Demo versions of their games can be downloaded from the Internet or found on the cover discs supplied with Mac magazines. Ambrosia has been around since 1993, producing both games and utility software, but unlike the porting houses, most of their sales are done through shareware. Ambrosia Software and Freeverse are two of the best known and most respected. TransGaming has developed a product called Cider that enables PC game code to run on an Intel-based Mac without significant modification.īesides the companies that port PC games to the Macintosh, the Mac enjoys good support from companies that create original games just for the Mac. So while not every best-selling PC game makes it to the Macintosh, a lot of them do, even if you don’t see them on sale at your local computer superstore.Ī further upswing was brought on by the switch from PowerPC to Intel processors, something that makes porting PC games to the Mac significantly easier to do. Even MacPlay eventually returned to life in 2000. Feral Interactive appeared on the scene in 1996, and quickly grew into a major porting house. Two companies that endured the 1990s were Aspyr and MacSoft, and they now boast impressive portfolios of blockbuster games.

State of the Gaming Mac - Things weren’t quite so rosy ten years ago, when one of the largest porting houses at the time, MacPlay, essentially shut up shop as its parent company, Interplay, abandoned the Mac platform.īut that was then, and this is now. But before we look at the wide world of free open source games, here’s a brief overview of commercial gaming on the Mac. A number of Mac-focused developers are putting out high-quality games too, and most notably for this article, the open-source world now provides a number of excellent games for Mac users. Thanks to the healthy state of the Macintosh marketplace, the economics of porting Windows games to the Mac are more favourable now than they have ever been. These are interesting times for Mac gamers. #1630: Apple Books changes in iOS 16, simplified USB branding, recovering a lost Google Workspace account.#1631: iOS 16.0.3 and watchOS 9.0.2, roller coasters trigger Crash Detection, Medications in iOS 16, watchOS 9 Low Power Mode.#1632: Apple Card Savings accounts, SOS in the iPhone status bar, Tab Wrangler, Focus in iOS 16.#1633: macOS 13 Ventura and other OS updates, 10th-gen iPad, M2 iPad Pro, 3rd-gen Apple TV 4K, Apple services price hikes.#1634: New Messages features, Apple Q4 2022 results, Preview drops PostScript, iOS/iPadOS 15.7.1, Dvorak on iPhone and iPad.

Inside mac games