I know that all of you enjoyed the real-time strategy from Ensemble Studios, Age of Empires III. Now, Microsoft Game Studios, the games developer, has decided to pass on the publishing torch to MacSoft, for releasing a Mac version of the game.

This Mac version of Age of Empires III has just gone gold, meaning that they have finished the game's development and they are ready for mass production. The game will come out on November XX (I guess XX stands for 20) and will have Apple Intel-based and PowerPC Macintosh support.

Age of Empires III has sold over 18 million copies worldwide not to mention all the bootleg copies out there. It is quite an innovative game, and the first in the Age of Empires series to introduce gunpowder weapons on a large scale. In the previous Age of Empires installment, there were some gunpowder weapons but you could get them later on in the game and they were not that used.

Age of Empires III was the first Age of Empires game that saw the Havok physics simulator middleware engine, also used in Half-Life 2. The game has also bloom lighting and pixel shader 3.0 support.