MacSoft Brings Age of Empires III to Macs

MacSoft has announced it will ship a Univeral Binary version of Age of Empires II for Mac OS X.

MacSoft has announced it will begin shipping Microsoft Game Studios’ and Ensemble Studio’s real-time strategy game Age of Empires III for Mac OS X in September 2006.

In Age of Empires III, players take on the rols of one of eight European powers colonizing (and, of course, ravaging, pillaging, and conquering) the New World. A new Home City feature enables users to “level-up” ther home city to boost their economic, military, and technological capabilities; players also command soldiers, direct cavalry, manage fleets, and explore uncharted territory as they negotiate conflicts with rival powers, create an economy, and form alliances with indigenous peoples.

The PC version of the game, for Windows XP, relies on the Havoc physics engine, which isn’t available for the Macintosh platform; MacSoft has managed to substitute the Ageia PhysX physics engine. According to MacSoft Age of Empires III will be a Universal Binary which will run natively on either PowerPC- or Intel-based Mac OS X systems, but no further system requirement or pricing details have been released. Age of Empires III for PC systems is priced under $50.