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Rejoice, Steam is coming to OSX!

Of course the games we all want are coming to Steam for Mac!
Why else would Valve go through the trouble of porting it, if they are not gonna capitalise heavy on it?

Anyone trying to paint a different picture better study capitalism history after the industrial revolution. This is a very obvious move.

I bet tons of BIG NAME games are gonna be available in the coming months after the launch.

Mac already has support for OpenGL and such, so it wont be a matter of completely rewriting the code for these games.

Remember way back when Steam launched, it was purely for Half Life and mods = Valve games. This is their tool to sell games digitally with high effiency.

Steam is the biggest digital distrobution method for games on PC, and it will probably be on Mac too.

Crossing fingers for this year!
 
Has anyone actually used Steam? I can't believe all the positive hype about this. Steam is the only reason Half-Life 2 didn't get a perfect score when it was reviewed by Computer Gaming World. Do you seriously want a dedicated background process running all the time for every game you own from each different development company?
 
SystemZERO said:
Has anyone actually used Steam? I can't believe all the positive hype about this. Steam is the only reason Half-Life 2 didn't get a perfect score when it was reviewed by Computer Gaming World. Do you seriously want a dedicated background process running all the time for every game you own from each different development company?
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I like Steam and the way it delivers games. I like the fact that I don't need a disc to install the game. Just log into my account and all my games are there for downloaded.
 
SystemZERO said:
Has anyone actually used Steam? I can't believe all the positive hype about this. Steam is the only reason Half-Life 2 didn't get a perfect score when it was reviewed by Computer Gaming World. Do you seriously want a dedicated background process running all the time for every game you own from each different development company?
Click to expand...

I use it everyday and as someone mentioned, it keeps track of my games,keys etc but the fact i can talk to my friends, see what they play and join is priceless.

it is more the social aspect that it adds that makes it even better
 
I've had my Steam account since day one.

Been playing Day of Defeat back when it was WONIDs and not STEAM IDs.

Only problem it had back then was it caused a lot of Dial-Up players to drop for awhile because of the size of the downloads.

Steam is like an XBOX Live but for PC and I have been wanting Steam to come to OS X for a long time. I can't wait for Valve games to be ported over and it shouldn't be a problem. The Source engine is very versatile.

It wasn't hard for them to make them a console port really.
 
I've also used Steam since day one and it has been crappy sometimes during it's betas, but now it's actually really good in my opinion.
 
TO bad apple does not have good gameing video cards in there mac the mini 9400m is ok but not as good and you can buy pc with way better for the same price and you better hope they don't go back to intel video in a new one.

and the macpro is a JOKE $2500 for that weak video card?
 
BRLawyer said:
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...
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facepalm8bu0.jpg


Yeah, what's the point. Having more competition has never worked out in the past. :rolleyes:
 
My prediction ....

They'll release Steam for OS X as a bundle with the release of a major new game title that has cross-platform support. (All rumors right now point to Postal 3 as that title.) You'll probably see Steam for Linux as well, as Postal 3 is rumored to support Linux as well as OS X and Windows.

Like you say, native OS X titles available on Steam will be thin to non-existent other than whichever title they initially bundle with it. But the ability for small developers to get native Linux or Mac titles distributed and advertised so widely and inexpensively will hopefully draw in a lot of new stuff as time goes on.

I'd also *hope* that existing Mac developers would see the potential in Steam, and would update their offerings (like Call of Duty 4) so they could be purchased via Steam too.

This may be a bit more of a stretch, but I could also see Valve porting over Team Fortress 2 for OS X and offering it exclusively via Steam. That seems like a title that would run well even on a relatively low spec iMac or Macbook, and yet is loads of fun and sort of a "timeless classic" of 3D shooter multiplayer games.


ltldrummerboy said:
I was just about to post this.

I'm trying to downplay this so my hopes aren't dashed later on. If (big if) they release a Mac version of Steam I'm betting that only a very few games will be Mac compatible and that if you already own the Windows version (Braid for example) there will be a fee to get the Mac version.
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P.B said:
This news doesn't surprise me at all.

A long time ago I had already seen news of a Linux version of Steam being worked on, so making a Mac version too is nothing but natural.

Both OSX and Linux run a Unix Kernel, and work exclusively with OpenGL.

News regarding the Linux version of Steam:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjA1NQ
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=steam_confirmation&num=1
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Linux kernel is Linux, it's unix-like, but not Unix ;)
 
I hated Steam when it was released. It was a bothersome background process indeed. But with time, I believe they managed to make it less demanding.

I hope that since Macs are all the same, for each model, that they will make hardware profiles for Steam. If it detects you´re on a MacBook it selects an optimized profile for this machine automatically. So you wont have to tweak and twist settings and analyze your hardware accordingly. The way you usually do it on PC.
 
