Steam Service Coming to Mac in April
Valve showing Steam-Mac Support
Valve has been making some blatant advertising that hinted towards the announcement of a Mac version of the Steam service which will be coming in April. Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal and the Half-Life series will also be seeing a release on Mac as well.
The first rumors of Mac support by Valve came around last month, when some crafty users found Mac specific files within the beta test folders for the new Steam service.Then Valve went ahead with not-so-subtle hinting in their series of images that sported Valve characters fit to a Mac style.
Gabe Newell, the President of Valve, said how they were transitioning from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, and how the customers and developers would require high-quality Internet clients. He believes that the Mac is a great platform for entertainment services. This is a smart move by Valve, because although they may not be doubling their fan base, they are certainly substantially increasing it.
The Mac version of Steam will be identical to the features of its PC counterpart with the exception of a new feature called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the game on one platform to download and play it for another at no additional charge. Although, I am sure that Steam Play will eventually see a transition to the PC service as well.
It is not known how many of the third party developers are actually interested in developing for the Mac platform, but Valve is sure showing their support by planning for unified release dates on future games.
They went on to say that they have a variety of methods in order to transition their current games onto the Mac, and decided to go with native version opposed to emulation, says the Director of Steam development. They are deciding to treat Mac as a tier-1 (or important) platform so that all of the future games will be released simultaneously on the Windows, Mac and the Xbox 360. The updates on the Mac will also be available on the same date of the Windows updates. Mac and Windows will also take part in a cross-platform multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies and so on. Steam will be supporting a mix of servers and clients, and the first Mac Steam client will be the new generation that is currently on beta testing on Windows.
The first planned simultaneous release for the Mac and PC will be Portal 2, by Valve, which was announced earlier this month.
This is major news for many Mac owners who have been complaining for ages about the lack of video game developer support on their platform. Valve is now sharing the Steam experience with you and providing the option for a cross-platform playing universe, which will be of definite joy to future Steam players.
