Valve bringing Steam to Mac

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/03/steam-mac/

by blazamos • 16 years ago

177 78 16 years ago

wired.com

stcredzero3• 16 years ago

Give this seamless integration with Front Row. (In the UI but have it be a modular add-on install.)

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Why? So you can select the game with a remote control, and then walk over the the computer to play it?

jcl2• 16 years ago

Why not? Many games can be played with controllers instead of mouse and keyboard. If you're using your computer as a media center hooked up to your TV, then being able to select the game via remote could be quite convenient.

dboyd• 16 years ago

My experience with Steam on windows has not been entirely pleasant. Granted, the poor user interface, and the endless amount of intrusion into the startup and gaming process can quickly be forgiven in light of the fact that I got one of the most entertaining games I've ever played through Steam: Portal.

Still, as someone who really doesn't want to have to own a high-end windows box for the sole purpose of gaming, this announcement make me (cautiously?) optimistic.

tialys• 16 years ago

They've just released an early version of the new UI, and it's MUCH faster and less intrusive (I think). That said, I can't really say it's all that bad when compared to most any other similar tool. Plus, SteamFriends and other things are just plain amazing for gamers -- frankly I don't know how I used to get by without them.

noilly• 16 years ago

the current steam beta ui has been ported from ie to webkit (which was a hint that they were going to introduce mac support)

hristov• 16 years ago

Last time I used Steam I spent a couple of hours trying to debug a game that crashed on startup. Eventually I figured out how to start the game without Steam interfering, and found that when I start the game without Steam I would get a very helpful error message, that told me exactly what the problem was. When I started the game with steam, the game would just crash with no error messages.

After that, I did a lot of cursing at Steam.

CoryMathews2• 16 years ago

I did the same thing and have swore to never buy another game by them again. I never got the game to work...

bliss• 16 years ago

Still, all the same, it's nice to have a high end windows box just for gaming. I also use mine for testing web sites (so it's a valid company purchase :)

weaksauce3• 16 years ago

I love that the mac is going to be treated as a tier-1 game device by valve and that you don't need to buy both a mac version if you have already purchased the PC version.

This could be the catalyst that the mac world was looking for to be more gamer oriented and not an afterthought.

potatolicious2• 16 years ago

What's even better I think is the expansion of Steam Cloud into savegames altogether. The ability to sync progress on a game seamlessly and automatically across multiple machines is going to be a real treat.

It's already useful for hardcore gamers now - go to a gaming cafe, log into your Steam account, and all of your control schemes and settings are just the way you like 'em.

metachris• 16 years ago

This also means a lot more games will be developed with OpenGL rather than just DirectX, which might bring many more future games to Linux as well.

MikeCapone• 16 years ago

That would be awesome. The only game I play is Call of Duty 4 because it's too annoying to reboot my Mac Pro in Windows mode.

coderdude• 16 years ago

Now there's a moving target. Given the amount of testing that is required just to get modern games to work across most hardware without problems (on Windows), Linux (which distros?) as a tier-1 platform is wishful thinking. The mass gaming market exists on stable, more or less predictable platforms.

houseabsolute• 16 years ago

Now if only it were possible to buy a good graphics card on an Apple computer. I say this as a proud owner of a Macbook Pro, by the way.

rplacd• 16 years ago

The mid-range "customizable" Mac Pro has always been a pipe dream for me :(

sp3322• 16 years ago

http://store.steampowered.com/news/3569/

"Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter."

scott_s• 16 years ago

I think there is a difference between a blog post and a news article by an established site, such as Wired. Personally, I'd rather see Wired's news article than a company press release.

Wired did reporting beyond the press release itself. The part of the guidelines you quoted is, I think, more aimed at blog posts that add no value, just quote another news story verbatim.

sp3322• 16 years ago

I don't entirely disagree, but it should be presented as commentary instead of news. I guess I was just a little ticked that Wired didn't even link to the official announcement.

threepointone• 16 years ago

I hope this kicks off the gaming peripheral market for macs. It would be lovely to have a a handheld controller to play this stuff. Macbook Pro keyboards are not very good for gaming :) The tiny arrow keys are pissing off.

