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Mac as a gaming platform
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 | Permalink
Recently Valve
announced that they will not just deliver Steam on Mac, but also a bunch of actual games for the Mac platform. Even though I'm a PC guy I find this to be excellent news. We need competition in the OS market, and one of the main reasons many people stay on the Windows platform is because it's the only viable platform for gaming. With a heavy-weighter like Valve giving Mac full attention, it could really change that. I don't think every developer will follow, but I think it will mean a substantial increase in games available on the Mac. Another side effect of this is that OpenGL will again become an important API. No bold new initiative from Khronos could ever make the same kind of impact as having Steam and popular games on the Mac platform. I think this is also good news for PC gamers, because it expands that gaming audience on computers. I wish Valve all the success on the Mac platform.
Gregory
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Exactly what I thought when I heard the news. OpenGL gets attention when the market decides it.
It's the same with gaming being less popular on Linux: it's not because of OpenGL vs DX arguments. No matter how appealing free software is (or not), it's just that shipping binaries for Linux is impractical and the market share doesn't make it worth bothering.
PiggyHop
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Well, isn't Apple handling of OpenGL a bit... shaky, to say the least ? e.g., still no GL 3.x on OSX.
Groovounet
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Agreed and I'm sure Blizzard will follow.
I am guessing for Diablo 3 release on PC and MacOS simultaneously or at close time.
OpenGL 3 should be there with MacOS X 10.6.3, it's about time. OpenGL support on MacOS is not so bad just a bit old compare to Windows implemetation.
ViktorSkarlatov
Thursday, March 11, 2010
This is indeed awesome news, I really hope this push from Valve will change things for the Mac as gaming platform.
Martijn
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Blizzard will follow? They've been on the Mac for a long, long time.
But it's definitely good to see other operating systems are getting more attention from the "big" game developers.
And I do understand why they choose Mac above Linux. Because you'd basically limit yourself to NVIDIA cards, though the open-source ATI drivers are hopefully going to change that.
On the other hand though, if they already have an OpenGL renderer, why not port it to Linux as well?
Like id Software (used to do?)
Gregory
Thursday, March 11, 2010
why not port it to Linux as well?
because it's more q&a and support work
Martijn
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Well, that's why I said "Like id Software". They only supply a binary, nothing more, nothing less.
Though obviously there's always extra work involved...
Vrej
Monday, March 15, 2010
Wow. They are actually going to write GL code for HL2, TF2. I still do gaming on HL2 deathmatch. It is pretty good graphically. Maybe one day, Linux (whatever distro) will become popular enough but that day hasn't come yet.
Thanks for the news.
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