Valve confirmed that Mac users will finally be able to use Steam, the company’s digital distribution service, and Source, its proprietary game engine this April.

As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.

Valve’s titles, which includes Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series, will all be available at launch. The recently announced Portal 2 will also be Valve’s first simultaneous release for both Mac and Windows. No word on when, or if, the entire Steam library will be made available to Mac users in the future.

“Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac,” said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve.

Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac.

This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.

Quote Source: Steampowered.com

The 2010 FIFA World Cup is now 93 days away. The 2010 FIFA World Cup game was officially announced back in January and is set to be released in April. Yesterday, the game trailer was released exclusively on EA Sports Facebook page.

The following is the official press release from the WCG Official Website:

New York, NY – Mar.8, 2010 – World Cyber Games Inc. (WCG), organizer of the premier international video game competition and festival, today announced the first official game titles for the WCG 2010 Grand Final in Los Angeles this fall.  The list features PC and Xbox 360 titles that comprise some of the most popular competitive games available around the world today.

WCG announced total of 7 official game titles and 1 promotional game title this time. In this year’s line-up, not only traditionally popular titles such as Warcraft3, Counter-Strike, and Guitar Hero, world famous racing game Forza Motorsport 3 and fighting game Tekken 6 is included

 

 

WCG 2010 Official Game Titles:

PC

• Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne (Blizzard, RTS)
• Counter-Strike (Valve, FPS)
• TrackMania Nations Forever (Ubisoft, Racing)
• Carom 3D (NeoAct, Sports)

 

Xbox 360

• Guitar Hero 5 (Activision, Music)

· Tekken 6 (Namco Bandai Games, Fighting)

· Forza Motorsport 3 (Microsoft Game Studios, Racing)

WCG 2010 Promotional Game Title (PC):

Lost Saga (IO Entertainment, Action)

Gamers the world over can now begin tuning their skills with these titles for the ultimate competition in eSports, the WCG 2010 Grand Final, which makes its return to the United States this fall.

“We are bringing WCG gamers the world’s most popular titles across every genre in competitive gaming today. WCG values gamer feedback and we have determined that the announced titles are among the most popular and challenging titles available today.” said Hyoung-Seok Kim, President and CEO, World Cyber Games, Inc.. “We are excited to unveil the first games for the 2010 Grand Final and we look forward to another exciting year of competition to crown the best players in the world.”

World Cyber Games will soon be announcing additional official, mobile and promotion titles for the WCG 2010 Grand Final. The titles announced today will be available for online and regional qualification tournaments in countries around the world.

For more information about this year’s titles line-up and the WCG 2010 Grand Final please visit www.wcg.com

Tonight, Eximius owner Brad Dick has announced the return of his team with 3 new rosters. Eximius has decided to bring on teams for CoD4 and CS:S. Brad Dick had this to say about one of his newest teams for CS:S:

I was impressed with their application and resume. This team has very little professional experience, the most they have had is a CEVO P placement spot. This is a good start for an amateur team to shine. They have already proven themselves that they are a top contending team, I am just hoping with the name Eximius behind them it can take them over that small hump they have been trying to get over. To all the teams who applied, I promised you an amateur team, I was not lying about that. I appreciate all of your interest and hopefully I will get the chance to be working with you again.

Eximius CoD4

Jaroslaw “Polanski” Jagoda 
Mark “CB!” Rokowski 
Joe “melkor” DeMarco 
Shane “Nuz” Carter 
Theo “darkk” Tijssen 
Matt “criminaL” Bradley

Eximius CS:S

Adam “Adam” Kelly 
Avery “avery” Jennings 
Devon “devon0” Wilcox 
Miles “miles” Barnes 
Pedram “pg” G

Eximius CS:S

Phillip “phiL” Boyd 
Brandon “drAgon” Aiken 
Sam “4sh0t” Mariano 
Brian “brian” Velez 
Adam “zarT” Dunlap

The full press release can be found at TeamEximius.com

On Saturday, March 13th and 14th, 6 teams for Counter-Strike 1.6 and 4 teams for TF2 Invite will come together in Dallas, Texas for ESEA’s Season 5 LAN Finals. On the heels of the ESL IEM Global Finals where both coL and EG competed against some of the best teams in the world, this will prove to be one of the most competitive ESEA Finals to date. The brackets can be seen below.

