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I spoke to Ben Berraondo, NVIDIA‘s PR Manager for the UK and Northern Europe earlier today and we mulled over the state of gaming and where the Mac lies (more on this later). We both feel that the Mac will one day be a successful gaming platform, but that it could be some way off.
Inevitably the conversation came around to distribution and piracy and finally settled on Steam, Valve‘s online distribution platform. Steam works. Out of the box. Zero configuration. You make an account, you choose the game, you pay for it and you download it. Steam encrypts it, it lets you preload before the release date and they always have promotions and play for free weekends. Best of all, most games are available in the UK at US prices meaning you’ll get your games for cheaper. I think I got the entire Orange Box for about £20.
Most of my PC games have been bought via Steam. There are no codes to enter, no serials to lose and no discs to be damaged. All Valve have to do is implement the ability to store all of your saved games and preferences online and in my eyes they’d have the complete package for gamers.
The Mac has nothing like this. There have been some rumours Aspyr are making their GameAgent application into a download tool instead of merely a utility, but I haven’t heard anything specific yet.
So what about Steam for Mac? Forget discs, mail order and multiple outlets: get all the indie games and all the big titles on Steam for Mac. Ambrosia, Aspyr, Freeverse, id, Feral, Transgaming – all Instant access and zero piracy.
Come on Valve, Steam for Mac. Please?
