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!

E3 2010 is a couple of months away. As usual, everyone is making predictions and speculating what huge announcements are coming. A lot of talk is revolving around Sony and Microsoft this year. There are hopes of long-awaited games finally coming out in the public eye.

I wonder if Duke Nukem will finally come out? Sure. Right.

For E3 this year, I have a couple of predictions of my own. I am hoping that Nintendo redeems themselves and announces a new Legend of Zelda game. I see the game releasing during the 4th quarter of 2010. Gears of War 3 is another prediction. I don’t see it releasing in the 4th quarter of 2010. I see an announcement at E3 with the possibility of release in 2nd or 3rd quarter of 2011.

I asked on Twitter what your predictions for E3 are from The Geek Media’s Twitter and my personal Twitter. The answers after the jump. Read More

Tonight on R&D! We’ve got a revue of those MMO’s that have gone the F2P path, a bit of chatter on Red Faction: Guerrilla, and finally Rob got his stupid chest paddles in Bad Company 2. We’ve also got the usual bits of news, including why Gabe Newell’s a jerk and a look at a few cheap games out right now that you can enjoy. All that and more starting at 10PM EST tonight on R&D!

Go over to OMFG.FM tonight to hear the fun!

Netflix has announced that their internet streaming movie service will be coming to the Nintendo Wii in Spring 2010.  The service will be identical to the PS3 service added some months ago which requires a physical disc to assess the streaming content (as opposed to an Application installed directly on the console like the XBox 360).

Please keep in mind that with the Wii’s maximum resolution of 480P wide-screen, the Wii-Netflix service may not be capable of properly displaying 720P HD content.  Although it is unknown at this time, chances are the HD videos will be downscaled to 480P.

To reserve your Wii Netflix disc today, click on the image below.

Picked this up doing the rounds this morning, enjoy the strange techy goodness.

I’m very interested to see where this ends up leading us to.