valve making a move to MAC?

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/03/valve-teases-upcoming-half-life-release-for-mac/
What do you guys think?

 

Great...another thing to come before we get Episode Three.

Don't get me wrong, it's great for the OS X crowd, but come on...priorities!!!

Even if Steam gets ported to OS X, what about the actual games? The vast majority of them are made to work with DirectX in Windows...I imagine making them work on a Mac would involve more than just copy + pasting some code.

 

Well, it's only fair to let Mac users get their hands on Oregon Trail and Marathon through digital distrobution. (Yes, I know there are more releases for Mac... but even then, most of the ones I can think of are from defunct publishers, or from EA/Maxis or Blizzard, which I haven't noticed on Steam on the PC side anyway.)

 

IMO Valve should not waste time with Mac and concentrate on making better/more games for Windows instead. How many Mac users are gamers/don't have a console for dedicated gaming?!

 

Plenty, but they just dual boot windows.

 

In all seriousness, it can't hurt to draw people in to computer gaming. And I have a strong feeling that the Mac side will have high visability to what's available on PC, so I'd bet if this move does anything, it will pull more people to PC gaming, which we all are for.

 

If this is true, can I start dreaming about Linux support in this century?

 

Sure, right after Microsoft starts releasing PC exclusive first party FPSes. Actually, no, I'd bet Valve would support Linux before that.

 

NO. WAY.

cool!

I'll start purchasing mac games on steam if this is true.

 

The problem that I see is that Blizzard are the best Mac gaming developer in the world. Their releases are probably the only ones that are just as good on Mac as they are on PC. But the thing is that Blizzard is doing their own digital distribution now, with Battle.net.

That leaves, many horrid Mac Ports of great games, that runs like crap on Mac. When I got my Imac, I bought Jedi Academy and Fable Mac Versions, and let me tell you - They run like a complete joke. These games are bugged, like they were emulated or something.

They need to have a solid line-up of Mac Releases ready. If Valve themselfs could make their games Mac Compatible, it would be a step in the right direction, but then again - Is all this effort worth it, when you have Bootcamp?

I am too much a gamer to do Bootcamp. After owning a Mac(and loving it!) I realise that as a gamer, that dual booting, just to play games.. even free or old ones, is beyond annoying.

 

Should not be to hard to get Valves Source and Goldsource games to work on a Mac, since they already run nearly perfect in linux.
At least now its a possiblity to play Counter-Strike 1.6 with native Steam client.

 

I wonder if this has anything to do with GFWL becoming more prevalent and Valve is just trying to branch off before they lose the PC market.

 

^lol or maybe not if serious.

 

I kind of think this is just not worth it.

- It would be a lot of man hours to get it working as well as it should.

- Mac users would only be able to play the source/goldsource games since none of the other developers selling on steam seem interested in Mac ports, existing mods wouldn't even work right.

- They already have a lot on their plates with TF2 updates, L4D content, the new Portal thing, episode 3/HL3, updating Half Life 2 (they promised at least steam achievements and better HDR), Steam itself, and whatever projects they have yet to reveal to us. Is devoting manhours to a mac port going to mean worse valve time for everything else?

- Mac users already have solutions to playing windows apps and games on a mac, and they're getting better and easier to use all the time.

- How much would they actually stand to make off of mac users who don't already have a solution for running windows software? As a college student I've met a lot of people with fancy new macbook pros, and exactly one is interested in computer gaming (and he runs windows on his mac as the primary OS).

 

this could be a gigantic fail for steam.
you know apple, anything that competes with their itunes and apps store they shhoot down.

 

It would be a waste of time to make Valve games or STEAM run on Linux since only very few people game there.

I see no point in Linux, all it is more trouble to do something compared to Windows and offers no real advantage.

 

I swear, I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but it's the truth! Just go to the Linux forum and see. It's like "OMG how do I get my WiFi to work in Linux" and then it's like you have to compile this and that and download this and that and in the end you only get basic functionality. Imagine doing this for 75% of the hardware on your PC...

Honestly, jeez, gamers are not going to waste their time doing that.

 

Quite so. I know very few people who would spend 2 days getting their computer set up just so they could find out they can't even play Half-Life at 15 FPS because they have no DirectX support what so ever. Linux has it's strong suits, but gaming isn't one of them.

 

Even with the open source ati drivers i can run Half-Life in OpenGL fullspeed 60fps.
Its dumb to run GoldSource with DirectX. xD

 

this has gotten me excited, id like to login to steam just to keep in touch with friends, i mostly work on my mac and my clan friends couldnt reach me on my mac, i turn on the desktop just to play online. now i can chat with friends and maybe play a little tf2 or even counterstrike, well really see how it goes

 

But you really don't know what you are talking about. Its not like that at all with the easier distributions.

