Aspyr's Gamerhood Takes Aim at Mac Gaming

Despite a loyal and passionate following, Apple's MacIntosh computers have never had much of an impact in a market with an equally passionate following: games.

But that may be about to change. There is speculation that in addition to full-length feature films, Apple may add computer games to its arsenal of iPod content. Whether or not that rumour comes to fruition anytime soon, Aspyr Media plans to give Mac gaming a significant boost with Gamerhood, a new application under development that will allow users to download digital versions of games via the Web. Gamerhood, which will be free to download for all Mac users, will launch sometimes before the end of the year with a target date in the fall.

Glenda Adams, director of development at Aspyr, is playing an integral role in the development of Gamerhood. She says Aspyr, which specializes in porting popular PC games to the Mac, has looked at a number of different digital download sources. However, the inspiration isn't Valve's Steam or Microsoft's Xbox Live.

"The model for Gamerhood is the iTunes music store," Adams said. "We want to make a place where gamers can go and quickly purchase and download games."

Adams says being a Mac gamer isn't easy; only a fraction of PC games are ported to the Mac OS, and the availability of even the most popular titles is extremely limited beyond Mac retail stores and online sources like Amazon.

"You can't find these games at Best Buy and other big retailers," Adams said. "So we wan to get these games out to the people that don't have a Mac store in their area."

Gamerhood has been in full-swing development for approximately six months after several more months of planning in 2005. The most challenging aspect of building an online download service, according to Adams, is accurately forecasting the necessary bandwidth and infrastructure needed to meet demand.

The second part will be selecting the right titles for the launch. Adams says the company plans to have approximately 15 titles ready for Gamerhood's introduction, and Aspyr plans to have a variety of games, from shooters to strategy titles. Top titles such as Call of Duty 2, Civilization 4 and The Sims 2, which have performed well for Aspyr, appear to be likely candidates for Gamerhood's initial roundup. Following the launch, Aspyr plans to add a handful of titles to Gamerhood every month.

In addition to securing the latest triple A titles for Gamerhood, Adams says she's focusing on getting older titles, classics and even casual games ready for the download store. "We may not sell a lot of the older titles," she said. "There won't be, for example, 10,000 people lined up to buy Splinter Cell, but even if we sell a few hundred copies, it will be worth the effort."

As for the software itself, Adams says Aspyr will tread carefully with the application. "We've looked at a lot of different models and we're trying to learn from others' mistakes," she said. "In that regard, we want to make sure we don't have too many tendrils into people's systems and intrude on their privacy."

Call of Duty 2 looks to be one of Gamerhood's initial launch titles.