybe I was wrong... it looks like Valve is already working on this!

[firefly2442]

Cool. They're making progress.

[Cobblers]

Slowly but surely - great to see.

Either way, I'll still end up buying a PC for my gaming rig this year rather than buy a new Apple Mac as the rate just isn't quick enough for me.