Feral Interactive Creates Mac App Store Splash: 'BioShock', 'Borderlands', and More

Wednesday January 26, 2011 12:03 pm PST by Eric Slivka

Popular gaming firm Feral Interactive made a brief debut on the Mac App Store at the marketplace's launch earlier this month, offering its LEGO Harry Potter title for a very brief time before pulling the application, apparently due to issues with file corruption possibly related to the large download size. But Feral is now back in the Mac App Store in a big way: Besides restoring LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 to the store, the company has also rolled out three other titles, including BioShock, Borderlands, and Rome: Total War.

BioShock

BioShock, the popular first-persion shooter game that originally debuted for Mac in late 2007, has been ranked among the top gaming titles of the last few years by numerous outlets. The game is priced at $39.99 on the Mac App Store.

Set in an alternate 1960, BioShock places you in the middle of an underwater utopia gone badly wrong. With a provocative and intelligent storyline, this is a game that is alternately beautiful, thrilling, funny, frightening and always involving. An experience that makes you think while you play.

Borderlands, another science fiction-themed first-person shooter, was only released on the Mac platform last month, coming in a "Game of the Year" edition with bonus content included. That expanded edition is now also available through the Mac App Store, priced at $49.99.

Finally, Feral has released Rome: Total War ($29.99), a strategy game available in a "Gold Edition" that also includes the Barbarian Invasion expansion pack for the original game. And of course LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 is now back in the Mac App Store at the same $49.99 price point at which it originally appeared.

Feral is not the only big-name Mac game developer to start bringing its titles to the Mac App Store, as Aspyr Media earlier this month launched Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Civilization IV: Colonization, the first of what is expected to a significant number of Aspyr titles to make their way to the Mac App Store.

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Top Rated Comments

IanAtFeral

185 months ago

Hello!

Does Borderlands accept mods? Is there a modding community? That would be pretty sick.

Borderlands doesn't do mods I agree though, it would be awesome.

Just to confirm, this is NOT a port, but a NATIVE Mac app?

It's a native Mac app!

This supports all the shading, anti-aliasing and other graphical goodies that the PC version supports (provided your videocard is up to spec)?

Yes!

I'll have just as much control over graphical settings as I would on the PC version?

Yes!

I'm running an early 2008 15-inch MBP, 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, Nvidia GForce 8600M GT 256MB. Latest Snow Leopard.

It'll run fine I'd recommend turning off ambient occlusion and dynamic shadows, and possibly dropping the resolution one step below native. But as ever, it all depends on what settings you're happy with.

(by the way, is Bioshock similarly native on the Mac?)

It is! And you should be able to turn up all the settings too.

Ian :)

(This reply sponsored by Exclamation Marks, for all your enthusiasm needs!)

Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

IanAtFeral

185 months ago

Hello! I'm going to try to answer as many questions as possible!

All it is, is price gauging for old games that are inferior cider ports. They aren't even native, just a windows exe in a wrapper with a performance loss.

Not true! Our games are native Mac apps. If you buy one from the App Store you're very welcome to have a look inside the App package yourself. ;)

how does gfx on a 2010 mini hold up against the 360 on for example Bioshock? can one use a 360 or a ps3 pad with the mac?

Compared to the 360 the graphics should be at least identical, and most likely better. It's worth keeping in mind that the maximum resolution of the 360 version is 1280x720, and you'll probably be running it at a higher resolution on your Mac. If you run it at a very very high resolution, you may see a performance hit. BioShock on the Mac has unofficial support for the 360 pad, but you'll need to install some 3rd party drivers to make it work.

Did anyone purchase the Mac Store Bioshock port? Does it run well on the latest model of the Macbook Pro 13"? I might chime in if my Mac is capable of running it.

It should run really well on that MBP. :)

With regards to pricing: We try our best! Making native Mac ports is a very expensive business firstly we have to pay the original publisher of the game for the rights to make a Mac version, and then we have to pay for the development. As I'm sure you can imagine, these games are terrifyingly complicated, so development is difficult! After we've finished the game, we're then faced with a market for games that is much smaller than on the PC and consoles, so we need to make more money per sale in order to break even. If we don't break even, we go out of business and then there's no Borderlands for Mac. You will see cheaper PC and console prices, but believe it or not, it's easier to sell a game for $10 when you've already sold 3 million!

With regards to older games: You will see a few older titles popping up as new releases on the App Store and other download sites (Direct2Drive, GamersGate, MacGameStore etc.), because we're trying to make as much of our back catalogue available for download as possible. We're hoping that some classics like Rome will find a new audience!

With regards to Steam: Steam's business model works for some companies and that's great, but we can't make it work for us. We're aiming to have our games available from as many other places as possible, though.

I hope this answers a few questions and clears up some misconceptions. If I've missed something, ask away and I'll do my very best to answer!

Ian