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Now Steam is coming to OS X, who's deleting Windows?
- Thread starter MattZani
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Still need Windows for gaming, especially as a Mac Pro owner with a GTX 285 I have a good selection of awesome games only available for Win...
I have 91 Steam games. Valve games (the Source ones at least) make up 7 of those games.
Don't get me wrong this whole thing is amazing and brilliant and I'll love Valve even more forever till death do us part. But I'm not throwing my money away not being able to play the bulk of my library just yet.
Windows stays.
Don't get me wrong this whole thing is amazing and brilliant and I'll love Valve even more forever till death do us part. But I'm not throwing my money away not being able to play the bulk of my library just yet.
Windows stays.
I guess i am in a fairly exclusive part of the gaming market where the only games i really play are Valve games, which feature on the orange box, and L4D.
Got a gaming PC with a GTX275 anyway. Just hope i dont have to buy my games again.
Got a gaming PC with a GTX275 anyway. Just hope i dont have to buy my games again.
Exactly, this might just tempt me to get back into gaming on my Mac, I've always found gaming on a computer to be frustrating and cumbersome, always having to check the specs list to see how well it'll run on your hardware etc etc.
Sim City 4 is my age old favourite though, one game I refuse to give up.
I'd be surprised to ever see all of them ported, but I certainly expect many more games than just Valve's library if this comment from the leading article is any pointer: "Third-party game developers distributing through Steam are also widely expected to take advantage of the feature."
this is really fortunate for me, because the only games i really play on windows are tf2 and l4d2. i'll still be keeping windows as a "just in case" though, and i think it might take a few months to iron out all the bugs/optimize the source engine for mac
All I own (or play for that matter) on Steam is the Valve Complete Pack. Assuming they port everything (even original CS and DOD) and the performance is there, I'm happily looking forward to being able to delete my Boot Camp partition.
I'm also thankful I held off on buying Windows 7 an extra week to see what was going to happen with all of the Valve speculation.
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I'm also thankful I held off on buying Windows 7 an extra week to see what was going to happen with all of the Valve speculation.
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More info required. Will we be able to play to play Windows games that were never ported to the Mac via Steam such as Half Life 2/episodes? If this is the case, then it is a great development for Mac gaming. 
And if so how would steam bypass Window/Mac platform differences?
If it's not the case, I see no reason to get rid of my bootcamp partition where I play 99% of my games (not counting the 360).
And if so how would steam bypass Window/Mac platform differences?If it's not the case, I see no reason to get rid of my bootcamp partition where I play 99% of my games (not counting the 360).
More info required. Will we be able to play to play Windows games that were never ported to the Mac via Steam such as Half Life 2/episodes? If this is the case, then it is a great development for Mac gaming.
If it's not the case, I see no reason to get rid of my bootcamp partition where I play 99% of my games (not counting the 360).
No, the developers have to port their games themselves. All of the Source games are being ported over, not sure about Valve's older games like Half Life or whatever.
Thanks Sam, that raises more questions. Half Life 2 is a source game. I assume Valve is doing the porting? I'll be interested in seeing the comparative bench marks for Half Life 2 running on a Mac in Steam vs on Windows in Steam. Think they will be close in performance? Historically games that have been ported over from Windows to Mac, due to software differences, and lack of Mac optimization, take a pretty drastic performance hit. I can give you an easy example UT2k4 ran at about 75 fps on a PIII and at about 35fps on a G5. Hopefully something in source will mitigate these differences.
Well at least it's a native port and not crappy Cider, and I assume Valve would do a good porting job. First thing I will do is the CS:S FPS test, on Windows I get an average of around 64-66, so that will be good for seeing the performance hit of the Mac version.
I probably won't DELETE my Windows 7 partition, but I sure won't boot into it as much anymore. I really hope Infinity Ward ports Modern Warfare 2 over to the Mac, but I have that on my PS3 anyway. I really just wanna play Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 on Mac OS X.
I hope it runs just as well as the PC version.
I hope it runs just as well as the PC version.
When you start playing WoW again, that 99% will go down
Well, that is true if I ever play WoW again. I enjoyed playing that in OSX. But I have sworn not to play WoW ever again, really, yep, I swear.
Well, that is true if I ever play WoW again. I enjoyed playing that in OSX. But I have sworn not to play WoW ever again, really, yep, I swear.
Cataclysm appears irresistable.
Cataclysm appears irresistable.
Yes it does
. My sub ended last month, not going to play until Cataclysm, will even start a new character or two to see all the new places and quests etc.Until games quit using Cider then I'll keep the Windows partition.
On the other hand, with more developers writing apps for the iPhone (and soon the iPad) there will be more developers using OpenGL. It won't be much of a stretch to take that knowledge to the Mac.
On the other hand, with more developers writing apps for the iPhone (and soon the iPad) there will be more developers using OpenGL. It won't be much of a stretch to take that knowledge to the Mac.
