Official announcement: Steam to be available on Mac

primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
edited April 2010 in Gaming
Official announcement: Steam to be available on Mac

Comments

  • waxwax the neroberg Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    whats next? apple to introduce two-buttoned gaming mouse?
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    wax wrote:
    whats next? apple to introduce two-buttoned gaming mouse?

    Two button mice, FM tuners in Ipods, cut and paste for the Iphone, now Steam.

    All this, maybe they will really shake things up by adding flash support to mobile devices. ;D
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Mac Gaming Tower. Positioned midway between the iMac and the Mac Pro, it will cost somewhere around $3500 and introduce a new, state of the art Radeon 5770 - but only the RAM and HDD will be upgradeable.
  • MAGICMAGIC Doot Doot Furniture City, Michigan Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    ^Wowwutabargain!
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Revolutionary.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Snarkasm wrote:
    Mac Gaming Tower. Positioned midway between the iMac and the Mac Pro, it will cost somewhere around $3500 and introduce a new, state of the art Radeon 5770 - but only the RAM and HDD will be upgradeable.

    You know, I was just thinking that.

    The mac user base, how many have a decent GPU to play modern 3D titles? I guess the titles based on source are not too demanding, but still, you need a little than a 9400M to really get the full 3D gaming experience, and in my estimation thats what most modern macs seem to be running by default?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Incredible.
  • BasilBasil Nubcaek England Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Magical.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Fabulous
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    INCONCEIVABLE!
  • MAGICMAGIC Doot Doot Furniture City, Michigan Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Boner.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    This makes me happy if only for the fact that it's one extremely large step closer to them porting Steam and Source to Linux. Rumors about that have been circling for years, maybe it will actually happen.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Ardi,

    I think Valve's endgame is a completely open cloud based API, but I think we are a few years away from that being widely obtainable. That being said, I would not be surprised if they use Apple's Steam implementation to start experimenting with that.

    As far as Linux goes, I would love to see it, and I suppose OSX is Unix based, so perhaps a Linux project to follow would not be too unrealistic. Would Valve do it just to make a point that they want their product portable across platforms? Maybe. If they do, how will it impact their relationship with Microsoft?

    I've long dreamed of a fully open gaming platform. I think Id games really attempted to blaze this trail by sticking to the OpenGL API long after it was fashionable (or some may even say good competitive business practice) I've been an apologist for titles like Doom 3 and Quake 4, in part because they were one of the few developers that valued the open source principle.

    Ardi, until your post, I had not considered that this whole Steam on OSX thing might be part of a much larger picture.
  • miragemirage
    edited March 2010
    I am not that excited about Steam games being available on OS X. But at the same time, I think this is a huge event since gaming is expanding beyond Windows and becoming cross platform. Way to go Steam! Don't forget Linux!
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    I don't think Microsoft really fears Linux as much as people want to make it seem. I mean, Microsoft has even contributed code to the Linux kernel in the past year. I think they've come to terms, somewhat, with the fact that Linux isn't going to go away but also isn't as much of a threat to them as some people make it out to be (with the possible exception of the server platform). That said, do Valve have some exceptionally good relationship with Microsoft that would be damaged any more by Linux support than by OSX support?

    As for OpenGL gaming. UNF, I would love to play some mainstream titles on Linux and I'd really love if I could get them through a platform like Steam. As it is right now I play Neverwinter Nights on Linux (because it doesn't play nice under Windows 7 with the latest ATI drivers, actually it crashes right away every time). I'd love to see more titles accessible to Linux without the bloat of Wine, though Wine has been getting quite good lately. Either way, I see this as a positive step toward a more platform accessible gaming future and for me I can only see this as a good thing.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    You can already get Mac systems with GTX 285's from Nvidia. A bit pricey but they are available: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=01G-P3-1080-TR&family=GeForce%20200%20Series%20Family
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Wine will never be a practical solution for the common gamer. Its hard to configure, and even when you do get a game running in it properly more often than not its buggy at least to some degree. Anything that requires that much work up front to have a little fun in the end just is not worth it to the common user. Sure, geeks that find value in toying with Wine don't mind so much, but everyone else...
    Long term, if the games are all served over your Steam cloud you wont need wine, or a specific OS. I'm fairly sure thats Valve's planed endgame for dominance in PC game distribution its just a matter of time before there are enough homes with the required internet bandwidth to make it possible.
  • NiGHTSNiGHTS San Diego Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    ...geeks are the only ones that use linux anyway.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    When is the last time you used Wine Cliff? I mean, I'm no wine defender, it is definitely not the ideal solution but a lot of games work with little to no tweaking these days. The only problem I have is that wine adds extra overhead so you really have to have some solid hardware to be able to play games at a decent framerate. Steam actually works well in wine and I was able to run TF2, L4D and other source engine games without any tweaking on my laptop, albeit at very low settings.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    ardichoke wrote:
    When is the last time you used Wine Cliff? I mean, I'm no wine defender, it is definitely not the ideal solution but a lot of games work with little to no tweaking these days. The only problem I have is that wine adds extra overhead so you really have to have some solid hardware to be able to play games at a decent framerate. Steam actually works well in wine and I was able to run TF2, L4D and other source engine games without any tweaking on my laptop, albeit at very low settings.

