Apple Macintosh Finally Gets Video Games with Valve’s Steam

From X-bit Labs: Although Apple Macintosh computers have been pretty popular among consumers, they have only supported select OpenGL-based games and have never been considered a platform for gaming. However, as Valve Software releases its Steam client for Macs, the situation may change.

“The Mac is a great platform for developers. And it's also great that we now have the ability to connect with Mac gamers via Steam. This is the beginning of a groundswell of games coming out for and fully utilizing the openness and power of the Mac,” said Gabe Newell, president of Valve.

On Wednesday Valve Software finally released Steam service for Apple Macintosh platforms. The software allows to acquire and download video games from various publishers, including Valve itself. Initially, there are 57 video games available at Steam for Macs, whereas users of Windows-based PCs can enjoy hundreds titles. Valve promises to add more games going forward.

Unfortunately for gamers, who use Macintosh systems, currently Steam for Mac does not offer award-winning titles like Battlefield-, Call of Duty-, Half-Life 2, Need for Speed-series and so on.

Moreover, fairly speaking, Macintosh systems are hardly designed for games or gamers. The most powerful graphics card that can be installed into premium Mac Pro system is ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB GDDR5, which is almost two years old. Popular iMac systems feature ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 in maximum configuration and ATI Radeon HD 4670 256MB in mainstream setups. Performance of such graphics solutions is hardly sufficient for modern games.

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