Epic Games' Ryan Gordon has offered his take on the impact Apple's Boot Camp will have on the future of Mac gaming. While casual games are unlikely to inspire gamers to boot into Windows, A-list titles are likely to prove more tempting. Gordon discusses the effect this will have on ports and offers some ideas to strengthen the Mac gaming market.

- We need to stop mourning the shelf space and move online. Aren't Mac users supposed to be smarter and more likely to have broadband? It's time to recognize that brick-and-mortar stores are an outdated and inefficient problem; instead of fighting to get in there, we should just dump them entirely. Games need to be downloadable, and for those that want a physical CD, either for gift-giving or just the Touch Factor, we can try something like Amazon as a distribution partner. For the former, my nomination is...

- iTunes. It needs a Games section, the same way it has a Movies section and a Music section. They are perfectly positioned to be a games publisher of everything from casual titles for 3.99 to UT2012 for 24.99. They could be the Steam of the Mac. If they did this, I wouldn't be surprised to see some really talented people become millionaires over the course of a few weeks. Could you imagine what this would have done for Lugaru? All you would need is a few polaroids of an 18 year-old David Rosen's new mansion, and people would be falling over themselves to compete for the iTunes front page. The end user pays less than they would at Best Buy, the developers make a higher royalty, Apple gets a cut and gets more eyeballs spending more time browsing the iTMS. That last shelf in the Apple retail stores can finally be filled with gaudy-ass pink iPod cases. Everyone wins in this scenario.

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