Mac Gaming To Get Some Steam?

When it comes to PC gaming, well, my Mac friends, sadly the PC still rules! That might be the case today, but, however, come tomorrow the PC's gaming position could be soon be matched by the Mac, and all thanks to the greatest game distribution system known to man... Steam!

Yes, my dear two or three readers, the makers of Half-Life and L4D, Valve, could be adding Steam's gaming distribution system to the Mac side of the equation as well, all according to a post in Gizmodo. If true, and this thing indeed comes to the Mac, then it will be great day for Mac gaming enthusiasts everywhere. The Mac may be the premier computer when it comes to multi-media, music, videos, photos and what have you, but on the gaming side the Mac takes a back seat to users of PCs. As the Giz goes on to state:

"In Steam's latest beta release, a search through its files revealed a number of OSX-specific assets, like a Steam dock icon (among loads of others). Since there's no reason for OSX resources—that I should add, are specifically labeled "OSX"—to make their way into a PC product, it seems pretty certain that, yes, Steam is coming to Mac. Hooray!"

That all sounds so promising, so I will say 'hooray' to that as well, and even though I'm hardly what you would call a hard core gamer, I still think that having lots of games and a great gaming service like Steam is very important for the Mac's overall growth in the long run. For one thing, even though there might be a dearth of gaming titles for the Mac currently, at least when compared to the selection on the PC side, Steam could and should really go a long way in equalizing that by helping to prompt many, if not most, PC gaming companies to increase something that they have been already doing of late anyway - adding more and more Mac gaming titles.

In conclusion, thanks to recent record breaking sales of Macs, the iPhone and iPod Touch, and now the upcoming iPad, having Steam on the Mac is important and I'm predicting that it could bring a flood of high quality gaming titles to the Mac market that otherwise may not have been the case. This is great news indeed for the Mac platform overall and it could help add to the Mac's already many strengths and thus, in the end, it could help to also give PC users another great reason to switch from the dark side over to the Mac.

And that's my 2 cents 4 this Thursday, February 25, 2010

Illustrations via: Gizmodo