 

I know what of he speaks though. Fedora may not be considered an 'easier distribution' but still no sane man should have to spend 5+ hours scouring forums and running at bootlevel 3 because the NVIDIA drivers have messed up your X-Windows after updating and now you have to re-download the linux source because you need to re-compile the drivers for every fedora update, only to have it still not properly configure the X server, requiring you to manually edit the x11 config in order to just be able to get the thing to boot into GUI with the generic less-than-stellar neauvou drivers.

As a gamer, this is pathetic. As an FSF and GNU proponent it's a sad reality we must all accept that until technologies like DX open up or libraries like OpenGL are extended this is the only way to be a gamer on a Linux system.

 

Not on your Intel GMA 950 you aren't.
Even though the games are being ported to Mac, you'll still be facing stiff performance issues if you're on earlier Macs (i.e. anything running a GMA 950, or even a GMA X3100).

 

true, but again im not really hoping for alot, lol just keeping in touch with the various clans is enough, anyway if i did try to get a gaming laptop, geez i would get no work done

i salute valve for taking the first step in what could be mac gaming, sure nothing hard core but small steps is good

 

Yeah, I stay away from any 3d in linux now. It used to be better. I remember actually playing America's Army and a couple other games in linux just great back in the day. What I was originally getting at was usapatriot's comment about there being no point to linux and that windows does everything better and easier.

 

Even a Intel GMA 4500mhd would struggle with CSS at native resolution.
And Mac doesent support Intel GMA 4500mhd, only drivers available for GMA 950 and X3100.

 

lol this isnt a discussion about gma 950/x3100/mhd4500 gaming alright? this is about valve moving towards the mac as a digital gaming distribution.

i would be happy if i could play but if i cant its not big deal, steam on mac for me, means keeping in touch with my clan teammates.

its totally up to mac if they are going to push better GPUS out for their system, which i hope they do.

honestly, plants vs zombies, homeworld 2 and torchlight is enough gaming for me

 

I don't and probably won't ever take this seriously......but I do love the little 'teaser' ads Valve did.... ( Macrumors link)

The Alyx Vance/1984 one is awesome....though the Left 4 Dead/Think Different ('I Hate Different') one I have as my avatar is also good....

In any event, anything that draws attention to the world of computer gaming can always be good as another poster mentioned. Hopefully this bodes well for the community as a whole too and pulls some attention back from the console front....

 

Such negativity surrounding a positive development, I'm glad to see Mac owners get another option of distribution for games.

Oh and I severely doubt Valve is very scared of GfWL - who buys games from there?

 

Umm people who can get the games for free with GFWL points? People who don't want to use Steam AND GFWL considering GFWL is the required one not Steam? I'd imagine, LOTS AND LOTS.

 

I don't see the link between your premise and conclusion. At the very least, you left out a few steps.

It just seems like three unrelated statements to me...

 

Um, what? There are a number of games that install Steam without an option, such as pretty much anything from Valve.

 

Valve games rely on Steam, but Bioshock 2 being a GFWL title, only runs if you install GFWL libraries even if you buy it off Steam.

And i dont think getting non Valve games to work on Mac Steam should be any trouble, because they could just bundle Cider or Crossover Games.

 

Hmmm. Would this force NVidia (especially) / ATI to up the capability of their OS X drivers? If so, I'm all for it.

I give an even chance of any OS X equivalent framerate issues being buried by the Applefanatics, but if this forces NVidia in particular to release better OS X drivers I'd consider this a positive.

And since Boot Camp is not only a hassle but unstable, I'd like to keep my Macs 100% in OS X - and if I can run some Steam titles to jump into a multiplayer session once in a while, that would be cool (even though the Mac it'll be running on won't be).

 

This is great news, computer gamers should be united against the ever growing console threat. Adding Mac users into the mix should increase the sales and viability of the computer as a gaming system. Of course if Apple ever does grow as a computer gaming option and gets releases on time or at least close the PC's release date I would show Microsoft my favorite finger (in fact two of them) and leave Microsoft to rot in console hell.

 

Wow Ziddy, so much Apple hate, it's just a computer man. To me it really makes no difference actually with steam, my Macbook already runs all my steam games just fine in Bootcamp with XP. But I agree with both Vogel and Darkness. Vogel's point about getting us some better drivers on the OS X side would be nice.

Darkness statement about uniting against the consoles is valid as well, every person we can steal from them over to the PC gaming side is a small victory towards keeping the developers making games for us.

 

Guys, let's stay on topic here. The discussion is about Valve possibly releasing a Steam client for Mac. Several posts have been deleted for being off topic and/or borderline trolling.

 

This has now been confirmed by Valve. Please continue discussion here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=465972