Gordon Freeman with an Apple logo stamped into his chest and the Heavy coming straight out of an iPod commercial here are actually saying quite a lot. Yes, they’re pointing at releases of Half-Life and Team Fortress 2 for Mac, probably announced at the Game Developers Conference later this month. (Well, hopefully.) If they really are teasing Mac releases of those franchises, that’s saying something huge about Valve, and their decision to adopt Mac as a full-fledged platform. I mean, Valve hasn’t even touched the PS3, and now they’re developing for Mac?
Steam for Mac would be one thing: It’s the best digital delivery for PC games around (well, except when my pre-load for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 never showed up), and gaining a foothold on the Mac for distribution would make a certain level of sense, even if Valve wasn’t developing Mac games themselves. (Though it’s also inherently fascinating that the two truest PC gaming companies, in a sense, Valve and Blizzard, may now be developing for the Mac. )
If I could play TF2 on my MacBook Pro without having to boot into Windows, keep all of my Steam settings and games intact and synced across platforms (without repurchasing!), I just might need to change my pants. PC gaming isn’t dying, apparently, it’s moving to Macs. [Kotaku, MacRumors, MacNN, Shack News]
Doug
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 12:16 PM“If I could play TF2 on my MacBook Pro without having to boot into Windows, keep all of my Steam settings and games intact and synced across platforms (without repurchasing!), I just might need to change my pants. PC gaming isn’t dying, apparently, it’s moving to Macs.”
You and me both! I cant wait for TF2 for MacOSX! That game rules! Engie update not far away…
Shane
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 12:30 PMIf that is all true, it would a major win for apple.
All we would need after that is steam on the iphone and we’d be set
spiderlama
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 2:58 PMAnd reasonable graphics hardware at a reasonable price!
Andrew Jacob de Ridder
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 1:27 PMBlizzard has always made mac/windows versions of their games.
I hope i don’t have to re-purchase my games to work on mac.
MONKEYBOY
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 1:56 PMThis is HUGE news for the PC/MAC gaming community: as long as the online games (TF2, Left4Dead) can play on the same servers – if not it will split the online community in half… which is bad news for PC gamers. Not so much for the popular games, more for the less popular online games. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a big surge in computer gaming, especially since the consoles are starting to show their age a bit in graphics, and there wont be any graphical improvements to console games until the next gen consoles come out.
Hope the move is extremely successful for Valve – I’m very confident it will be.
matt
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 3:39 PM“PC gaming isn’t dying, apparently, it’s moving to Macs.”
lol…
a few things to consider.
valve games are written for DirectX. porting to OpenGL macs will probably be more difficult than porting to the xbox360.
the fact that Valve is exclusive to directX and windows is probably one of the reasons their games are so awesome and polished.
if they can do this, it would be really easy to port to Linux. now that WOULD be interesting.
between crappy compilers, and crappy graphics APIs – two things MS hand crafts them selves for their platforms, and are probably the two highest quality things the company makes – I would have my doubts about these games running as fast as they do on windows.
Blizzard have always developed for Mac, I remember seeing someone playing Starcraft on a Mac.. Once…
It will be VERY interesting to see if you have to buy mac versions of the game.
matt
Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 4:09 PMjust saw this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-of-Warcraft-Mac-PC/dp/B000197Z30/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1267679049&sr=1-4
it seems that all the blizzard games are just one purchase and you can play on Mac or PC. hopefully valve follows suit. its interesting that these are cross platform, but not console games – you can’t buy a 360/PS3 version in one box – I suppose different media is one thing, but it must be more than that. honestly though, from a development standpoint, there’s no difference between making your game PS3 and 360, than PC and MAC.
Epilogue
Friday, March 5, 2010 at 12:00 AMBrilliant news. This is great on all sides. More macbook pro gaming goodness :D
klaw
Friday, March 5, 2010 at 11:29 AM“PC gaming isn’t dying, apparently, it’s moving to Macs”
Including Macs, perhaps. Moving to Macs, no. Gaming is heavily influenced by budget constraints, and Macs remain quite expensive relative to PCs.