Counter-Strike 1.6

Team Fortress 2

Live On Three sees the return of co-host and Team EG manager Scott “SirScoots” Smith from the Canadian olympics, who will talk about his trip and his players performances here this week at the Intel Extreme Masters Season 5 Finals. Quake Live champion Shane “rapha” Hendrixson will be this week’s featured guest, going over his road to victory including revenge on American champion Tim “DaHanG” Fogarty, a miraculous comeback against Alexey “Cypher” Yanushevsky, and an epic final with Anton “Cooller” Singov.

Also joining the show today are ESEANews.com Editor-in-chief Mark “jESUIT” Cheben and WorldofMing.com lead editor NIck “Bodi” Johnson. jESUIT will be talking about the launch of ESEA’s new site, and diving into the Counter-Strike 1.6 action which saw the first event major champion for a Ukrainian team with Na’Vi taking out the legendary fnatic in the finals. Bodi will talk World of Warcraft, which saw America’s Team EG, who picked up a stand-in just days prior to the event and was expected to easily be knocked out in the group stages, claw their way through the best of America, Europe and Korea to take top honors.

Tune in today at 4 PM EST/22:00 CET at http://www.djWHEAT.tv

Other news topics include:

– Lots of talk of the Intel Extreme Masters Season 4 finals including DDoS attacks and scheduling issues, broadcasters Jay “2GD” Harding and Joe Miller’s comments about Slasher and Quake Live players comments before and during the event

– Major League Gaming has announced their first 2010 Pro Circuit details including the removal of Gears of War 2, the addition of Tekken 6, Smash Bros. and Modern Warfare 2, and the noticeable absence of Super Street Fighter 4. We’ll also speculate what the PC games and announcement may be, and where you may be able to find out

– Justin Wong won the first Level|Up tournament, still the best player in the United States, is now using cammy a lot

– Another Starcraft 2 patch is out, how the balance of the game is going

Finally, the news that Quake players have been waiting for has been announced. Clear your calanders for August 12-15th, as QuakeCon will be in Dallas at the Hilton Anatole Hotel.

QuakeCon 2010

WHAT: QuakeCon is a free convention held yearly in Dallas, Texas brought to you by id Software, Bethesda Softworks and their parent company ZeniMax Media Inc.. Thousands of gamers gather in one location to play with their friends on a giant gaming network, see the latest in cool technology, hear about upcoming games and compete in world-class tournaments.

WHO: Fans of computer and videogames. The event is FREE to all attendees thanks to the support of id and Bethesda as well as the QuakeCon volunteer staff and the 2010 event sponsors and exhibitors.

WHEN: August 12-15, 2010

WHERE: Hilton Anatole Hotel – Dallas, Texas

WHY: Play in world-class tournaments, meet and interact with game developers, be the first to learn new information about upcoming computer and videogames and have the opportunity to frag with friends on QuakeCon’s massive Bring Your Own Computer network.

More details about QuakeCon 2010 will be revealed in the next few weeks, check back frequently as we’ll update when its announced.

Source: QuakeCon

The Grand Finals of the Intel Extreme Masters Global Finals Counter-Strike division have just come to an end and history has been made. For the first time in not only IEM history, but world CS history, a Ukrainian team has managed to take home the trophy. Na`Vi came into the tournament virtually unnoticed, not even predicted to make the top 3, but they proved everyone wrong, taking down the likes of coL and EG on their way to the finals where they took on last year’s champion, Fnatic.

In the series versus Fnatic, Na`Vi stood toe to toe with the defending champions as both maps came down to the last few rounds. Na`Vi was able to grab the first map from Fnatic as they took them down on de_train by a score of 16-13 after starting the 2nd half down by a score of 10-5. On the second map, it was even more intense as the two teams traded rounds all the way until the very end, with Na`Vi grabbing the last round of the map to take the series and the championship by a score of 16-14.

Image courtesy of ESL-World.net

On April 15, 2010, it has been announced that Microsoft will discontinue the Xbox Live for the original games for the original Xbox and the Xbox 360. What this means is that you can still play the original Xbox games in single player or offline mode, but can’t play them online.

With this announcement, Microsoft is giving Halo 2 fans a reward for getting rid of online portion. They will receive a free three month Xbox Live membership, accompanied by 400 MS points and a chance to play the Halo: Reach beta.

Source: Xbox.com