Valve Sets Up Shop For the Mac

Valve has announced today that their popular gaming platform Steam will be coming to the Mac, along with a sleuth of other games in their library.

Here’s the rundown from Valve:

Steam and Valve’s library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April.

“As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”

Portal 2 will be Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. “Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step,” said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. “We’re always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.”

Office 2010 for Mac to Launch w/ Actual Outlook

The Mac means serious business this time with the gain of Outlook 2010, available soon on Mac with Microsoft Office Mac Edition.

“Because it’s designed for the Mac, it will be different from Outlook for Windows,” Wilfrid said. “But it will be fully compatible. For instance, Outlook for Mac will support Information Rights Management, which controls access to sensitive documents.”

ARS TECHNICA said this:

Finally, the Mac BU is rejiggering the versions of Office 2008 it is making available to consumers. The “Student and Home Edition” will stay the same, but a new “Business Edition” arrives on September 15. Packaged in a Serious Business Black box, this new edition will include Entourage Web Services Edition andDocument Connection for Sharepoint compatibility, and it will sell for the same $399 as the “Standard Edition” did. Also included with the Business Edition are over 200 professionally designed, business-oriented templates and clip art, as well as seven hours worth of training at lynda.com.

Command & Conquer 4 ALWAYS Needs to Be Online: Even in Single Player

Command and Conquer, the popular military based strategic game for PC, is nearing its fourth release, and fans are all over it [that being myself as well]. However, one new enhancement in the game is causing a lot of worry and outcry.

It seems that the game will use a World of Warcraft-like scorecard. That is, everything you do is tracked, monitored, and recorded. The only problem is that this is done even throughout single player mode, and that means you HAVE to be connected to the internet to play this game. I know people [including I] usually play PC games around the house, but that PC [really a MacBook here] is all I have, and a lot of people carry laptops as their main computers now. That means you can’t go anywhere that doesn’t have internet, and attempt to play the game. Want to use LAN? (local area network) Too bad, because you need some internet to go with that. Essentially, the game is never really yours and yours alone. Here’s what EA (Electronic Arts, the developer of the Command and Conquer series) had to say:

“As of right now, you need to be online all the time to play C&C 4. This is primarily due to our ‘player progression’ feature so everything can be tracked. C&C 4 is not an MMO in the sense of World of Warcraft, but conceptually it has similar principles for being online all the time,” Community Leader APOC wrote. No matter what mode you’re playing, no matter what you’re doing, if you want to play Command and Conquer 4, you’re going to need to have a working Internet connection.”

Music is done with DRM, it’s time for games to be too. It’s comparable to this: if I buy a song on iTunes, then it’s mine, and I can do what I want with it short of profiting from it or making it available illegally. That means I can use it on however many iPods, computers, whatever.

Or if I buy a sofa, it’s mine, and I can do anything with it, short of copying it to make profit.

So why is it when I buy a PC game I have to always keep connected, and only install it on so many machines? Why not offer a digital download FOR FREE? FOR BOTH PLATFORMS? (Mac and PC, if available). I just don’t understand. Especially considering how much games are now. I just can’t afford to shell out $50 or $6o for every new game!

And don’t even get me started on companies who force developers to charge store price for a digital download (a.k.a Wall-mart against Sony on digital downloads of full console games)

Apple Launches Annual Back-to-School Promo

Today through September 8th, whenever you purchase any Mac computer (except the Mac Mini) along with an iPod, you will receive a rebate on that iPod model. The Mac and iPod must be purchased at the same time either at an Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Campus Store. Neither the 8GB iPhone or the 16GB iPhone were included in this promo. This offer only applies to College staff and students.