    I have used Wine to play various titles in Ubuntu as recent as Juanty Jackalope. You can't honestly say its a user friendly, trouble free experience?

    Don't get me wrong, I like Linux and want a great free windows alternative, who wouldn't? For gaming though, its just not a easy platform to get along with. There are a few native Linux games that are diamonds in the rough, and yes, there are about a dozen games that will run nicely inside of Wine, but configuring Wine is too much hassle for the average user.
  • BasilBasil Nubcaek England Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Cliff_Forster wrote:
    Don't get me wrong, I like Linux and want a great free windows alternative, who wouldn't?
    Linux is a Windows alternative in the same way a crash box is an alternative for an automatic gearbox.
    They both can do the same job but if you expect to have a trouble free switch from the automatic you're in for a world of hurt. :p

    Linux is not a free windows and never will be, to my mind WINE/Cedega is for dedicated Linux users who also want to run a few games not for Windows users looking for a free lunch.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Cliff_Forster wrote:
    I have used Wine to play various titles in Ubuntu as recent as Juanty Jackalope. You can't honestly say its a user friendly, trouble free experience?

    Don't get me wrong, I like Linux and want a great free windows alternative, who wouldn't? For gaming though, its just not a easy platform to get along with. There are a few native Linux games that are diamonds in the rough, and yes, there are about a dozen games that will run nicely inside of Wine, but configuring Wine is too much hassle for the average user.
    Depending on what you're trying to run, yes, sometimes it is a user friendly trouble free experience. Last time I used wine, installing steam was just as easy as on windows. Download the installer, double click, automatically opened in Wine and ran as expected. I then installed Audiosurf, it went as expected and ran fine. How easy it is is solely dependent on the game in question. Some of them are downright simple, some require strange tweaking (which is usually well documented at WineHQ.org) and some just don't work right at the moment. That said, I'd never propose Linux and Wine as an alternative for a hardcore gamer and I'm not trying to make the case that it is that. All I was saying is that I'd love to see Source ported to Linux because the wine bloat running source games is a killer. This is coming from someone who only runs Windows full time on one of the 5 computers he owns because I honestly don't need Windows for my day to day activities. The only reason my desktop at home runs Windows is because I game on it.
  • Broliath
    edited March 2010
    Cool, now mac owners will see a 50% increase in smugness and self-fart smelling. Sadly they're gaming machines will still cost 5x as much as any windows machine and therefore suck 10x as much.
  • FLUFFY! :D
    edited March 2010
    @ The pic...

    The PC Kills How many different classes?
    The Mac kills 1...
    The PC Doesn't fall over and deactivate its self... The PC has to be killed before it stops working...

    MAC USERS DON'T DESERVE STEAM. (IMO) :P
  • AnnesAnnes Tripped Up by Libidos and Hubris Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    FLUFFY! :D wrote:
    @ The pic...

    The PC Kills How many different classes?
    The Mac kills 1...
    The PC Doesn't fall over and deactivate its self... The PC has to be killed before it stops working...

    MAC USERS DON'T DESERVE STEAM. (IMO) :P

    WHAT IS THIS, I DON'T EVEN.
  • James King Auckland NZ
    edited April 2010
    I like to have wild sex with dogs.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    Cool!
  • UPSLynxUPSLynx :KAPPA: Redwood City, CA Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    pics or it didn't happen.
  • Jeff Little
    edited April 2010
    You know there always some Farking moron that doesn't know Apple has been able to use multi-button Mice since System 8.

    Little boys needs to grow up.
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited April 2010
    I only ever use w+Mouse1 when I play tf2 anyway. (On my mac, that's w+MouseTheOnlyButton)
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