Troubled SimCity hitting Mac on June 11 – one purchase buys both PC and Mac versions
The latest SimCity game will hit Mac computers on June 11, following the games troubled release on PC on March 5 earlier this year.
A native version of the game rather than a Wine “wrap” port of the PC version, those who buy (or have already bought) either the PC or Mac version will get both the PC and Mac version with one purchase, with the other available as a free digital download from publisher EA’s Origin service.
The game will also support cross-platform play between Mac and PC gamers.
“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.”
Though selling over 1.3 million copies since launching on PC, the city-building title has struggled against a tide of bugs, many stemming from the game’s always-online requirement. A new update, bringing the game up to version 2.0, has attempted to address some of the problems, including the removal of the in-game top-speed Cheetah setting. Server overload issues as now beginning to subside too, though many gamers have been burnt by earlier poor experiences with the game.
In our full review, which you can read here, we concluded that:
“If we’re to believe we’re entering a time when games are seen as much as a “service” as an isolated product, SimCity’s first few weeks stand to show that the service has to be at least as good as the game mechanics it supports if you’re going to avoid a damaging backlash as a developer. There’s fun to be had in SimCity, that’s for certain, but its problems make it feel less enjoyable than previous entries into the series.”
RELATED:
REVIEW: SimCity
