You no longer had to wait for a Mac-compatible version. Not only did Apple switch to Intel, features such as Boot Camp (allowing you to run Windows natively on the Mac) and virtualisation software (such as Parallels and VMWare Fusion) meant that you could now run pretty much any Windows gaming title you wanted to. This removed a huge hurdle for developers, the only real hurdle that remains is the different operating system.

Whilst this meant a number of games did make it to the Mac, they were hardly ever the latest titles and often required extremely powerful Macs to run the games at a playable rate.Īpple has found it somewhat difficult to tempt gaming publishers (and by extension, gamers themselves) over to the Mac platformĪll this changed in 2006 when Apple switched to Intel processors. Mac gaming publishers such as Aspyr attempted to fill in the gap by creating Mac-compatible conversions (called “ports”). Unfortunately, because Apple Macs ran on PowerPC architecture with a completely different operating system, many games simply never made it to the Mac. Since Windows has been (and still is) the largest PC operating system, it’s little wonder that game developers focus on it. PC gaming is somewhat of a misnomer and it has actually referred to Windows gaming. PC gaming has always been the mainstay of the serious gamer. With the sheer popularity (and performance) of the Mac, over the last few years, the tide is turning. Since then, Apple has found it somewhat difficult to tempt gaming publishers (and by extension, gamers themselves) over to the Mac platform. Unfortunately for Apple, Bungie was bought by Microsoft soon after and Halo became the flagship game and franchise for their Xbox console. Gaming on the Mac could’ve been very differentīungie debuted a pre-release version of Halo at MacWorld back in 1999 (complete with introduction by Steve Jobs) that ran on the Mac.

Best games on mac os