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Rejoice, Steam is coming to OSX!
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Slightly surprised to read quite resounding approval for both Steam & Crossover Games. I've read elsewhere that the latter was supposedly a bit of a poor compromise for gaming on the Mac? Or is that just inaccurate advice coming mostly from Windows fans looking to make trouble & put people off?
I don't know, so I'm neutral on this (hence the questions). But going by both your posts, my 20" iMac with HD 2600 Pro should be fine with this. Hell, if I could find an acceptable PC gaming solution on my Mac without having to resort to Windows (nothing against Windows, but I can see how some soon tire of regular rebooting), I'd be well pleased!
It depends on the game. Don't expect Mass Effect 2 to be playable with all the quality settings on max in CrossOver Games. The guy you quoted uses Counter-Strike Source as an example, but doesn't mention that this game is already 6 years old.
Slightly surprised to read quite resounding approval for both Steam & Crossover Games. I've read elsewhere that the latter was supposedly a bit of a poor compromise for gaming on the Mac? Or is that just inaccurate advice coming mostly from Windows fans looking to make trouble & put people off?
I don't know, so I'm neutral on this (hence the questions). But going by both your posts, my 20" iMac with HD 2600 Pro should be fine with this. Hell, if I could find an acceptable PC gaming solution on my Mac without having to resort to Windows (nothing against Windows, but I can see how some soon tire of regular rebooting), I'd be well pleased!
Yes lots of people on forums say that Crossover is slow and buggy, but I still gave it a try, and I was very surprised to see that the games run perfectly! There are minor bugs in Steam and the Settings, but not in the games themselves. For example, if you change the resolution of the game, it crashes, but the next time you launch it, it remembers your resolution so you won't have any problems from there on. Also, on some combinations of settings, the games sometimes crash after a bit of playing, but once you figure out which setting to change, it's all perfect.
I'd say try the Trial of Crossover Games and download some demo on steam to see how it runs. It's probably going to work fine with some games, and it may be less smooth with others, but I'd say it's completely useable. The cool thing about Crossover is that it's clean, the Windows stuff runs in a so-called "bottle", isolated from everything else. You can run multiple "bottles" simultaneously, reboot them, or simply erase them with all their contents.
Slightly surprised to read quite resounding approval for both Steam & Crossover Games. I've read elsewhere that the latter was supposedly a bit of a poor compromise for gaming on the Mac? Or is that just inaccurate advice coming mostly from Windows fans looking to make trouble & put people off?
I don't know, so I'm neutral on this (hence the questions). But going by both your posts, my 20" iMac with HD 2600 Pro should be fine with this. Hell, if I could find an acceptable PC gaming solution on my Mac without having to resort to Windows (nothing against Windows, but I can see how some soon tire of regular rebooting), I'd be well pleased!
Try the 30 day trial of crossover games if you like. The full version has a 40% discount with the code "MACGAMES" up until tommorow so if you like it you can buy it cheap.
I think sometime in march crossover games 9.0 is released too.
I run guild wars via crossover games and the ability to run "full screen" with the menu bar still visible at the top alone makes it a better option to dual booting.
I'd imagine this would be the biggest selling point initially, unless they really are signing up Mac publishers. So long as they launch with a good selection of quality games.
Valve have also been adding achievements to the PC version of HL2 so they're clearly working on something.
As for Crossover, I tried and didn't like it. I'm not happy with the performance cut and I figure if I've bought a premium product like an iMac or Macbook Pro that I'd rather get a full performance out of it.
Interesting views. Just browsed through the Crossover site & I see that a reasonable number of games have already reached either gold of silver medal standard, thus either they're as good as playing in Windows mode or almost so. However, there are still a lot of PC games left for more progress to be made before those standards are reached.
Crossover Games Compatibility
Overall, I'm fairly impressed, but in view of ongoing developments I'm sure this technology is bound to improve even more so in future. For now, I think the advice to try out the free trial before buying is best. Thanks to all for your opinions on this.
