Valve Software, makers of the hit PC games Half Life 2, Portal and Left4Dead 2, have issued a press release for the upcoming Macintosh launch of their online gaming service, Steam.

May 11, 2010 – Valve announced that Steam will launch on the Mac platform this Wednesday, May 12.

On subsequent Wednesdays, additional collections of Mac titles will become available, each designed to highlight specific functionalities of Steam on the Mac.

The first collection of Mac titles will demonstrate “Steam Play,” which allows customers to purchase a game once and play it on all Steam supported platforms.

Portal, in addition to supporting Steam Play, will be the first of Valve’s Source engine based games available on the Mac. Native OS/X support for the Source engine is also available immediately to licensees for use in their games.

Among the initial titles available on Wednesday will be Runic Games’ critically acclaimed Torchlight. “We’re very excited to be bringing Torchlight to the Mac,” said Max Schaefer, co-founder of Runic Games. “Having Steam for the Mac solves so many problems for us as a developer. We look forward to our future games coming out on the Mac as well.”

In addition to bringing the online functionality of Steam to the Mac, Valve will also make its Steamworks suite of publishing and development tools available on the Mac platform. These include product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating, social networking, matchmaking, anti-cheat technology, and more. The features and services available in Steamworks are offered free of charge and may be used for both electronic and tangible versions of games.

For more information on Steam, please visit www.steamgames.com.

Source [ SteamPowered.com ]

As a Mac user and a gamer, I am very excited about the impending cross-platform release, as well as knowing that I will not have to re-purchase Mac versions of (most) games I already own.  My Steam library, when I was using BootCamp to run Windows and Steam for the past few years, includes games such as Torchlight, the Half Life series, Left4Dead, TeamFortress 2, Portal, Bioshock and many games from the Quake and Doom series.

While detractors will argue that Steam for Mac does not mean that PC game developers will flock to the platform, that is not necessarily a requirement at this time.  There are plenty of Mac game developers who will benefit from Steam as a platform for selling their software, pushing out updates to their users and track hardware statistics to better help optimize their games.

It has been awhile since I have logged into Steam, but I will soon be back.  Once Team Fortress 2 has been fully released for Mac, which I hope is soon, meet me up for a few rounds.

Nintendo has seen a significant drop in profits lately and most say Apple’s mobile gaming platform is to blame. Nintendo themselves are even keeping an eye on Apple. Sony and Microsoft is no longer the thorn in Mario’s side. It’s the big “little i”.
Is Apple really the biggest issue Nintendo is facing or is it a larger issue? Most likely, a little bit of both. As a hardcore Nintendo fan, I can safely say that my favorite gaming company has failed me the past few years. It all began with the shoddy release of Twilight Princess, the lack of core titles for the DS and then the Wii games that were off-shoots of “Sports” started to move through the shelves.
What’s left for us? The Moms, families and kids are only going to enjoy their Wii for so long. Then, they will put it down for a new toy that’s promising family fun. I have it on good authority to say this since I’ve sold my Nintendo Wii. Why? Because my kids stopped playing it and moved on to something else.
Nintendo has forgotten about their core audience. They have been pumping out games for a brand new audience that were quite successful. You can only go so far with the “Wii-fit-sports-swimming pool-billiards-backyard party” franchise. Frankly, you can only go so far with any franchise. I have to admit, even Zelda is in desperate need of an upgrade.

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That’s right everyone, starting tonight will be the last episode of this season of The Rob and Dan Show over at http://www.OMFG.fm as well as my personal livestream down on the page. What started as a short podcast in mid 2007 on the development of new video games and gaming tech turned into a fantastic broadcast chock full of fun, sometime raunchy humor where we discuss current events in the gaming industry as well as subjects we feel strongly on.

It’s come a long way since Rob and I started it as one of the first podcasts over at The Geek Media, and we’ve enjoyed every single episode so far. We’ve had a lot of special guests on with us as well, everyone from David from the Festival of Blood cast to Matt Hillyer from The Stealth Mac, and we hope as many of those guests as possible show up tonight to be with us for the cast.

It’s hard to think about it being over, for now. It really doesn’t fit too well with me because I’ve done R&D almost every week for nearly the last three years, and I want it to come back as soon as possible. With all things though, we must move on, and taking Rob and Dan’s place while we’re on hiatus is going to be CrossFaction with myself and Almighty Farseer, and Player One, a new video cast that’s finishing up development as we speak.

