Update: What's Up With Uru For Mac? Cyan Answers
December 16th, 2003

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.
- J. R.R. Tolkien

One of the best games of all time, available on either the Mac or PC, was Myst. Heck, I still think Myst is very playable today. As many of you know, there have been 2 sequels; Riven and Exile, and a remake of the original, RealMyst, that includes updated graphics and a more immersive and reactive environment.

A while back, I wrote a puling diatribe about how Cyan, the makers of Myst, was abandoning the Mac platform with its latest Myst franchise installment, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. I then wrote Richard Watson of Cyan and asked him to give us the scope on Uru and the Mac, and he did.

Basically, Cyan didn't have the funding to support a Mac release of Uru, still Richard and his compatriots at Cyan were eager to get to work on a Mac version as soon as those nasty funding issues were resolved.

Well, a lot has happened since then. Apple has released new machines and updating others; iPod and iTMS work the same way now on both Macs and Windows platforms; I've managed to gain 5 pounds; and Cyan has released Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. I was wondering what if anything, was happening on the Uru for Mac front. Had Cyan found the needed funding and, heading well into development? Had Cyan decided it wasn't worth the effort and ditched the idea of a Mac version?

Just as before, I wrote Cyan's Richard Watson for some answers, and just like before, Richard came through. I asked Richard if Cyan had found the funds needed for development of a Mac version of Uru and if, indeed, Cyan still had plans to do Uru for the Mac. Here's Richard's answer:

Unfortunately, the situation hasn't changed much. We're still very confident that it's a question of "When" rather than a question of "If" (Cyan makes Uru for the Mac), but we're still waiting a) for outside funding or b) to be in a financial position to be able to fund it ourselves.

So, while there's no definite date for when Uru will show up, it seems reasonably certain that it will, which should make a lot of Mac Myst fans extremely happy. Hey, if Halo has finally showed up for the Mac then you gotta believe Uru will, too. Eventually.