Gaming on the Mac: Still playing second fiddle

Cyan Worlds' Myst, a game that was a Mac exclusive in 1993, 

later being ported to nearly every other platform.

(Credit: Ubisoft)

 

CNET - A decade ago, if you picked a Mac over a PC for your gaming machine, you could pat yourself on the back for loyalty to your favorite OS while you complained you didn't have very many games to play. And yes, that games list includes the bootleg version of Tetris you played in your college dorm room.

Life for the Mac gamer got a little more diverse in 2006 when Apple switched to Intel processors and soon after introduced Boot Camp, a free software utility that lets Mac OS X users install Windows on their Intel-based machines. But five years later, the software library conundrum remains for gamers who want to stick with the Mac OS.

So why are Mac users still treated like second-class gamers? The simplest answer is that the Mac is still a smaller market, at less than a tenth of the size of machines running Microsoft's Windows. For a development house, putting resources into a Mac version may not bring back the kind of returns you get on the PC side, which itself now plays second fiddle to game consoles.

But there are signs that inequality between native versions could be changing, such as the introduction and growth of Valve's Steam service. Steam was launched by Valve in 2004 and finally made its way to the Mac just a year ago. The service lets customers buy digital copies of games through a piece of software that doubles as a download manager, game updater, and chat tool.     Read More