By Joylia 1 year, 11 months ago • 0 Comments
Back in 2007, Valve’s co-founder, Gabe Newell, had some disparaging comments in an interview on Video Games Daily in regards to Apple’s stance on gaming.
“Well, we tried to have a conversation with Apple for several years, and they never seemed to… well, we have this pattern with Apple, where we meet with them, people there go “wow, gaming is incredibly important, we should do something with gaming”. And then we’ll say, “OK, here are three things you could do to make that better”, and then they say OK, and then we never see them again. And then a year later, a new group of people show up, who apparently have no idea that the last group of people were there, and never follow through on anything. So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there’s never any follow through on any of the things they say they’re going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms.”
“I just don’t think they’ve ever taken gaming seriously. And none of the things developers ask them to do are done. And as a result, there’s no gaming market there to speak of. We’d love it if they would get serious about it. But they never have, and can’t even follow through on any of their commitments for game developers.”
I guess Apple came to their senses and realized the merit of Gabe’s wise words because according to GameInformer’s April 2010 edition – yes, the rumors are true. Valve is bringing Steam to Mac Systems! The beta version is planned for spring while the full release is targeted for May.
“As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”
“Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac,” said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. “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.”
“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.”
The article also advised that Windows users who already have a Steam account will be able to re-download games using their existing keys rather than having to go through the expensive hassle of re-buying their games for their once neglected Macs, which is even better news for those thinking of switching over to a Mac or who use both systems!
It has also been said that one of the most anticipated Valve titles, Portal 2, will also be available for the Mac in the fall. Seems Apple is getting a lot of love this year!
source: http://archive.videogamesdaily.com/features/gabenewell_valve_iv_sep07_p1.asp)
Apple, Joylia, Mac, Portal 2, Steam, Valve
