Steam on Mac
Valve made the announcement that they are officially bringing Steam and it’s many games over to the Mac platform. This includes all the popular Valve titles such as Left 4 Dead and Half-Life 2, as evident with the teaser image of one Gordon Freeman with an Apple logo on his chest. Of course, games based on the original game engine, Source, will be coming along for the ride, too.
Team Fortress 2 is an example of a game that has taken full advantage of Steams delivery system. The developers for TF2 have sent out over 100 updates to users via Steam, a task that was very difficult to have performed on every installation of the game. Recent major release Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 had a successful launch on Steam as well. Valve has announced that they will attempt to release products on PC, Mac, and Xbox360 simultaneously and will take on three gaming fronts at the same time with each release. The first game to take on the new pattern will be the upcoming release of Portal 2.
For gamers who currently own PC versions of titles on Steam, they will be able to get Mac-versions via Steam Play. Also, the Steam Cloud feature saves your in-game progress. This would allow you to play a game on your PC, save, leave and then be able to continue from that very spot on your Mac. I know many a gamer who only use Windows PCs for gaming while spending a majority of their time in a Mac environment. With this, they’ll be able to stay comfy while enjoying their games. While I don’t have a Mac, I like that they’re getting access to great games offered by Valve, especially TF2 which is a personal favorite of mine.
