Gameloft has today launched Blitz Brigade, a new online multiplayer game, on Android and iOS. It’s a class-based first-person shooter that’s clearly heavily influenced by Valve’s Team Fortress titles, and it’s a whole lot of fun.
Valve co-founder Gabe Newell has revealed that he sees Apple TV as more of a threat to the Steam Box than consoles like the Xbox or PlayStation. The Cupertino company has an “obvious pathway” into the living room with its platform, Newell told students at the University of Texas — and competitors must try to establish themselves before Apple does something about it.
Wow, talk about a stealth release. First released in 1998, Half-Life has never been available on OS X through Steam for Mac, even though every other Valve game — including Half-Life 2 and its episodic sequels — have. Sometime in the last few hours, though, Valve quietly released Half-Life for Mac on Steam… and still hasn’t apparently officially announced it.
The Steam Holiday sale continues through this coming weekend, as the Valve-owned digital distribution portal extends its amazingly deep discounts for a wide variety of games, including the Mac variety, until 1 pm Eastern time on Monday, January 7th.
The Mac games included in the sale are some great ones, including Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a game we included in our top scariest games list last October. This formerly $19.99 game is now up for sale for a ridiculous $4.99.
Back in September, we reported that Valve had created a special interface to let Steam gamers play on the big screen with a controller. At that time the PC version of Steam was enabled for what it calls Big Picture, but today, one of our readers noticed that the Mac beta is finally available.
It’s also fairly easy to enable it on your Mac right now–no software update required, if you’re already running the latest version of Steam.
So, I hopped onto Steam last night to see what was new, and noticed something amazing in my list of Mac games for the service. Borderlands 2 is in the list of the Mac games on Steam. Woah!
It took me a minute to even register this fact, as I’m used to only seeing it on my gaming PC. In fact, that I own the game already on Steam is probably why I even see it on my Mac at all.
This is great news for all Mac gamers, of course. But the details are thin on the ground.
Today, the appropriately named Mac Game Store released a Mac app that looks a lot like a simliar service you may have heard of, Valve’s Steam. While Steam began as a matchmaking and leader board service that soon morphed into the premier PC and Mac game digital distribution juggernaut it is today, the Mac Game Store will only sell downloadable Mac games, naturally.
Steam, the online portal for Mac and PC games, announced a new beta feature coming tonight to PCs and soon to Macs – The Big Picture. Parent company Valve has created a new way to play games purchased through the Steam store, using the same exact Steam friends list and games you already own.
Once you’ve updated the Steam client, you’ll be able to click a button and play your games with a controller, a mouse and keyboard, or what have you. Valve has made the new interface controller-friendly, designed to kick back on a couch and play games right on the big screen TV you already have in your living space.
If you haven’t played Valve’s amazing sequel to its arguably even more awesome original Portal game, now may be the time to jump in. Valve has updated the map editor for Portal 2 to include co-operative levels, called test chambers. Now you can create these yourself and share with the vibrant Portal 2 community on Steam for Mac, according to today’s news from Valve.
Valve co-founder Gabe Newell knows a thing about Microsoft. After all, he initially founded Valve Software — makers of such mega-hits as the Half-Life, Portal and Left 4 Dead series, as well as the popular Steam digital delivery service — using the millions he made working for Microsoft for 13 years.
So when Gabe Newell says that he thinks Windows 8 is going to be apocalyptical for PC makers and cause OEMs to start fleeing the platform in droves, it’s worth paying attention. Especially since Valve’s Steam delivery service is putting increasing emphasis on Windows alternative OSes like Linux and, yes, the Mac.
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