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Westlake on Mac OS X 3:40 PM | Lucian Fong | Comment on this story
Prior to the release of Mac OS X, many companies who were developing key applications (e.g. Microsoft, Adobe) pledged support for Apple's operating system. But what about games? Many Mac gamers are understandably concerned about the state of games under Mac OS X since that is to be future of the Mac platform. Westlake Interactive's president, Mark Adams, wrote to assure us that they will be releasing all future games with Mac OS X support in mind. They are also in the process of evaluating past games to see which ports are viable. Here is the press release he sent us: Westlake Interactive has been receiving many queries from gamers and the press over the past few months about our OS X plans, and we're pleased to announce that we are now officially supporting OS X in our development work.
We have spent several weeks working with the final OS X seeds and release version, testing game and OS technologies to get a better picture of the transition from 8/9 to X, and believe OS X has a strong foundation to build games on. While there are a few rough edges in the game related OS functions in OS X 1.0, we are working closely with Apple to make sure they are smoothed out. Even though some game API's need to be fleshed out in OS X, Westlake is pleased to be able to start developing OS X native versions of current projects, and is fully committed to native support OS X in future games.
Games that have just shipped or are close to shipping (Escape from Monkey Island and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2), will be carbonized to run natively under OS X over the next month or so and free updates will be released via the web. Other projects that are in final beta test (Tomb Raider Chronicles and Centipede), may have time to get OS X native applications on the shipping CD's, or if scheduling is too tight will have free web updates.
Projects that have been signed but that aren't shipping for more than a month (Alice, unannounced projects) will support OS X natively right out of the box when the ship.
Carbonizing games Westlake has shipped over the past four years, including The Sims, Unreal Tournament, Scrabble, Deus Ex, etc, will be handled on a case by case basis. We are working with our publishers to pick those titles that can be reasonably ported to OS X, and hope to be able to announce some of that work in the near future. Obviously it will not be possible for us to port our entire library of games (31 games shipped as of March 7,2001), but we realize many of the popular games like Unreal Tournament are still selling and have many fans. We are looking forward to working with our publishers to help us Carbonize some of the most popular games, and have already been testing our older products for Classic compatibility in case they can't be made native.
While the transition to OS X will be a bumpy ride for both gamers and developers, we at Westlake are very excited about the future of Mac games and OS X as a gaming platform, and are looking forward to bringing the best games to the Mac for many years to come
This great news should put many of your hearts at ease. With the OMNI Group, GraphSim, id Software, and Westlake all porting their A-list titles to Mac OS X, it looks like we'll have plenty of games to play in the future.
Recent Mac Games News Thursday, March 29, 2001 Wednesday, March 28, 2001 Tuesday, March 27, 2001 Monday, March 26, 2001 Friday, March 23, 2001
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