Joe The Dragon said:
TO bad apple does not have good gameing video cards in there mac the mini 9400m is ok but not as good and you can buy pc with way better for the same price and you better hope they don't go back to intel video in a new one.

and the macpro is a JOKE $2500 for that weak video card?
Click to expand...

perhaps if this does happen it may give apple a incentive to put in better 3d cards
 
SystemZERO said:
Has anyone actually used Steam? I can't believe all the positive hype about this. Steam is the only reason Half-Life 2 didn't get a perfect score when it was reviewed by Computer Gaming World. Do you seriously want a dedicated background process running all the time for every game you own from each different development company?
Click to expand...

I've been there since the start, it started off not-so-great but it is brilliant now. Every week they have mid-week and weekend sales where games drop to a few £. The community features are excellent. I can arrange games with friends at certain times, have open chatrooms to organise bigger games, keep track of achievements and stats and compare them, invite people to games and servers. The DRM is friendly (unlimited installs, can play from any computer, no spyware or rootkits. You don't even have to be online to play) too. Brand new games are cheap (£25 for Bioshock 2) and there's a massive library of indie and commercial games, mods and SDK tools.

This is why people like Steam.
 
Stridder44 said:
facepalm8bu0.jpg


Yeah, what's the point. Having more competition has never worked out in the past. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Before trolling you should be able to answer, Sir. My question relates to the purported "importance" of this news. If it's just about having another store, MR should also publish similar article to many other stores that pop up every now and then.

So I ask the pundits again: WHAT is the advantage of this over other existing stores (presuming that ports of Valve games are NOT included)?
 
BRLawyer said:
Before trolling you should be able to answer, Sir. My question relates to the purported "importance" of this news. If it's just about having another store, MR should also publish similar article to many other stores that pop up every now and then.

So I ask the pundits again: WHAT is the advantage of this over other existing stores (presuming that ports of Valve games are NOT included)?
Click to expand...

The core of the topic is exactly there. Since Steam in it self (as in no game ports) is rather pointless in any system (sure it has some social activities, but nonetheless pointless), its a bit far off Valve spending so much time (Valve is searching and employing people to help doing the port since 2007) and effort in bringing Steam to Mac and Linux if it will have no games to sell at all to those platforms.

So I think its pretty easy to assume that the Steam port will bring at least the Source engine ported with him.
 
BRLawyer said:
So I ask the pundits again: WHAT is the advantage of this over other existing stores (presuming that ports of Valve games are NOT included)?
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Well that's up to Valve. If this quote is to be believed:

"We're looking at more casual games and international games. And we're also looking at other types of content like video and music. We're definitely having those conversations and meetings, and we're reaching out to folks with other types of digital entertainment," said [Valve's Marketing VP Doug Lombardi].

"I think before the end of the year, you'll probably see some pilot programs with other digital entertainment on Steam."
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then there's definitely the chance Steam is looking to become more than just a game service. That quote was from a couple years ago, so they may be about to show their hand one way or another.

It makes sense that they would port Steam if digital media rather than games was their target. I can't imagine a group as ambitious as Valve just wanting to offer the miniscule number of Mac ports to Mac users, I think their intentions go far beyond that. If I were Valve I would be thinking about taking Apple to court over why they can't sell iPhoneOS users games.
 
pixelcruncher said:
Well that's up to Valve. If this quote is to be believed:



then there's definitely the chance Steam is looking to become more than just a game service. That quote was from a couple years ago, so they may be about to show their hand one way or another.

It makes sense that they would port Steam if digital media rather than games was their target. I can't imagine a group as ambitious as Valve just wanting to offer the miniscule number of Mac ports to Mac users, I think their intentions go far beyond that. If I were Valve I would be thinking about taking Apple to court over why they can't sell iPhoneOS users games.
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Thank you; in other words, this means absolutely NOTHING of relevance to the world of Mac gaming...especially since most couldn't care less about yet another social networking thing. As for the rest of media needs, iTunes serves the globe pretty well...
 
kurosov said:
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.
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I broke down and purchased this today. Also I found out that I still have a license for CrossOver Pro (not games). I guess I can now install Visio.
 
What i've always liked about steam is how you can delete stuff, and no problem, you can just download it again.

Compared with many other digital distributors, Apple's iTunes included this is a marvellous feature.

Seriously, if i could download what i've bought on iTunes as many times as i like i'd probably use it a lot more.
 
Not all Macs have a decent video card to play higher end games but there are alot of us that do.

The ATIs in the new iMacs run awesome. And you don't always have to have the settings maxed out to enjoy the game.

No one is still going to buy a Mac with the intentions of gaming first. It is just a bonus for me anyways.
 
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