YEEEEEEESSSS!!!!!!
Finally the only thing missing on Macs!!!
The only advantage PC has had.
I really wanna play me some Half Life an CSS on my Macbook!
I remember writing several complaining letters to Valve, how retarded they were not making Steam available for Mac. This is gonna be awesome.
Finally the only thing missing on Macs!!!
The only advantage PC has had.
I really wanna play me some Half Life an CSS on my Macbook!
I remember writing several complaining letters to Valve, how retarded they were not making Steam available for Mac. This is gonna be awesome.
Hell, I'd be happy to just have Steam ported to the OSX and (hopefully) iPhone OS. Purely so I can buy my games more easily on the go, I've tried gaming on my MacBook and it's pretty bad
Steam is not Half-Life, so making Steam available for the Mac does not have to mean all Valve games will be ported to the Mac.
I think Steam will primarily be available for Mac for (future Valve games and) 3rd party developers.
I will jump for joy is this turns out to be true, Steam rules.
It would give Mac users access to what is by far the best game distribution platform. Developers will take notice of OSX, and finally, after years of disappointment, Macs could get some games.
All we'll need then are Macs with decent graphics cards.
Gaming is an area Apple has long neglected, and Microsoft has excelled in.
More than graphic cards are needed. Apple needs to produce quality graphic card drivers. And keep them updated.
Don't I know it. It's the ONLY reason why I ever boot into bootcamp. It'd be nice to be able to stop having to do that.
w00master
So what's the relevance of this news, then? We already have some very good online game stores for the Mac such as Deliver2Mac, the Aspyr Game Store and the Feral Store...
Having another online store means absolutely NOTHING if it doesn't come with brand new games for the Mac, be it named "Steam" or not...
Graphics cards are ok on Macs! Especially lastest 1-2 generations are very good but the drivers are not up the challenge. It is not even apple fault, but ATi and Nvidia. I really hope we get better drivers both updating OpenGL like apple is doing and especially more quality coding from ATi and Nvidia.
@
I think they will port HL2 games too (CS, DOD, HL2...). It would make sense for many reasons. Naturally all games from valve are utopia, but porting suorce engine (HL2 engine) they give the choice of many titles and many third party devs could port their games too. Porting source engine is the big work, then if they have HL2 working, porting CSS or DOD is a work of a week probably.
Steam for Mac will have features not present in other online game stores for the Mac. This is like saying, hey we have Office for Mac, we don't need iWork because they are both Office suites. Or iTunes Music Store versus Amazon Music.
Valve's games might be ported, I would love it if Valve would do that. I just don't believe that Valve will port the games. However, I do believe that future games could see a Mac release.
For anybody doubting the validity of this here's a quote from IMG's Tuncer Deniz via a similar thread on the IMG forums:
"Steam for the Mac is real and happening. It was shown to Apple at WWDC last year and my guess is will be released at WWDC this year.
Tuncer"
My take is that Steam for Mac OS X, in any form, with any percentage of its game catalogue, can only be a GOOD thing. How good we'll just have to wait and see.
-PN
"Steam for the Mac is real and happening. It was shown to Apple at WWDC last year and my guess is will be released at WWDC this year.
Tuncer"
My take is that Steam for Mac OS X, in any form, with any percentage of its game catalogue, can only be a GOOD thing. How good we'll just have to wait and see.
-PN
I think this has to do with Steam moving into other areas
http://kotaku.com/360662/steam-to-offer-movie-music-downloads
and possibly competing with iTunes than it does with Mac games. Who would really buy the $49.99 Mac port when the PC version is $7.50 on sale? I just don't have that kind of money to support Mac porting companies these days.
http://kotaku.com/360662/steam-to-offer-movie-music-downloads
and possibly competing with iTunes than it does with Mac games. Who would really buy the $49.99 Mac port when the PC version is $7.50 on sale? I just don't have that kind of money to support Mac porting companies these days.