I hear the ps3 controller already hooks up with snow leopard easily, so that's good news.

EDIT: Google search for "ps3 controller snow leopard" shows a bunch of hits, just to confirm what I said. http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS368US368&so...

jimm2• 16 years ago

I never use the arrow keys when gaming. A friend showed me the setup I use to this day: look with the mouse, right mouse walks, left mouse fires, shift/c strafe left/right, z secondary fire, x duck.

andybak• 16 years ago

Interesting. If only I'd been shown that 15 years ago when I still had some ability to rewire my neuronal pathways.

nonrecursive• 16 years ago

how do you walk backward?

ramchip• 16 years ago

AFAIK the canonical FPS setup is wasd for up/strafe left/down/strafe right, left click for fire, right click for secondary fire, x for duck and z for prone. Or, anyway, it's what I use. I think it allows for more flexibility in movement, but sometimes cheap keyboards don't support strafe+forward+duck together too well without using modifiers (ctrl/shift).

varikin• 16 years ago

The Wiimote can connect to the Mac as well. I current use one with Remote Buddy (http://www.iospirit.com/products/remotebuddy/) to control a Mac as a media center computer. The buttons work great, but I haven't had good luck with the motion sensor though.

stcredzero3• 16 years ago

If playing Meteor Blitz is any indication, the iPhone/iPod Touch can make a very nice game controller. (You'd probably want all of the CPU and other resources devoted to just controlling.) It might be worth Apple's while to hire 2 or 3 devs and have them cranking out iPhone interfaces to Steam games.

nickyp• 16 years ago

The Logitech G13 game controller works flawlessly on Mac OS X and is a hell of a lot more comfortable if you want to game on your laptop. It can also store keymap profiles on the device itself so you can use it on any computer.

matthijs• 16 years ago

I really like the Steam Play concept and hope all the older Valve games I bought will use this feature.

Finally no more or at least less reboots to windows

jkincaid• 16 years ago

Anyone with knowledge of the current generation of video cards know how recent models of iMacs and Macbook Pros will perform (assuming performance of Steam on Mac is comparable to its Windows counterpart).

I tried checking out the video card in my 27 inch iMac (by far the most expensive desktop I've ever purchased) and was a bit underwhelmed to find out the card was released in 2008...

X-Istence• 16 years ago

I am able to play Half Life 2 at full settings on my older generation MacBook Pro with an 8600M when running Windows, on a 1080p monitor.

I would be interested in seeing how the 9400M does in the latest MacBook Pro's.

weaksauce3• 16 years ago

Some of the latest MBP's have a 9600 as well as the 9400. The 9600 runs mirrors edge pretty well on a 24" monitor at native resolution.

ovi256• 16 years ago

I played CoD: MW2 (Bootcamp) on my 27" Core Duo 2 iMac and it ran well. Not at highest quality settings, but about as well as the PS3 I'd say. No crashes either.

tibbon2• 16 years ago

My 2008 Macbook Pro (C2d 2.5ghz, 512MB Geforce 8600gt, 4GB ram) holds up pretty well with most Steam titles at reasonable settings and resolutions. I'm sure the newer ones fare even better. I wouldn't worry about your graphics card so much- even 'older' ones are pretty good still.

Will it play Crysis at full settings on a huge screen? No, but it does TF2 and Portal nicely at 1440x900.

yashodhan• 16 years ago

That's the same laptop I have. Do you think it'll last for a while?

jsz0• 16 years ago

Any of the Source engine games should run great on the last few generations of MacBooks and iMacs. Half Life 2 actually ran fairly well on my old GMA950 based MacBook. I know Valve has added some bells & whistles to the engine since then however to target older Mac's they may simply disable some of those features when running on Intel GMA or X* hardware.

nitrogen• 16 years ago

Don't expect much from a 9400M. I hope you went for the iMac with the better graphics chip.

