Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The Significance of Steam and Valve's Games for Mac
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
This statement couldn't be more true. The difference between a dedicated graphics card and an integrated chip is IMMENSE. Cube owners are STILL nuts over upgrading their GPUs. (I took the cheap way out - see sig.)
It's stunning beauty is what lured people to the Cube, but the removable chassis and upgradeable components was what made the $2k+ price tag bearable. Otherwise, it would've just been an iMac.
-Clive
I am sorry, but not everyone plays games in a manner you may find up to snuff. You're like a wine snob who tells me my two buck chuck is awful.
I do most of my gaming on a 5870 but when I travel I like to able to play games on my 13 inch laptop. If I can run L4D2 on steam without duel booting, I am happy.
Oh, it shouldn't surprise anyone with half a brain that running a game with higher res textures eats up gfx ram. But still, I am glad you shared that keen insight, you're destined for great things.
Yeah, I've got my eye on both those, plus I'm hoping that id now falling under the Zenimax/Bethesda umbrella stops their IPs from being trampled on, think Quake 4 and Wolfenstein (although I did quite enjoy Quake 4).
Plus Doom Scrolls FTW Bethesda/id crossover stylee...
Well I can wish
They're fun machines. It's amazing those 2" change a Mac mini into a Cube for that PCIe x16 slot.
As I've said, it's just 2 inches. That means an entire world between the Mac mini, the Mac Pro, and the money you want to spend.
I have a friend with a 1.0 GHz G4 and a GeForce 6200 in their Cube.
I wouldn't say Crysis, my desktop PC had a hard time struggling with that on medium settings (at 1680x1050 though). Fallout 3 is very playable though. I can run that at my Macbooks native res, medium-high settings. Bioshock ran very well too.
I wouldn't throw my copies of GTAIV or Crysis at it though
.Why thank you, it's not snobby I just like my games to look shiny
, I just took offense at you suggesting I was blabbering when saying (or implying) that a notebook with an integrated GPU wouldn't handle graphically intensive games that well, ergo someone with a keen interest in gaming would not choose such a machine for (solely) gaming purposes.Hell I get up to a bit of plundering in torchlight if I'm away on my notebook, mainly because it's about the only thing the GMA X3100 can handle, that and the older Blizzard games.
And for the "fail" comment I apologize, I got ahead of myself, as for my destiny, if things unfold as expected the next six months at least involve helping to make a few games that you and others will hopefully enjoy
This is great news for me, as I have a legit PC version of Half Life 2 that I bought at launch and cannot for the life of me remember the email address I used to sign up to Steam.
I'll buy any Mac version of Half Life 2 the day it comes out, as well as the subsequent episode add-on's.
I'll buy any Mac version of Half Life 2 the day it comes out, as well as the subsequent episode add-on's.
I'm liking these mentions of the G4 Cube and the xMac. As I posted elsewhere, when it comes down to it, the only three components almost anyone ever upgrades over the life of a single machine are the hard drive, the RAM and the video card. (Maybe the CPU, but then you're approaching the territory of people who scratch-build their own systems anyway.) If Apple released an aluminum cube that let you drop out the guts, G4 Cube-style, and upgrade just those three things at your discretion, that'd cover most people right there, aside from the ones (the numbers of which are vast and terrifying) who would sooner buy an entire new machine when their hard drive fills up than have someone swap in a new drive for them. It's safe to say Apple could even afford to pay nVidia/ATI to crank out non-crap Mac drivers for a decent range of recent cards.
To those of you currently engaged in a model-number pissing contest: if that was the xMac, and the graphics slot was PCIe x16, would you be content playing on that?
Edit: To clarify my own situation, I moved up from a circa-2004 PBG4 to a second-hand Hackintosh several months back, and have since upgraded it with an off-the-shelf GeForce 9500 GT 1GB, which, as far as I can tell, works wonderfully in OS X once some rummaging around in the InsanelyMac forums and fiddling with EFI strings is done. This is the first computer I've been able to play real games on, as the computer I used before the PowerBook had a 400 MHz AMD K6-2 and 64 MB of RAM. If the Hackintosh community can make most straight-up PC cards work with OS X, I'm sure Apple must be able to find some way too — or is that a ridiculously naïve view?
To those of you currently engaged in a model-number pissing contest: if that was the xMac, and the graphics slot was PCIe x16, would you be content playing on that?
