Sony Online Entertainment Inc. has opened the doors of its The Station online gaming service to Mac users for the first time. The company has announced that it will become an official Mac developer and has already made some of its more popular titles available to Mac users. The Station sports 11.5 million registered users, and Sony bills the service as the first mainstream online gaming site to commit itself to Mac gamers.
Sony Online Entertainment vice president and chief technology officer Russell Shanks said that his company is excited to extend its online gaming efforts to Mac users. “As The Station’s audience continues to grow, we know that the Macintosh platform will play a significant role,” said Shanks.
Some “hardcore” gamers consider the ultimate online experience to be a good deathmatch using Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament or a multitude of other action-oriented games. There’s plenty of room for those, but there’s a much larger community of online gamers who prefer to play what are considered “casual” games — titles that don’t require a quick trigger finger as much as they do some crafty knowledge or clever strategy. Such titles are the ones that will initially be available to Mac users through The Station.
Already, Mac users are able to play titles like Jeopardy! Online, both solo and with other users of The Station, both based on PCs and Macs. Wheel of Fortune Online is also available, as is Yuetan, Empyrean, Bingo, 99s, Slots and Checkers. Sony Online Entertainment said that it would be working to make all of its games available for the Mac over the coming months.
The best part is that The Station’s registration is free, so you have nothing to lose — except some time playing games, of course.