Edit: hopefully this move helps prod Apple toward including better graphics chips by default, as paying three times as much for a computer vs DIY from Newegg shouldn't give one third the performance for games.

noarchy• 16 years ago

Hardware parity has never been a big priority for Apple. The Mac as a gaming platform may force a change that has been overdue for years. Gamers aren't going to put up with weak GPUs that run things "well enough" in medium settings or less. And they will want more than Cider ports of games, for sure.

msg• 16 years ago

As a user who endured many crashes in Team Fortress 2 with the edge versions of Crossover Games, I'm happy that I'll become a first-class citizen soon...

Flow• 16 years ago

I'm in the exact same position. The crashes are very random.

snprbob86• 16 years ago

How long before their achievements and other components are on iPhone too?

zyb09• 16 years ago

I bet Apple will sooner or later throw rocks in their path. Why? That's just how Apple rolls.

e1ven2• 16 years ago

World of Warcraft has been running on OSX for several years, and Apple has helped them to get better performance over time.

duskwuff• 16 years ago

Indeed, a couple of OS X updates have mentioned OpenGL changes made specifically to boost performance in WoW. For instance, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1525 "... improves the reliability of OpenGL-accelerated graphics in Blizzard's World of Warcraft".

ptomato2• 16 years ago

Per the valve guys in an interview with AppleInsider, Apple provided quite a bit of support and help when they were porting Steam/Source to Mac.

potatolicious2• 16 years ago

It makes sense - Apple has been interested in Macs as a gaming platform for years, but has never been serious enough to put their considerable muscle behind it.

If someone else is willing to throw their money, time, and influence at the problem, all the better for Apple.

jeroen• 16 years ago

The interview: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/08/valve_apple_wo...

quizbiz• 16 years ago

Does this mean PC games on Mac? Pardon my ignorance.

acj• 16 years ago

Yes and no. Valve is porting some of its existing PC/Xbox game titles to run natively on the Mac platform, and most (or all?) of their new titles will be released simultaneously on PC, Mac, and XBox 360.

e1ven2• 16 years ago

Further, Valve is bring it's "App Store for Games" to the Mac, which will encourage other game publishers to port to the Mac, and give them a solid sales-platform to do so on.

bemmu• 16 years ago

Already many students are using Apple laptops at school, and perhaps have a PC at home since you can also play games on it. If you could play all the new cool games on a Mac, instead of a home PC you could consider either getting a beefier Mac laptop or a Mac desktop system.

While there may still be a lot of people preferring a PC, I think their future number just went down a lot. Time to long AAPL?

ekiru• 16 years ago

One thing that I'm wondering is whether I'll be able to get the Mac version of Dragon Age, for example, through Steam without having to buy it again since I've already bought the Windows version through Steam. I'm sure there could be some licensing issues there, but if Valve managed to convince other game developers to allow them to do that with non-Valve games, it would make this even better.

stef25• 16 years ago

"If players already own the PC versions of Valve games, they’ll get Mac versions at no extra charge through a feature called Steam Play."

Source: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/03/steam-mac/

lutorm• 16 years ago

Yeah, too bad that of the few games I own on Steam, a big fat zero come from Valve...

illumin8• 16 years ago

Unfortunately, this is really up to the publisher of Dragon Age, EA/Bioware. Steam is just a distribution channel, like the App Store is for iPhone. They take a cut of each purchase and handle electronic downloads and DRM.

In order to get a copy for Mac for free, EA/Bioware would have to agree to allow their PC Steam customers to do this. Edit: I'm an idiot, they did release a Mac version

This isn't a magic bullet, but it's a great first step. Now that publishers have a known and trusted distribution channel on Mac, we may see more Mac versions of AAA titles.

CoryMathews2• 16 years ago

Steam does not even run well on windows why would they try to port it to mac before making it stable on windows?

Valve bringing Steam to Mac

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