Gametap to bring subscription gaming to the Mac

GAMETAP, PURVEYOR, purveyor of online subscription-based gaming for the PC, has announced that a Mac client is imminently forthcoming, on June 28 to be precise.

On the PC, GameTap is a great way to download games, with new titles like Tomb Raider: Legend appearing on the service, as well as episodic exclusives including the new Sam and Max and American McGee's Grimm.

Unfortunately, none of those titles will be appearing on GameTap at release, leaving gamers with - well - poor clones of the same flash games and Tetris clones that they've been playing anyway thanks to shareware and freeware releases.

Fear not! In the coming weeks, the service will be updated with, gasp, Sega Megadrive and Dreamcast games. Well that will be worth the wait, for sure.

The games are being cross-platformed by Cider, which is a game wrapper technology that translates Windows calls to OSX ones on Macs that have Intel processors. It's the same tech that EA is using to launch its Mac label. But no matter how good the technology, if the games suck, there's going to be little adoption. We suspect that Mac gamers have been without decent games for so long, that the appearance of a bunch of freeware-a-likes on a game subscription service isn't exactly going to set them alight.

Back to the one game that does work on Mac, then - World of Warcraft. At least, until Starcraft 2 hits. µ