The Significance of Steam and Valve's Games for Mac

[ph0rk]

Did anyone else read that as a middle aged parent trying to sound hip to their kids? That space between the two words changes everything

Who cares? The hardcore gamer is merely a niche market now. Games like l4d don't cater to the hardcore as much as they cater to the casual gamer - Valve knows what they are doing here.

Super high end gaming rigs are in the same realm as audiophilia, if you ask me: a pornographic excess of consumption.

 

[pmjoe]

Yawn! Games? Was this a slow news day?

Maybe when Jobs gets Wii Sports for the Mac this would be interesting as those games seem to work for family fun. I have tried to get into the gaming thing many times in the past and it is soooo boring. I think about playing games, and then I think I could go outside instead ... outdoors always wins.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Who cares? The hardcore gamer is merely a niche market now. Games like l4d don't cater to the hardcore as much as they cater to the casual gamer - Valve knows what they are doing here.

Super high end gaming rigs are in the same realm as audiophilia, if you ask me: a pornographic excess of consumption.

I've never seen pornographic used like that before.

Audiophiles usually have prime hearing and most likely play a musical instrument. I would happily spend $200 on a pair of headphones just for less distortion.

I actually have those Apple In-Ear ones, get these if you don't want to spend lots of money on Bose headphones or whatever.

Yawn! Games? Was this a slow news day?

Maybe when Jobs gets Wii Sports for the Mac this would be interesting as those games seem to work for family fun. I have tried to get into the gaming thing many times in the past and it is soooo boring. I think about playing games, and then I think I could go outside instead ... outdoors always wins.

Thats up to our personal 'lenses'. I grew up in the open country and find the outdoors quite boring.

 

[Gasu E.]

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[MorphingDragon]

I wonder if this will be another case of mind of matter where the Mac community wills something into existence.

Hey, why not? The iPad appeared last time. Now we have some practice.

 

[Gepper]

Yes, but it depends how good the port is. A good port will run almost as good as the Windows version.

Almost as good? Whats stopping it from running just as good or better?

 

[skate71290]

Who believes that?

I do, Apple could quite easily make the Apple TV into an iEntertainment-Centre but downloading 1080 games could be a pain in the ass especially when Blu-Ray discs can hold up to 54GB... like 5 games to an iEntertainment-Centre... but if Apple did do something like that i would expect it too have like a 4TB Hard Drive and piss all over the PS3 and Xbox 360 systems

 

[MorphingDragon]

Almost as good? Whats stopping it from running just as good or better?

A port suggests that there is lack of optimization.

 

[MikeDTyke]

I wonder if this will be another case of mind of matter where the Mac community wills something into existence.

Hey, why not? The iPad appeared last time. Now we have some practice.

Well they haven't willed a mid range desktop mac into existance, even though there's been years of gnashing a wailing of a massive market, if only Apple would build it.

BTW: The definition of mid range desktop mac, means something cheaper than a mac pro, but still expandable.

 

[skate71290]

if a game was built from the ground up for a Mac... i.e. no port/no cider whatsoever... surely the game would run a lot faster on the Mac if the exact same game and system was used on Windows... just find that OSX is much cleaner than Windows and much more simplified?

 

[0098386]

^No.

Almost as good? Whats stopping it from running just as good or better?

DirectX is the mutts nuts, is why. Though it does remain to be seen how good the next OSX revisions OpenGL drivers get.

I do, Apple could quite easily make the Apple TV into an iEntertainment-Centre but downloading 1080 games could be a pain in the ass especially when Blu-Ray discs can hold up to 54GB... like 5 games to an iEntertainment-Centre... but if Apple did do something like that i would expect it too have like a 4TB Hard Drive and piss all over the PS3 and Xbox 360 systems

No it wouldn't. I don't get this mentality that if Apple does it; it's the best thing ever. They make some good products (iMacs, iPods) some terrible products (iPod Shuffle, iPad) and they're infamous for their apathy towards real gaming or using good quality video cards.
I don't know about anyone else but I wouldn't buy an expensive console with meagre video card and lack of developer support and/or quality games just because Apple made it.

 

[Gasu E.]

How the world changes...
Not long ago there was a time where you had to buy a separate computer to play games if you had a mac. Now people are complaining about how they have to do a restart if they want to play games.

I don't think this means very much in the grand scheme of things. What would be much more significant for mac gaming would be if apple updated their products with good graphics more often.

Yes, it's much better today. No, it's far from perfect.

1. Rebooting makes "just a few minutes of casual play" much less appealing.
2. I now have to reserve, and ultimately manage, an extra volume. It's not huge but it's that much less usable space.
3. I don't know about anyone else, but not all my peripherals are working on the Windows side. Even if you do have everything working, it's another system you need to update and administer.

Boot camp saves me on initial system cost and desktop footprint. I still occur all the ongoing costs of managing an extra Windows system.

 

[alent1234]

if a game was built from the ground up for a Mac... i.e. no port/no cider whatsoever... surely the game would run a lot faster on the Mac if the exact same game and system was used on Windows... just find that OSX is much cleaner than Windows and much more simplified?

apple just has to write a decent game API like microsoft did

 

[VoR]

Macs by hardware design can't be upgraded easily using PC parts. They use a newer technology called EFI which provides several improvements including removing the 16-Bit legacy sub system. Despite what people say, Apple appears to actually use some advantages of EFI.

