Half Life 2's OS X Port Costs $ 1 Million

EA have recently hit the market with NFS and Battlefield ports for the OS X, so Valve couldn't wait to seize the opportunity and make an OS X port of their own. Of course, Half Life 2 seems to have been the chosen title and the talks with Apple were on their way when suddenly...they stopped. The reason? A million dollars... This was the price asked by Valve in order to develop a port of the acclaimed HL 2 title.

I can see that porting such a title on Macs can be pretty tough, but still a million dollars is quite a lot of money even for a huge company like Apple. Also, Valve would be betting on a game that won't sell as well as the PC version did, in fact it won't even reach 1% of the original version's sales. Does Valve know something that we don't? Have they read the future in the crystal ball seeing that the Mac is the platform of the future and not the average PC?

Considering that Apple will soon launch a new operating system, most gaming companies will probably try to take advantage of it and the hype generated by such an event. Siding with Steve Job's company when everything's going perfect is a good move and Valve was just about to perform it, being however cut off by financial issues. What do you think? Will they make a second demand, asking for less money or will Apple finally be willing to pay?

While we're waiting for the second episode of Half Life 2, those poor Mac users are still hoping to play the first title on their platforms. Is it really that tough to develop a port? So far there are 2 platforms that are always mentioned as developers' worst nightmares when it comes to producing games: the