Edit: To clarify my own situation, I moved up from a circa-2004 PBG4 to a second-hand Hackintosh several months back, and have since upgraded it with an off-the-shelf GeForce 9500 GT 1GB, which, as far as I can tell, works wonderfully in OS X once some rummaging around in the InsanelyMac forums and fiddling with EFI strings is done. This is the first computer I've been able to play real games on, as the computer I used before the PowerBook had a 400 MHz AMD K6-2 and 64 MB of RAM. If the Hackintosh community can make most straight-up PC cards work with OS X, I'm sure Apple must be able to find some way too — or is that a ridiculously naïve view?
Steaming Mac
Dominance over the pc gaming market isn't the object. Expanding their target market is, and it's a wise choice. Lots of new mac owners over the past two years - Couple that with popularity of other apple devices, and their market share is very likely going to continue the upward trend.
COD plays well (way past well enough, very well) on my 08 Imac. And if other games come through steam that are as good, Valve's going to get hundreds of thousands of new customers at about 59-69 bucks a throw for each game they buy. So call it (and lets lowball it, for fun) two games a year times 300,000 mac game players - about 36 million AmeriBucks in year one.
Good business, and good for the mac user base as well.
Dominance over the pc gaming market isn't the object. Expanding their target market is, and it's a wise choice. Lots of new mac owners over the past two years - Couple that with popularity of other apple devices, and their market share is very likely going to continue the upward trend.
COD plays well (way past well enough, very well) on my 08 Imac. And if other games come through steam that are as good, Valve's going to get hundreds of thousands of new customers at about 59-69 bucks a throw for each game they buy. So call it (and lets lowball it, for fun) two games a year times 300,000 mac game players - about 36 million AmeriBucks in year one.
Good business, and good for the mac user base as well.
I would hope that Valve is porting the Source Engine to Mac. After that, porting HL2, Portal, TF2, L4D, L4D2 - and future titles - will be... well... not entirely trivial, but much more-so, definitely.
There's still the hurdle of making sure it's running smoothly under OpenGL. No one commented on it earlier, but I think it would be insanely wise of Apple to license DirectX, as it will 1) make it easier to port games to the Mac, and 2) give developers less of an excuse not to write for Mac in the first place.
Then once developers are hooked on Mac Gamers, "gently" encourage them to start using OpenGL & OpenCL...
-Clive
I think Valve lost some of their innovation edge years ago. I do think that they're in a small group of game companies that produces some really quality stuff though. I'm not sure I'd say that they're really any younger per se. They hire from the same pool of programmers that EA does and Game Newell has got to be about 50 years old now. Not old but no spring chicken.
I'm so stoked for this it goes beyond normal rationale. What the OP failed to mention is that there are over 25 MILLION active acounts on Steam. That's equal to XBox Live!
There are tons of indie games (this week had a massive indie sale) that would gain exposure to mac audiences and...man it's gonna be so cool!!!
I love VALVe =)
There are tons of indie games (this week had a massive indie sale) that would gain exposure to mac audiences and...man it's gonna be so cool!!!
I love VALVe =)
that's a really interesting idea. I doubt it would happen since Apple seems to care diddly about gamers on their computers and leave all their care for their Ipods and iPhones =(
I wouldn't go that far, Naughty Dog, and Insomniac Games make some fine games.
But remember stream accounts are free, around 50-60% of those XBox LIVE accounts are paid for.
I agree, but so do Epic, id, Nintendo, Bungie, Sony, Ubisoft, Blizzard, etc..
I would say Valve are definitely the apex of Windows-only game development in the same way that Naughty Dog, Guerilla & Insomniac are the apex of PS3 development. And though I absolutely LOVE Uncharted 2... I think most people (including me) would take Valve's back-catalogue over the current PS3 exclusive back-catalogue any day.
I'm a massive Sony fan btw.. But critically Valve have a lot more clout than almost any single dev.
Portal trailer
That's the same vid that you can download for free when you get Portal:still alive on XBL. Did anyone notice it looks very different from the actual game? is this the beta? Because i remember in the developer commentary they mentioned things in that video (slow opening of portals, different sounds, different color button)
That's the same vid that you can download for free when you get Portal:still alive on XBL. Did anyone notice it looks very different from the actual game? is this the beta? Because i remember in the developer commentary they mentioned things in that video (slow opening of portals, different sounds, different color button)
The point they make is sound enough - if a user just wants something as a games machine the Mac makes little sense currently, but if they want the computer for other reasons than just gaming, or if they have Macs already.. It's a great thing.
Whether it's a PC or a Mac makes no difference once you're in a full screen game, really! That’s one reason why so many mac users are running bootcamp for gaming purposes.