Game--Age of Empires II The Viking Sagas for Mac, $19.99 on Steam September 22 per Feral

The Viking Sagas, the newest expansion for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, was due on the Mac on September 22, on Feral Interactive's schedule. Feral's September 11 announcement said the expansion "makes landfall on September 22nd" on macOS through Steam, with three new civilizations and three interconnected campaigns built around King Harald Hardrada. The Steam page listed it at $19.99 on September 20, with a 15 percent pre-order discount to $16.99 that Steam said ran until September 22. Feral's date, by our count, is four months after it brought the game to macOS on May 28, and it is the same September 22 that World's Edge gave for Steam, the Microsoft Store and Xbox.

It adds three civilizations and a fifteen-mission campaign

The new civilizations are the Danes, the Saxons and the Varangians. World's Edge's August 27 pre-order post describes "an epic 15-mission, 3-part new campaign" that follows Harald Hardrada, who "embarks on an odyssey to become the greatest Viking there ever was," from "the young Prince Harald of Norway" forced into exile, through "the streets of magnificent Constantinople," to "the throne of England in the decisive year 1066." The studio's FAQ adds that the existing Vikings civilization is reworked, and that the reworked Vikings and the improved northern European historical battles are free to every owner of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, expansion or not. World's Edge says the expansion reaches the PlayStation 5 store on launch day as well.

The Mac has history here. MacSoft shipped the first Age of Empires for the Mac at $49.99 in the summer of 1999, per our July 1999 note on MacSoft's lineup, and our August 1999 pointer to a review of the Mac port quoted Insanely Great Mac calling it "a realtime war strategy game that was widely successful for the PC." Twenty-seven years later, by our count, the same franchise has a new chapter dated for the Mac by a different porting house, on the same day World's Edge gave for the PC.

It needs an Apple silicon Mac and the base game

The Steam page lists the Mac minimum as macOS 15.7, an Apple M1 with an 8-core CPU and 7-core GPU or an Apple A18 Pro with a 6-core CPU and 5-core GPU, 8GB of memory and 16GB of storage. The A18 Pro is the chip in the MacBook Neo, which Apple's tech specs list with a 6-core CPU, a 5-core GPU and 8GB of unified memory, so the MacBook Neo is the floor. Intel Macs are out; Macworld's June 5 review of the base game says it "only runs on Macs with Apple Silicon processors and is not supported on older Intel-based Macs."

You need the base game first. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition on Steam is $34.99, with the same Mac requirements, and it bundles three earlier expansions, Lords of the West, Dynasties of India and Dawn of the Dukes. 9to5Mac reported at the May 28 launch that the game and its DLC are sold on Steam and on the Feral Store, and that a Mac App Store version was expected later in 2026; Feral's April 30 announcement said the same, with no date. One limit to know before you buy for multiplayer: Feral's announcement describes online play "with other macOS players," and Macworld confirms the Mac version "only allows you to play with other Mac users," so you will not meet Windows opponents.

It is a native port, and Macworld says it does not need a fast Mac

This is not a Game Porting Toolkit translation of the Windows build. World's Edge's May 28 post says the game "arrives on macOS as an Apple silicon native version," and Feral's April announcement promised "razor-sharp 4K visuals" and a remastered soundtrack. Macworld's review says "you don't need a really fast Mac to run it properly," but no source we accept has published frame rates on a named Mac, and we have not installed it ourselves. For the other route to Windows games, see our First Look at the Game Porting Toolkit 4 beta; this one does not need it.

In our September 1999 note on MacSoft's America's Greatest Arcade Hits 3D we pointed readers to a review that found an emulation compilation "fared pretty well"; a Microsoft strategy expansion dated for the Mac on the same day as the PC, and playable on the MacBook Neo, is more than any Mac gamer of 1999 would have believed. We'll post a hands-on report after we install it.