I would implore everyone to go over to http://www.macharbor.com/rnd/podcast.xml and listen to all the old episodes of R&D to experience the goodness that we’ve had over the past couple years.

Tonight will start EARLY, be around the irc and watching your twitter early tonight, I’m probably going to do an impromptu Player One on my livestream page at http://www.livestream.com/letonator and we’ll have some fun with that before we get to R&D tonight. Have fun tonight guys!

A 100 year old visually impaired woman received an iPad from her family. They bought it for her so the woman could read and write again, using the iPad’s features to be able to read very large print. The video went viral overnight and there’s no wondering why. Just watch.

Turbine Inc was purchased by Warner Brothers Entertainment Group, adding to WB’s roster of video game and video game publishers. They have previously purchased TT Games, famous for the LEGO video games. Turbine Inc publishes Dungeons and Dragons Online, Asheron’s Call and Lord of the Rings Online.

Turbine has consistently brought it’s players an environment where the community is at the forefront of the game. Developers and Turbine staff drop in on forum threads and feature a self contained social network for Lord of the Rings Online called My Lotro.

(Disclosure: The blurb about Turbine is blatantly biased. Candace is an avid Lotro player.)

It seems like Apple may have an issue on their hands here. A country and now three prominent Universities in the United States are banning the iPad. Each of them cited security concerns, bandwith concerns and interference with wifi as reasons for banning the device.

Quite a few people gawked at Israel deciding to ban the iPad in the country over security concerns. They probably aren’t gawking today. Princeton University, George Washington University and Cornell University have all banned the iPad.

All of them are citing security and connectivity issues as the reason. Cornell University said they are seeing connectivity issues and a bandwith overload which is why the iPad was removed from campus. George Washington University rejected the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch from connecting on their campus. Wonder if they are Microsoft fans?

I think we need to write some letters to Apple about this issue. If someone writes a snarky enough letter, we could get a response from Steve Jobs. He will probably tell us we’re nuts, but he may give a one sentence answer as to how he’s going to handle this issue.

Like other uber geeks, we are the beautiful people and we have awesome taste in tattoos, clothing, games, tech, gadgets and nostalgia. A generation grew up on Atari, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and the Mother of video game entertainment of the 1980’s – Nintendo. We proudly wear our dorky gamer badges on our bodies for all to see.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of Nintendo tattoos out there. We scoured the web to find our 5 favorite Nintendo character tattoos.

#5. Hey. Hey Listen!

Why Navi? Of all things, why Navi?! Because you said that as soon as you saw this tattoo. She’s embedded into your brain, the constant screaming of “Hey, hey hey listen!” and this brave man has made sure everyone will remember it. The tattoo is really well done, but we all hate him just a little bit.

Original

#4. Stars and Ghosts, oh my!

This tattoo comes complete with invincible stars and a Boo. It’s quite obvious this girl loves her Nintendo. We love her half-sleeve and her stars. The original photo by Kotaku stated this woman’s husband was the tattoo artist. We love both of them just a little.

#3. 8 Bit Mario

Memories of throwing your controller when Mario died, moving the controller with Mario to make him jump and wanting to kill Toad when your Princess was in another castle come to mind when looking at this tattoo. The original tattoo is credited to artist Jon Poulson on Flickr.

Number 2 and number 1 are after the break

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It’s not every day you receive a reply from a big wig at Microsoft or Apple. It’s also not every day you receive a reply from Steve Jobs himself.

One man sent Apple an e-mail, airing his grievances with iPad’s international shipping issues. At one point, Jobs was accused of “pulling the wool over the world’s eyes.” This man got a very simple response from Jobs that started with “Are you nuts? We are doing the best we can.”

If you want to read the full e-mail conversation, it’s under the mystical “Read More” link.

“Dear Mr Jobs

On behalf of the international community of Apple consumers I would like to protest at the way Apple is apparently leaving us out in the cold with the Apple iPad product.

We have been fed either misinformation or no information at all and it is starting to cast doubt over Apple’s intents, at least it is to me.

I live in Switzerland and as yet we have no idea what the Apple iPad will cost here, if it is anything like the international pricing we have been used to to date on other Apple products, then it will certainly not be an “unbelievable price” as stated in your marketing. Read More