EA's Origin is coming to the Mac for largely the same reason that Valve did in 2010: the PC gaming community isn't the revenue generator it once was, but the Mac market provides an opportunity to expand its market with games that have never before been released to the Mac. If EA's Origin can deliver some of its library to the Mac community, then it will have an easy inroad into a Mac gaming audience that is hungry for new content. What gamer wouldn't want to play EA's library of games on the Mac?

The truth of the matter is, it's not enough to simply have more digital distribution services available on the Mac. It's possible that Mac gamers are in for another disappointment in a long line of disappointments. It's been over ten years since , only to see Bungie's sci-fi shooter become the flagship game on Microsoft's Xbox platform. A few years ago, everyone looked to Transgaming for its for Mac games--but that largely hasn't happened. And now, Steam is the best service for both casual and core games on the Mac platform, but that's largely by default. Steam was supposed to end the Mac gamers status as second class citizens--but it still takes months for high-end titles to be ported to the platform, if they're ported at all.

EA's entrance into the market could be good for the Mac consumer because it will bring attention to the platform, hopefully drive a new era of competitive between Valve, OnLive, Asypr, and EA, and then finally we'll start seeing some new releases. EA's familiarity with mobile and stated ambition to develop a mobile app for Origin could also provide a key ingredient that has been lacking in Mac gaming.

But perhaps we should concede, as Apple did years ago, that there isn't a high demand for high-end titles on the Mac platform. Perhaps the disappointments with Steam and Transgaming can largely be attributed to a lack of support from the Mac gaming community, leading us to our current situation where the digital distribution services on the Mac are scattered and incomplete. EA's Origin will provide yet another service for users to sign up for with promises that this, finally, will be the service where all of their favorite games will be available. (With EA's focus on mobile, at the very least we can hope for a better alternative than Game Center.) Mac gamers may be skeptical of any promise that EA makes, but since the age of boxed games is largely over, Origin and digital distribution services like it are the best bets for the oft-maligned Mac gamer community.