Gamertell

Hey Mac gamers - remember all those tasty rumors about Steam (Valve’s premiere digital game store and platform) coming to Apple machines? Well, get out the celebratory slice of cake - it’s true! Not only that, but Portal 2 is slated to be the first simultaneous Mac/PC release on the platform. Steam will be available on Macs this April.

It all makes sense now, as Valve president Gabe Newell stated in a press release:

“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.”

Check out some of the technical details from the same release:

“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. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.”

I cannot tell you how excited I am. I’m a Mac user and a gamer - and thus I’ve been mostly into console games for the largest chunk of my gaming. Mac gaming has steadily gone from the punchline of a joke to a serious thing - and here we have the first truly massive development. No more bootcamp for me!

Read [Steam] Read [Wired]