However, the majority of gaming, on any platform, is going to be online and free.I see that Half life is released on Linux based computers with WineX ( ) to emulate Microsoft DirectX. 'So it's likely we'll see the Mac taking its place alongside the other platforms, receiving simultaneous releases. 'The additional cost to developers to develop for Mac is minimal compared to the initial cost of development,' notes the MacFormat man, who adds, 'it's already becoming apparent that the cross-platform differences and tribalism are being rapidly eroded. PC developers that are now willing to commit to the Mac platform (on record) are still few and far between, but off-record chats with developers shows that there is a willingness to consider Mac as a gaming platform now.

Instead of £40 games that require systems worth hundreds of pounds, now you can get quality games for pennies.' 'Moreover, the iPhone plays games better than the PSP or DS, and its micropayments system has revolutionised gaming, being arguably the only platform that's matching pace with the on-going social gaming revolution. 'Four years on, those 'new consoles' are starting to look weary in comparison to what a specced-up Mac or PC can handle, and, suddenly the Mac looks attractive,' adds King. Where gaming has previously been a side-line interest for Apple, it seems that the explosion of interest in games on the iPhone has led to a new focus on desktop and laptop gaming on Macs. King notes, in the latest issue of MacFormat, that: 'For years gaming on the Mac was possible, but undesirable the userbase relative to PC was low, almost no-one had a graphics card that was designed for gaming, and because of compatibility issues (Endian differences, DirectX incompatibility, and so on) games had to be made from scratch rather than ported.'

MacFormat writer James King certainly seems to think the recent launch of Valve's Steam marks a sea-change for gaming on Macs. 'With PC games so reliant on the DirectX APIs for graphics, sound and human interfacing, it'll be interesting to see if PC devs take to the Mac equivalents (like Apple's implementation of OpenGL) with the same gusto but it seems that much of the usual crowd of PC middleware is available for OSX, so it could be relatively painless, should Steam for Mac prove popular enough to warrant the time investment.' 'Though they'll have a Mac already, so it's perhaps not that steep a curve - and traditional PC developers need to migrate to the Apple APIs, though with Intel chips on both formats, porting should be straightforward,' adds Coles.

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