![]() ![]() Its big feature was SteamPlay: buy once, play on all platforms that support the game, and if there's multiplayer it will be cross-platform. Steam put Mac gaming on the map, but embracing it took a bit of a leap of faith for porting companies like Aspyr. "In a matter of six months we went from virtually zero distribution - because Apple had wound retail down to very limited box distribution - to having two major outlets to sell content." Retail distribution remained king of software sales, but Mac gaming boxes were being increasingly squeezed out of even specialist Apple stores.Ĭompeting porting labels MacSoft and MacPlay soon fell by the wayside, but Aspyr survived both the fall of retail and the transition to Intel - which was expected to kill Mac gaming because everyone thought "why not just boot camp into Windows?" Digital distribution picked up, both direct from publishers and through online storefronts like Mac Game Store, and then Valve announced Steam for Mac in early 2010 and Apple launched the Mac App Store in January 2011. When she started, the iPod didn't exist yet - let alone the iPhone, the iTunes Store, or the iPad - and Macs were still using PowerPC architecture rather than the Intel processors of today. "It's changed immensely over the last 11 years," says Howard of her time with Aspyr. But Aspyr's founders saw an opportunity to own the market for Mac games - to become a big fish in a small pond - and the gamble paid off handsomely when a Steve Jobs-rejuvenated Apple bounced back from the brink to form new multi-billion dollar markets in mobile hardware and digital media sales - dragging the Mac along for the ride. They were going broke, Mac market share had waned to barely 1 per cent of computers worldwide, and most developers couldn't get away from the doomed platform fast enough. But in 1996, when Aspyr entered the ring, Apple was in serious trouble. But it took a long time, and it's somewhat remarkable that they survived at all in a small market that underwent several seismic shifts in a mere decade and still struggles to shake its reputation as being anti-games.īoth Apple and the Mac are in great shape today they rake in squillons of dollars every year in profits and command enough attention to be taken seriously by companies large and small. They worked very hard to get this far, to build relationships with big companies like Activision and 2K, and to cut down the porting process enough that day-and-date releases are possible. "It's just not as straightforward as 'we make a thing and then push it out.'" Aspyr handled the Civilization 4 and 5 ports, including expansions. "There are nuances to creating content on the Mac, which include getting approvals from our partners," Howard explains. "We do everything we can to keep in sync with the PC so if there's a multiplayer our players are able to play with their PC friends." If a game is late, it means either there were significant technical hurdles to overcome - DirectX 11 posed problems with the BioShock Infinite port, for instance - or they had to wait until the last minute for source code or publisher/developer approvals. "If it's coming from a Steam PC title, we're going to try to do as best we can to make that 100 per cent in parity with the PC," she continues. "We aggressively try to be day and date now," says vice president of publishing Elizabeth Howard. Aspyr gets Borderlands 2 and Civilization 5 downloadable content and expansions out day-and-date with the PC version, and they also get most updates for all games in their catalogue out on the same day as the PC, while the initial release of BioShock Infinite was five months late. They take a popular PC or console game - BioShock Infinite is the latest one - and develop and publish a Mac version, historically released months or years later (though that's not often the case now), earning ridicule and celebration from a frustrated audience long condemned to second-class treatment.Įxcept these days they're actually doing a pretty good job. But that's what Aspyr Media has been doing for roughly 17 years. It's a strange life, porting video games from one platform to another - seldom making something of your own. ![]()
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