It has been a trend that has passed relatively unnoticed, but the past few days have seen some significant gaming titles arrive on the Mac App Store. Among the worthies who have been arriving there are Bioshock, Borderland, LEGO Harry Potter, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD 4). Considering the fact that one of the biggest complaints Mac fans have about their platform is the availability of suitable videogames, especially given how trustworthy the Macs are in terms of hardware, this is excellent news.
While games for the Mac OS have been available on online stores like Amazon, getting them in retail stores has been a problem for many gamers who prefer playing games on computers, rather than consoles. The result? A number of gamers (including Yours Truly) actually install Windows on their Macs (via BootCamp) just to be able to play the latest videogames. The availability of high-profile titles on the Mac App Store will undoubtedly make a difference to such people. There is, however, a significant catch – games are massive downloads (CoD 4 is a 6.85 GB download) and the price tags are higher as compared to retail store prices or even those of online retail stores. CoD 4, for instance, comes with a $49.99 price, even though the DVD package costs only $39.70 on Amazon.com.
Clearly, gaming on the Mac has still some way to go before it can catch up with its PC counterpart, but at least a start of sorts has been made. Now, if only the pricing could get a bit more rational.
