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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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.

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

Apple today unveiled the 2009 line of iMac, Mac Pro and Mac Mini systems as well as the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule devices.

The new Mac Mini now includes the NVidia GeForce 9400M (128MB to 256MB shared memory) integrated graphics while supporting up to 4GB of internal memory itself.  Not really a “power-house” for gaming in the graphics chip side of things, but definetly a Mac system with some staying power.  This update also sports 802.11-N wireless networking, five USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 800 port, Mini-DVI and DisplayPort video outputs.

The new Mac Pro tower system now comes with either a 2.66GHz, 4-core or two 2.26GHz 4-core (called 8-core) Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processors, 18x dual-layer SuperDrive, 640GB hard disk, 3GB or 6GB internal memory and an NVidia GeForce GT 120 with 512MB of memory.  This is the great grand-daddy of the Mac Mini, sparing no expense with the power it delievers.

Before now, the Airport and Time Capsule line of devices have all been single-band, broadcasting either a B/G, G, or N based wireless network.  With the new Airport and Time Capsule will have the ability to broadcast two seperate wireless network, allowing for better placement of your wireless devices that currently fight for wireless bandwidth.  Currently, I use an Airport N for my main computer and an Airport Express B/G for my iPhone/Wii/360/DS.

See more at the Apple Store…