Mac fans rejoice!
The latest Mac Operating System 10 platform is getting an influx of new heavy-hitting games courtesy of deals with EA and id.
EA will be releasing Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Battlefield 2142, Need for Speed Carbon, and the as-yet unreleased Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix while id will bring their next all-new IP to both the Mac and the PC (as well as the PS3 and Xbox 360).
Electronic Arts also announced that, from the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix onward, EA will start releasing majors games “simultaneously on the Mac” when they ship for other platforms. The first two titles to be released for the Mac following Phoenix will be Madden NFL 08 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 which will be hitting in August.
id software co-founder and chief technical officer John Carmack also showed a technology demo for the Mac at the show.
“We were able to put this together fairly quickly, which speaks highly of the Mac platform,” said Carmack. He then gave the first public showing of the all-new engine that will power id’s forthcoming game, which was first unveiled in 2004.
Titled “id Tech 5,” the demo began with a swooping pan through a desert canyon filled with a shantytown straight out of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Carmack talked up the fact the engine supported “a world that is entirely covered in unique textures.” He said the sequence, which followed a MotorStorm-esque dune-buggy racetrack, had a whopping 20GB of texture information. “It will allow designers to tweak any aspect of the textures without affecting the stability of the game,” he said.
In his concluding statements, Carmack also revealed that id’s as-yet unnamed new game will be formally unveiled to the public at the E3 Media & Business Summit next month. He also confirmed the game would be “running on the PC, PS3, Xbox [360], and Mac.” Between E3’s kick off and the 2007 QuakeCon convention, id will also “have another Mac-related announcement,” Carmack promised.