You no longer have to "be a PC" if you want to play NCsoft's superhero-themed MMORPG City of Heroes.

The company told Edge this week that it will be bringing the game to Mac after four years of PC exclusivity.

Brian Clayton, executive producer of City of Heroes for NCsoft West, said the time was right to finally bring the game to Mac users because of a proper technology partnership with Canadian porting experts TransGaming.

Aside from that partnership, NCsoft was able to be more flexible with the IP after purchasing it outright from franchise creators Cryptic Studios last year.

The proliferation of Intel processors in Macs have also warranted the new version. "There's now that critical mass on the Mac side. ... A couple years previous, the market penetration wasn't there," Clayton said.

TransGaming president and CEO Vikas Gupta said NCsoft met with him at GDC earlier this year about bringing City of Heroes to Mac. After the companies decided to go ahead with the port this summer, it took "less than four weeks" to get the game up and running. After that, it was all tweaking and aligning infrastructures.

TransGaming uses a product called Cider to rapidly port games to Mac. "What that really does is act like a 'wrapper' around Windows games," said Gupta. Essentially, the method translates, in real-time, a Windows game into a Mac game.

He added, "It's flexible enough that we can still create a Mac user-friendly environment. ... So instead of writing a lot of code, which also means a massive delay in the game ... we can make sure that every [City of Heroes] update moving forward is simultaneous on PC and Mac."

Gaming on Mac

The Windows PC has been the primary platform for desktop gamers, but TransGaming and NCsoft want to make sure the growing Mac market isn't ignored.

Clayton stated, "We definitely think that in the last few years, Mac gaming has been on the upswing. We're certainly excited about the space.

"And with mobile platforms like the iPhone, there are some opportunities to do some very creative things from an MMO perspective. ... The one thing that I like about Mac and Apple, frankly, is the connectivity with the Internet--getting people online and getting them to feel comfortable online."

Gupta, whose company has brought over 20 titles to Mac, added, "Mac users in the past have been treated like second class citizens. What we're really trying to do is ensure that the Mac userbase is treated the way it should be."