By hardware design you are correct - obviously you can't squeeze a big dedicated card into a machine with no space, little ventilation, small psu and no (official) driver support.
EFI support is in windows and all modern pc hardware, what does apples implementation offer as an advantage (appears?)? It's certainly not speed/stability/security from what I've seen.

That'll happen when all hell freezes over and Linux devs realize GTK doesn't make nice looking GUIs.

You read about valve switching steam off IE to webkit a fair while ago? What about valve hiring linux devs (not saying it's not for their server source obviously)? What about the 'rumours' the steam/source is coming to linux too? Looks pretty much like many articles that I've read before, no characters with penguins on their chest mind. What does GTK have to do with anything?

Using steam as a game delivery service on alternative platforms is good news, will have to see what's available on it in the future. I don't play games, but aren't many of the source engined and *spangly graphics* games fps shooters nowadays? Even as a casual gamer, I wouldn't find osx' mouse acceleration too much fun

 

[bluefox9er]

I didn't know what steam or valve was. This is great news. Maybe Apple should buy this company so that google doesn't buy it and port it to android. This is precisely the kind of company that google would buy to deliberately kill just so apple couldn't have it and dominate the gaming industry.

Apple needs to invent a way to use you iPhone like a joystick to control whAt happens on your television screen.

dated, boring and over rated games like half life are not a threat to apple.

apple is doing the right thing by forgoing all it's other products such as it's mac book pro range to go after the nintendo ds and sony psp market and aim squarely for the 8 to 25 year old markets whilst the rest of us drool over the sony viao z series and the hp envy and think of what could have been...

 

[MorphingDragon]

By hardware design you are correct - obviously you can't squeeze a big dedicated card into a machine with no space, little ventilation, small psu and no (official) driver support.
EFI support is in windows and all modern pc hardware, what does apples implementation offer as an advantage (appears?)? It's certainly not speed/stability/security from what I've seen.

EFI is the ROM type. Mac OSX does not support VGABIOS based cards. VGABIOS is the old technology. Its technology comes all the way form the 80s!

What does GTK have to do with anything?

Fail.

 

[mongorama]

Something I'm trying to figure out is if the Source-engined games will be available on OS X, will the mods built around those games work (Garry's mod, NeoTokyo, Fortress Forever, etc...), or would the mods have to be rewritten/ported over as well?

 

[jlc1978]

In all fairness, Apple has been talking about entering the gaming industry before on several occasions.

Instead of entering the market with a games console to compete with Nintendo and Sony etc maybe they're looking to enter it with a buy-out of Valve.

I know, very unlikely but interesting.

They actually tried (Pippen) and failed miserably.

I don't see Apple buying a game developer - they're model seems to be to control the hardware / content distribution part of the value chain and let others do the development. They take a cut of all teh content and let someone else take the risk of failing. Why drop millions into a risky venture when you can get 10, 20, or 30 percent of each sale? You don't have to worry about what will be a hit; you just need to build up a large enough customer base so the major content producers can't ignore you. A much better business model, IMHO.

 

[BradenG]

dated, boring and over rated games like half life are not a threat to apple.

Just wanted pipe in...dated? Yes. Boring and over rated? No.

 

[jlc1978]

Really basic question

How does Steam's DRM work? If I buy a game, can I run it on my Mac without connectivity; i.e. is Steam essentially replacing delivering the program via a CD? Most of my gaming is odne when I am not connected; so having to connect to play or start a game would make it unusable to me.

 

[BradenG]

How does Steam's DRM work? If I buy a game, can I run it on my Mac without connectivity; i.e. is Steam essentially replacing delivering the program via a CD? Most of my gaming is odne when I am not connected; so having to connect to play or start a game would make it unusable to me.

There's none of that on Steam.

 

[VoR]

EFI is the ROM type. Mac OSX does not support VGABIOS based cards. VGABIOS is the old technology. Its technology comes all the way form the 80s!

Fail.

What? I'm not sure why you're wasting your time stating the blindingly obvious and ignoring my questions. Yes, your average pc boots up from a motherboard bios too, same as back in the 80s...I'd still like to know why apple's implementation is better than this 'old technology' - it's not like they're using various EFI features that they could be anyway.

'Fail' is an interesting response to the comment about GTK - does your linux knowledge stretch any further than the occasional fragment you've picked up on this site?

 

[actripxl]

I find it humorous that to this point there are 24 losers that actually clicked negative on Steam coming over to Mac.

 

[Sambo110]

How does Steam's DRM work? If I buy a game, can I run it on my Mac without connectivity; i.e. is Steam essentially replacing delivering the program via a CD? Most of my gaming is odne when I am not connected; so having to connect to play or start a game would make it unusable to me.

Yeah, Steam starts in offline mode and lets you play.

 

[BothBarsOn]

Why do people who don't like video games take the time to declare that fact in this thread? And while I'm up, why do people who don't like games feel superior to those of us who do?

It's genuinely puzzling to me.