• New OSX could make the Mac as game-friendly as the iPhone

New OSX could make the Mac as game-friendly as the iPhone

The new version of OSX that Apple announced today feels like it could strangely make the Mac as valuable a channel for games as Facebook or the iPhone.

I say strangely because the Mac has typically been a backwater for games. Even with the the launch of an App Store, transition to Intel chips, and Steam coming to the Mac it remains a distant second fiddle to the PC which is itself in decline. For example if you want to play two of the largest releases of the last year, Skyrm or Star Wars: The Old Republic, you’re out of luck on a Mac. For casual players, it’s not like you see Cityville or even Cut the Rope rising up the Mac App Store charts (notwithstanding Angry Birds “everywhere no matter what” strategy).

But two features of the upcoming Mountain Lion could change this in very rapid and dramatic fashion, depending on how they are implemented. Basically, this is what I’m seeing:

Step 1: Game Center knows who you are

The big news today for gamers is that Game Center, the multiplayer identity & leaderboard app that is available on the iPhone/iPad is coming to Mac. This should enable cross platform play between not only different Macs, but also between Macs & iPhones. It’s not a particularly great user interface, but a key here is that by logging into Game Center to display your scores, games will have a cross-platform, cross-game identification system not dissimilar to Facebook.

This will let you build games around identity, the same way that it’s important that Word with Friends knows who you and your friends are to let you play together.

Step 2: Notification Center as Facebook requests

The second feature, Notification Center, if done correctly will arguably have a much more important impact on games, potentially creating a disruptive opportunity. The feature, which is basically a port of the notification tray on the iPhone (or a copy of Growl depending on your preference) will provide the single feature that makes gaming on the iphone & facebook so different from PC gaming. The game can let you know when something happens worth paying attention to.

This is similar to the request channel on Facebook (for installed users of course), with one big difference — you don’t need to be on Facebook. You just need to have your computer on.

Yes this also opens up potential for abuse, but the implementation allows for games like Words with Friends to be viable on the platform since you can finally reach out and say “Fred spelled ‘Peuter’ in Words with Friends, take your turn” and that makes a huge difference to the engagement, and therefore success, of a social game.

The bonus step 3 could be if the Messages-to-Twitter integration is smooth enough that it becomes a viable viral channel for games on the Mac. That’s unlikely, at least at first, but regardless this amount of reach will have a big difference for games that plan to take advantage of the Mac App Store / Game Center / Messages combination.

(full disclosure: I talked about a Zynga product and, yeah, i own zynga stock)