Valve confirms Portal 2, Steam titles coming to Mac


To button up the Valve story here, Valve officially announced its intentions to develop for the Mac OS, and which games we can expect to see.

For the past week, Valve has been playing the gaming world like a violin with leaked details of Mac development. Monday the company formally announced its intentions go Mac.

As reported earlier today, Portal 2 will be launching for the Mac. In fact the Mac OS X version will ship along with Windows and Xbox. The company also announced that Steam is in fact coming to the Mac. Probably best described as iTunes for gaming, Steam is a game store where gamers can buy and download titles, and after which updates will be available to download right in the system. Popular titles such as Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Half-Life, and Counter-Strike are expected to be available next month.

"We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said director of Steam Development John Cook.

One cool feature will be Stream Play is it will allow gamers to play on both their Macs and PCs. Game progress will be saved online, and gamers can switch from their PC to play later on their Mac. Valve also indicated that customers who own the PC version of Valve games will get the Mac version at no charge.