Quake Live Soon Coming To The Mac And Linux

Game Review | nawed | August 17, 2009 at 3:14 pm

quake live mac linux Quake Live Soon Coming To The Mac And Linux
id Software is at last expanding to Mac and Linux platforms on August 18, but also revealed by id co-founder John Carmack that the Quake Live will be getting a premium subscription service.

The game, which is a Web-based re-creation of the 1999 classic Quake III Arena, went into public beta for Windows in February, with promises of coming to the Mac and Linux in due time. The game runs from inside a web browser with the help of a plug-in. It is already available on the Windows platform. The game supports Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox web browsers only at the moment. Mac and Linux users would have to use Firefox as a result.

id founder John Carmack revealed that the until-now free-to-play Quake Live will be getting a premium subscription service to generate more revenue, after admitting that ad support alone wasn’t covering the costs to run the online game. Early in his address, he admitted that Quake Live , the multiplayer in-browser web re-make of Quake III Arena that went into open beta early this year, was not up to id’s standard yet. Leaderboards and more community functionality around the game need to be improved, he said. Later, he fielded a question from the audience about the future of the game. Carmack said he did not think the game could survive on Internet advertising alone, the only revenue-generator currently in place.

Firefox will be the de facto browser choice for Mac users looking to unload some plasma cannon blasts next week: the only other supported browser is Internet Explorer 7 or 8. Hardware specs aren’t yet available, but the PC specs recommend a 2GHz or better Intel processor and an Nvidia NVIDIA GeForce 7 Series, ATI Radeon X1800 series, or better, so you can read between the lines.