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

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