Apple users arguing that the Mac is a viable gaming computer will have a significant addition to their army: Valve has now confirmed Steam will be coming to the OS X.
For those who live by consoles rather than computers, Steam is a digital distribution platform in which gamers can easily purchase and download games, connect with friends and of course, play online. It has grown exponentially within the last few years as Valve has branched out to more and more gaming producers who wish for their games to by offered by Steam.
According to the ambitious goal by Valve, Steam will offer Mac users their glorious library of games (like popular hits Left 4 Dead 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Portal and the Half-Life series) by April 2010. Before you reach for that dusty calendar, that's just a month away - a time frame so small that it makes me wonder if Valve employees are ever allowed to go home. Then again, it explains why we haven't heard any news of Half-Life 3 - at least they're working on something!
Gabe Newell, nerd god and president of Valve, reiterated his love for the previously neglected operating system:
"As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients. The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services."
Valve's Director of Business Development, Jason Holtman, confirmed that it wasn't just Valve's games that will be supported, but every single game distributed by the platform:
"Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac. 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. For example, 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. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."
As if things couldn't sound better for Mac users, the Director of Steam Development (John Cook) also confirmed that they're "treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform", which means game releases will be simultaneous - Windows and Mac games will be released on the same date, as well as updates and patches.
If you're wondering if you can hook up a LAN from a PC with your buddy's iMac, you completely can - Cook later went on to state that the two systems will be completely non-differentiating in multiplayer:
"Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients."
Whew, all that revolutionizing gameplay and assimilation of operation systems made me sweaty.
What do you think of Valve's ambitious project? Do you support the idea of macs using Steam?
Source: ComputerAndVideoGames