SimCity Arrives On the Mac on June 11th With Cross-Platform Servers

The new SimCity will ship for the Mac on June 11, EA reported today. Gamers will be able to purchase SimCity for Mac as a $60 digital download via Origin, EA's Steam-like digital store that launched earlier this year, as well as other digital retailers. Owners of the PC version of SimCity will receive the Mac version for free, and vice versa.

Simcity
EA is emphasizing that this is not simply a Mac "port" of the Windows version, but instead is a native version of the game designed specifically for the Mac. The software renderer has been rewritten for OpenGL, but the Mac version will use the same servers as the PC edition so gamers can play together regardless of what platform they are using.

"SimCity is coming to Mac on June 11 and one purchase will give you both the Mac and PC versions. You only need to buy SimCity once to play together across the same servers, regardless of which version you’re playing," said Lucy Bradshaw, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EA’s Maxis Label. "We didn’t want to make any compromises when it came to the Mac so we created a native version that is optimized for the hardware and OSX."

SimCity's launch was more than a little rocky, largely because the game can only be played online. EA requires that the game be connected to its servers at all times to facilitate region play where multiple cities are connected to share utilities and citizenry.

At launch, SimCity's servers were overwhelmed with traffic and the gameplay experience was extremely poor. Today, EA seems to have ironed out the bugs and users are playing the game as intended. The company recently turned the 'Cheetah' speed mode back on after disabling it to reduce load on the servers after SimCity's initial release.

EA originally said SimCity would come to the Mac in February of this year, but pushed that ship date back.

Top Rated Comments

William Gates Avatar
143 months ago
I was excited about this 2 months ago. Now I couldn't care less if I never play it.
Score: 57 Votes (Like | Disagree)
attila Avatar
143 months ago
They shouldn't waste their time.

We don't want their DRM-crippled always-online Sim TOWN.
Score: 55 Votes (Like | Disagree)
drewyboy Avatar
143 months ago
Sim"Town" sucks. Just stay away. Always on, DRM, horrible servers, game glitches, bad AI, very small town... overall just bad.

Edit: Lets not forget the virus/trojan that is Origin
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
IlluminatedSage Avatar
143 months ago
Am i the only one who thinks it is BS to have to have your games online?

What about us who are traveling, on go or such and just want to play on their laptop, where no internet is available???

Seems like EA's zeal for copyprotection and DRM has overridden the basic needs of their customers
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Kissaragi Avatar
143 months ago
They shouldn't waste their time.

We don't want their DRM-crippled always-online Sim TOWN.
You dont, I do. Dont speak for other people.
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Vidd Avatar
143 months ago
Great. EA's going to look at this and think "well, games don't sell on OS X" after the fallout from Sim City 5.

Wasted potential.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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