Aspyr Media on Tuesday announced the release of their Macintosh version of Star Wars: Empire at War. The game is rated T for Teen by the ESRB and costs $49.95.
Star Wars: Empire at War is a real-time strategy game set in the Star Wars universe. The game takes place a few years before the events in the first movie, Episode IV: A New Hope. In the game, you assume the role of the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire, setting up and deploying tactical forces on land and in space.
Star Wars: Empire at War is, thus far, the only game that Aspyr Media has made specifically for Intel Macs. Unlike the company’s other recent releases, it’s not a Universal binary — it requires an Intel-based Mac in order to play.
In announcing the Intel status of the game in February, Aspyr indicated that the decision was made due to the complexity of getting the game running on the Mac in the first place; it was made additionally difficult because of how floating point calculations are managed by different processors. As a result, Aspyr elected to release the game only for Intel Macs. Aspyr director of development Glenda Adams has indicated that the alternate choice was to not license the game for the Macintosh at all.
A playable demo of the game was released last week.
System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.4.8, Intel 1.83GHz or faster processor, 512MB RAM, 3.5GB hard disk space, ATI Radeon X1600, Nvidia Geforce 7300 or Intel GMA 950 graphics with at least 64MB VRAM and DVD-ROM drive.