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BioShock Infinite coming to the Mac later this month
BioShock Infinite will be available on Mac as of August 29th, some five months after it was first released on PC and consoles. That may sound like a long time for Mac gamers to wait, but that's much better than the more than two years after the official release date it took for BioShock 2 to arrive on Mac OS X. Ported by Aspyr, the same outfit that brought Borderlands, Civilization and Call of Duty to Mac gamers, BioShock Infinite will be available through the Mac App Store, Steam and Asypr's own GameAgent. The list price is US$59.99, though where you purchase could determine how much bang for the buck you get. Purchasing through Steam will get you Steam Play, meaning you get a copy for both Mac and PC, where as purchasing though GameAgent gets you the Columbia's Finest DLC and a voucher for 20 percent off the list price, which is quite a big incentive. Either way, Aspyr has stated the new Clash in the Clouds DLC will be available on or not long after the launch date, and the recently announced Burial at Sea two-part campaign add-on will follow thereafter. [Via The Verge]
Aspyr Media charges on in the wild world of Mac gaming
I've been vocal for many, many years now about Aspyr and their like, and exactly how I feel about them. I'm a big fan of gaming, of course, and a big fan of Apple and the Mac. And Aspyr sits right at the intersection of those two worlds: They're a company, based in Austin with about 50 employees, that ports AAA and big-budget games over to the OS X platform. Given my dissatisfaction with the company and how vocal I'd been about it in the past, it was with not a little bit of temerity that I went to finally meet with them here at Macworld 2013. But Aspyr's VP of Publishing Elizabeth Howard and Sales Manager Michael Blair kindly welcomed me into the company's suite and sat down to talk about the state of Mac gaming from their point of view. The good news is that Aspyr has seen all of the signs that I've seen the past few years, and the two main concerns I've had for so long are their concerns as well. Buggy ports of PC games on the Mac was a big problem, but in the past few years Aspyr has worked hard to make things better, and even I'd agree that the ports we're seeing these days, from Aspyr and other companies, are light years better than what we used to see. The other big complaint I've had is delays -- games on the Mac often come out months or even years behind their PC and console releases. But both Howard and Blair agreed this was an issue as well, and in fact one of their biggest concerns. Late Mac releases was "definitely the most important thing to us in 2012," said Howard. Aspyr is working as hard as it can to juggle licensing partnerships, engineers, code bases and platforms to try and get these games out as close to the PC release as possible, and Howard says that "it's getting much better." With a few exceptions, Aspyr essentially has the porting process down to just a couple of months, with most releasing coming out either day and date or soon after. It's not perfect. Just recently, Aspyr had to release Borderlands 2 without multiplayer content on the Mac App Store, though it was able to get multiplayer ready for the Mac Steam release (and the Mac App Store patch is coming as soon as it's ready). But both Howard and Blair said they share the timing concerns, both because they are fans of Mac games, and simply because games released alongside the PC versions (and alongside all of the marketing and promotion for them) . "Revenue is a huge difference for us" when games are released together, said Blair. It turns out that fans like me aren't the only ones bugging Aspyr -- the companies they license the games from aren't always helpful either. Not only do a lot of AAA developers not have time for Mac ports, but they often don't have time to even help Aspyr figure out what code goes where, which adds time to the process and frustrations to Aspyr's engineers. Finally, Aspyr has one more source of concern, and it's the distributors that it chooses to deal with. The company releases games on its own website through the official GameAgent store, but most of its sales come these days through either Steam or the Mac App Store, and Howard says those are two very different marketplaces. How sales look on one or the other tends to depend on the title you're talking about (Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, for example, does well on the Mac App Store, while Borderlands 2 is a much better hit on Steam, presumably because of that multiplayer problem, among other things). But Howard said that just releasing games on one platform or the other is even more work for the company's engineers: Steam has its own achievements and features, and the Mac App Store of course has Game Center and other features to deal with. I asked Howard, given how much success the company has found on the Mac App Store, what Apple could do