The Omni Group and Aspyr Media today released a statement clarifying the software developer’s role in Aspyr’s support of Mac OS X. The statement has apparently been offered to settle some confusion in the gaming community about whether The Omni Group would be releasing Cocoa versions of some of Aspyr’s games.
Cocoa is the object-oriented software development environment built into Mac OS X, and one of the companies leading the way with support for the new technology is The Omni Group. Former NeXTStep developers, The Omni Group is known for their efforts with OmniWeb, the OS X-native Web browser and other various products. Many Mac gamers are also aware of The Omni Group’s efforts — representatives of the company have spoken in the past of their efforts to create Cocoa versions of popular Mac games, including some titles published by Aspyr.
“With the release of OS X Aspyr had to take a leap into uncharted waters and determine the future of Aspyr games,” said Aspyr. “Our first OS X titles were carbonized by Westlake [Interactive], allowing both 9 and X users the opportunity to enjoy the latest and greatest games. However, in an effort to better understand cocoa and OSX we sent code of titles that were already in conversion to the Omni Group for evaluation.
“The Omni Group has been very helpful in explaining the cocoa process to us and helping us understand some of the cool features of OSX. However, we have been completely satisfied with Westlake’s performance in providing high quality carbonized games in a timely manner. We are fortunate to have two great porting houses available in the Mac industry.
“However, there will be no release of any cocoa versions of any of Aspyr’s current titles,” concluded the company. “Aspyr will continue to research the cocoa process but completely supports the dual compatibility of the carbonization done by Westlake.”
The Omni Group’s Wil Shipley added, “We had fun working on these ports (and getting to play the games early), and although we would of course love to have people play our code, what’s most important is that the Mac platform gets great games; it makes no sense for us to duplicate efforts.”
“There are a lot of games out there that need to come to the Mac, and for a lot of them doing OS X only ports is great, so we are staying very busy,” said Shipley.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.