

Valve Leaks Teaser Images for Announcement of Steam (and Games) for Mac - pmjordan
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/03/valve-teases-upcoming-half-life-release-for-mac/

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drawkbox
Looks like Valve is not going to be DirectX showcase anymore. They went all in
with DirectX9/10 and were started by Gabe Newell who worked at Microsoft and
on Windows itself.

OSX is huge for developers and is gaining. Since going Intel and __nix based
it has attracted developers and is the prettiest distro of __nix you have ever
seen. If Steam and Valve aren't going to Mac someone will.

This is so huge because it also cements OpenGL (since they will need to have a
OpenGL renderer in their engine) as having a resurgence and no longer makes
the major decision point for many people on their next computer due to Windows
still being seen as a gaming machine.

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weaksauce
It has not been directx vs opengl really. It's more of a direct3d vs opengl as
they are really only renderers and not full stacks to build your game off.
That being said, using opengl is smart to do because that is a tough part to
get right and the other code(sound, input, networking) should have cross
platform libraries or be easy enough to create from the native code.

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Tiktaalik
I hope this ends up being a sort of "build it and they will come" scenario,
and it ends up boosting OS X game development across the board.

With Valve developing for OS X and Blizzard being a long time OS X supporter,
I'm pretty close to not needing a PC for anything at all. Maybe in a few years
the platforms will be equally competitive.

~~~
pmjordan
I wonder if it's the various multiplatform indie games on steam that made them
reconsider. Those alternative SKUs of games are currently not earning _Valve_
money in the OSX (or Linux, or...) versions, as they have to be sold via other
channels.

~~~
83457
I bet a big reason as well is all of the games on iPhone, and soon on the
iPad, which is a huge market that Steam can't tap into. If iPhone games can be
considered essentially Mac games then there has probably been a million
percent increase in Mac game development in the last couple years. I'm sure
with little work most of these games could be released for the desktop --
Valve could become the store for Mac games. If they have success I'm sure it
will push Apple to start offering desktop apps/games on iTunes.

~~~
wtallis
I'm not sure that Valve will be able to get too involved in the app store
profits.

But the iPhone has done wonders for the casual/2D gaming market, and gotten
Apple's APIs a lot of exposure, and 3D gaming on the iPhone forces a developer
to get used to OpenGL ES and the Mac development environment. The number of
people capable of delivering a good Mac game has exploded over the past few
years.

When you combine this with Apple's incredible market share among college
students, it's clear that companies like Valve have to be strongly considering
going cross-platform.

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timmorgan
Is it really "leaked" information since the images are deliberately released
to promote their announcement? I suppose it's now standard operating procedure
in the computer software industry to pretend to accidentally release images to
hype your product. Just feels dumb to me.

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sp332
I suspect, in this case, it's more a play on the word Valve then anything. But
is there

 _word_ : leak :: astroturfing : grassroots ?

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ErrantX
This is fantastic news. I hope they have plans to expand this to Linux as
well!

It would be great to see some of the better Linux games distributed on a
content platform like steam (similar to how they help distribute the big HL2
mods).

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sp332
The Steam client and Valve games run great under Wine, so if a native port is
too much trouble, they could license the Wine libs and it should work fairly
quickly.

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kbob
That was a very clever marketing campaign.

(a) It piggybacks on 26 years' worth of Apple's ads, and Apple has had some of
the best ads in history.

(b) By pretending to leak the images, they created a buzz among the people who
hunted down the whole series.

(c) By pretending to leak the images to news sites, they didn't have to pay
for advertising.

~~~
arn
all true... but note that this only works for news items that are news-worthy
already.

Someone sends me a "leaked" image about their uninteresting startup, I'm not
posting it. :) That said, Valve should have released a new image every day,
not all at once to 6 different sites.

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arohner
Excellent news. The screenshots heavily imply to me that they've ported the
HL2 engine (and HL2, portal, TF2, L4D) to OSX.

I haven't had a windows machine at home for several years, because of that, I
shifted most of my gaming to consoles. If they port to OSX, I would likely buy
my valve games on OSX.

~~~
jokull
Exactly what I'm thinking. If Valve games get ported to Mac OS X I'll actually
buy them and stop considering XBox, PS3, PC gaming machine etc. purchases.

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seabee
Do I have to be the first to say just how hilarious these images are? I don't
care for the Mac but even I'm interested by it now.

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Artifex
I want LINUX support! Hear me Valve?!? You're obviously running source on
OpenGL...

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lurkinggrue
Valve did a 2nd update to portal and added an ending where Chell is being
dragged away for "Asset retrieval" by a robot.

~~~
lurkinggrue
The new ending was just uploaded to you tube:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_45oK0AIb8>

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noarchy
Ok, so are these going to be a bunch of Cider ports? I don't tend to get very
excited about those.

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hackworth
i wonder what this will do to Apple's hardware lineup? If people are demanding
more power from macs as game technology on the platform advances, and people
can't just upgrade their video card, what will happen to the game market? Die
off, or goad Apple into a mid-range mac pro?

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jgavris
The cake is a lie.

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wendroid
Interesting, I wonder if my game purchases will migrate platforms too.

