Another title has just been announced as an addition to the slowly growing Mac-compatible library of games. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will be making its way to Intel-based Macs, hopefully just in time for Christmas.

ET:QW was released recently to rave reviews on PC, with a native Linux version following soon after.

The Mac OS X version is the only planned distribution of the game that hasn't yet seen shelves, but word on the street says it's entered the Alpha stage of development and is currently undergoing optimisation from game publisher Aspyr Media.


What's good for the PC gamers has been a blow to the Mac developers, with the recently-released ET:QW 1.2 updater patch, meaning that Aspyr must match their current code to the new Windows version straight out of the box - incorporating new VoIP communications support, balance tweaks and some user interface improvements.

The game is based on id Software's Doom 3 engine and MegaTexture rendering technology, which is a good and a bad thing for Aspyr. Good, because they've already had experience porting id Software titles to the Mac (Quake 4, Doom 3)... not-so-good because while the titles work well, they don't match the performance of the Windows copies.

These concerns could be for nothing however - the inclusion of Intel inside the new Apple hardware sees many of the architectural Mac/Windows differences become a thing of the past. Developers like Aspyr can now shorten their development time and spend more attention on optimising the program for the platform, instead of dealing with converting an entire codebase.


No system requirements have yet been released, but given the richness of the graphics, all expectations are that ET:QW will be pretty demanding, but an Intel Mac with a dedicated video card should be enough.

...and before you ask about gaming with a one-button mouse, they assure me, Apples can use two-button mice just as well as PCs can. No, really.