better for games like theirs, and she said Steam is really leading the charge in supporting game developers. Steam "engages that audience constantly," she said, putting together lots of regular sales and promotions for customers to find, and leaving promotional banners and ads up as long as their relevant, rather than changing them out from week to week. Apple, on the other hand, isn't quite as active in its promotion, and definitely isn't as open in terms of how it deals with the store, says Howard. That seems to be a legacy of Apple's relationship with gaming in general: The company has never really understood gamers, and even on the Mac App Store tends to promote and sell more of its own apps rather than much more popular games. Aspyr didn't have a lot of information to share about their exact catalog this year (unfortunately, recent changes in the gaming industry have put some of their titles in question for the moment), but Howard said the content lineup for 2013 would be very impressive. She promised more content for Civ 5 (Aspyr has published both the game and the Gods and Kings expansion on the Mac), some more indie-style titles, and lots of other new titles on Mac and Steam. Howard also mentioned, though again without specifics, that the company was thinking about a new plan as well: Bringing "catalog Mac experiences" over to the iOS platform. She mentioned Grand Theft Auto: Vice City as a desktop game that had done well on Apple's mobile devices, and said that Aspyr was considering bringing games that were a few years old to touchscreens. There's no more information on that, unfortunately, but it was definitely an intriguing idea. Aspyr is definitely working hard to try and make all of its Mac ports better, and while I'm still not completely satisfied with the release schedule (and I definitely got the impression that Howard and Blair weren't yet either), it's definitely clear that the company is facing a whole lot of pressure from all sides for doing something that all of us Mac gamers want: Bringing us high profile games that run natively on the computers that we love. The quality and timing of the ports has gotten better over the last few years for sure, and I would no longer call the company "a complete dealbreaker," as I wrote five years ago. Still, there's always room for improvement, and hopefully we'll see even more of it this year, as Aspyr is able to convince more and more of the companies it licenses games from just how wonderful and loyal the Mac community can be.
Aspyr launches GameAgent online store
Mac games publisher Aspyr has thrown the switch on their online game store GameAgent. Somewhat similar to Valve's Steam, GameAgent allows buying and downloading games for your Mac. They seem to be starting slow with only Call of Duty 4 ($54.99) and a trivia / SAT prep game called futureU ($39.99) available at this time. But other classic Mac games like Stubbs the Zombie appear to be coming soon at $19.99.GameAgent also offers an Extended Download Service for an additional fee of $4.99. Basically, what this does is give you the right to re-download the game anytime within two years. So, if you have a hard drive crash and no back-up, you can download again.One downside is that the game is locked to your computer, so you can only play them on the machine they were downloaded on. If you want to re-download the games on a new computer, you must purchase the EDS service when you buy the game. Even then, a given serial number can only be activated three times.[via Macworld]
Aspyr Media updates, digital distribution plans (Macworld Expo)
Mac games mainstay, Aspyr Media is showing of its latest and upcoming titles at the Macworld Expo. Easily the company with the most Mac game releases in recent years, Aspyr will ship the Mac version of its Best in Show, Prey to retailers next week, with Star Wars: Empire At War next on the company's Mac list. Aspyr also reminded us its PC and PS2 title, The Shield, will also ship to stores next week.In addition to upcoming games, we learned more about the company's Game Agent digital distribution service for Mac gamers. Currently a method of testing Mac hardware to see if new games will run, Game Agent will be relaunched this year to offer a back catalog of Aspyr titles that don't fit on retail shelves.The Mac-only service -- at least initially -- will sell older titles mostly as-is, although some may be updated to work better with the latest version of OS X on a case-by-case basis. OS 9 games, however, will be unlikely to be updated to Mac OS X versions, and Aspyr may not offer those games at all.Aspyr wants to include as many games as possible, but it needs to clear the rights for its older Mac titles, most of which were PC ports. We asked about the potential for small Mac developers to sell games though the service, and we were told that may happen, but that's not the focus. Instead, marketing director, Leah Heck told us Aspyr first wants to "give people access to the back catalog and make it easy to play."
