Valve on Mac piques interest from other game developers

Now that Valve has committed to offering full support for the Mac for both its in-house games and Steam, its digital game delivery system, other developers are expressing interest in the Mac as a gaming platform, too.

Gas Powered Games, creator of Supreme Commander 2, Kings and Castles, and Dungeon Siege, has said of the Mac: "We, as a developer, will include a Mac platform option in all of our proposals moving forward. We're in 100 percent support of it, absolutely." Chris Taylor, founder of Gas Powered Games, says that porting games over to the Mac is relatively easy since Macs and PCs now have largely identical internal architectures. Intel processors and ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards are common to both platforms, making game porting far easier than it was back in the PowerPC days. Taylor also says that recent rises in Mac sales are another contributing factor making the Mac a more attractive target for game developers.

Swedish gamemaker DICE, best known for the Battlefield series of games, may also be throwing more support behind the Mac -- one of the company's lead developers has said that "We're currently investigating the possibility of making [Battlefield: Bad Company 2] available on Mac." That's not as big or flashy a commitment as Valve or Gas Powered Games, but considering the popularity of the Battlefield series, it still goes a long way toward improving the state of gaming on the Mac.

Over the next year or so, many other developers are likely to be watching Valve's success (or lack thereof) on the Mac with a very keen eye. If Valve manages to make a healthy amount of money by selling games to Mac users, it may only be a matter of time before many more gaming outfits follow suit.