'BioShock Remastered' arrives on macOS with graphical updates for its 10th anniversary

Feral Interactive has released its macOS port of "BioShock Remastered," landing on Tuesday on Steam followed by the Mac App Store to follow, with the 10-year anniversary remake of the first-person shooter gaining graphical improvements for modern systems.

Taking players down to the dystopian underwater city of Rapture in an alternate version of the year 1960, players are tasked with surviving attacks from the city's mutated inhabitants called Splicers. As Jack, players also have to contend with the Big Daddies and choose between saving the Little Sisters or harvesting them to fuel special powers, such as telekinesis and pyrokinesis.

Originally developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K Games, "BioShock Remastered" is a separate game from the original release instead of an update. High resolution textures and models are incorporated into the remake, which also includes an updated interface and 4K support on compatible Mac systems.

Along with the main game, "BioShock Remastered" also includes downloadable content offered after the original's release, including the Museum of Orphaned Concepts to view art that wasn't included in the final game, Challenge Rooms, and a director's commentary featuring Ken Levine and Shawn Robertson. The Steam store page also advises that customers acquiring "BioShock Remastered" can also receive the original "Bioshock" as part of their purchase.

According to the minimum specifications, the game requires macOS 10.12.5 or later to run, with a 2.4 gigahertz Core i5 processor, 8gigabytes of memory, 27 gigabytes of storage for the installation, and either Nvidia 680MX 2GB, AMD R9 M290 2GB or Intel Iris Pro 5200 1.5GB graphics.

The list of Macs said to support the game include all 13-inch Retina MacBook Pros released since 2016, all 15-inch MacBook Pros since late 2013, all Mac Pros since late 2013, and all 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMacs released since late 2013, though iMacs with Nvidia GT 750M 1GB or GT 755M 1GB graphics are not officially supported. A second list, for Macs capable of running the game "but do not consistently meet the standards required for official support," is also provided on the Steam store page.

"BioShock Remastered" is available from the Feral store for $19.99, while on Steam is discounted to $6.59 instead of the regular price of $19.99 as part of an offer running until August 28.

The title is expected to arrive on the Mac App Store in the near future, also priced at $19.99.

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2 Comments

MacPro

said about 6 years ago

Crickets ...

Marvin

said about 6 years ago

MacPro said:

Crickets ...

It's a 10 year old game, the remaster doesn't change much, there's only so much mileage to be gotten out of it. It's a shame the company behind it closed down, losing most of the employees. It (and one of the sequels) is among the highest rated games of all time:

http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/pc/filtered?sort=desc

The franchise sold 25m copies (>$500m). The main people behind the studio are now here and working on a new franchise:

https://www.ghoststorygames.com/studio/

The original studio had about 200 employees (now less than 30). The last game they made took 5 years to make. Just in salaries that would be about $30m and then they have marketing. They were owned by the same company that makes GTA V (Take Two), as is the new studio, so they should have had enough cashflow to keep going but maybe they didn't have a viable enough business plan to justify that size of team.

That's the size of team it takes for big AAA games though. The Witcher 3 developers have 250 staff and they had 1500 people working on it with 500 voice actors. Their revenue is here and it fluctuates a lot year to year:

https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/investors/financial-summary-report/

They have to keep coming up with new compelling stories to tell and it's hard to do that consistently. It's leading the big publishers to keep churning out the safe but stale established franchises just like the movie industry (Bioshock 2 was an example of this). Hopefully the new studio will be able to deliver a similar quality product as Bioshock with the smaller team, it won't be until next year they start talking about it.