EA announces SimCity for Mac coming in June

Today game developer Electronic Arts has announced that the much-anticipated SimCity for Mac will be available for purchase on June 11.

The latest version, which is stripped of any version number and is being simply called SimCity, was announced on March 5 for both OS X and Windows, and was initially released for Windows early last month, but in an EA blog post today Lucy Bradshaw, senior vice president and general manager of EA's Maxis label, is quoted as saying the Mac version of the software will be out in two months' time:

SimCity is coming to Mac on June 11 and one purchase will give you both the Mac and PC versions. You only need to buy SimCity once to play together across the same servers, regardless of which version you're playing.

In addition, Bradshaw reportedly said that the delayed launch of the Mac versions is because the game's rendering engine has been built from the ground up with Mac-native code to ensure that Mac users will get the best performance possible out of the title, and is still undergoing testing and development: "We didn't want to make any compromises when it came to the Mac so we created a native version that is optimized for the hardware and OSX."

At its initial release, EA underestimated the game's popularity and its launch was plagued by server errors that dropped users and prevented them from connecting to their game sessions, resulting in EA offering affected users refunds and free game purchases.

The SimCity series has been one of the more long-standing game titles, with the original version, released in 1989, having spawned a number of subsequent versions and related titles, including SimTower, SimAnt, and the ever-popular The Sims.

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