14 DAY TRIAL // In light of Valve’s confirmation that several Steam games are headed to the Macintosh, AppleInsider has scored an interview with John Cook, director of Steam development at Valve. The Q&A sheds light on the process of porting the Steam online gaming system to the Mac, as well as the role Apple played in its development.
The report begins with AppleInsider acknowledging that Valve is bringing its Source-powered games to the Mac. Titles mentioned in the report include such popular games like Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2, although the first Steam game confirmed to hit the Mac is actually Portal 2, the sequel to the Valve-developed single-player first-person action/puzzle video game.
Asked if he could share anything regarding the timeframe for release, as well as pricing of games, and even system requirements, the director of Steam development at Valve replied by saying, “The Steam client and native implementations of our games will ship in April. We expect a number of third parties will release their games at the same time. Each game will have its own performance requirements in terms of CPUs, memory, and graphics and we expect they will be comparable to running on Windows. The Steam client itself is very lightweight.”
On the same subject, he added, “The first game from Valve that will ship simultaneously on the Mac will be Portal 2 this holiday season. Our future games will ship simultaneously on the Mac.”
Using a feature called “Steam Play,” Mac gamers would be able to play against PC gamers, Cook revealed. Moreover, existing Steam users would not have to re-purchase games for the Mac, if they already owned them for the PC, Cook told AppleInsider.
On the topic of working with Apple, Cook said, “Yes, we've been working with them a bunch as we get more acquainted with their platform. They've been a great partner so far and we look forward to growing our relationship with them over time.” He added that, “The Mac is a very attractive platform for entertainment as a service,” explaining what prompted the decision to support the Mac, even though Valve seemed to have a frustration with Apple in the past. Other insightful details about development for the Mac are offered in the report.