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Where are the commercial game ports for Linux? No one wants to make them, obviously, save for the FPS crowd (and there's only an Unreal Tournament for Linux because Epic passes the buck to Icculus to get the job done, not because they have the in-house talent to do it themselves). There are a few commercial games for Linux, yes, but only a few, and there's very little variety between them. In the open source world we have a few good games (the majority of them being FPS's, what a surprise), Battle for Wesnoth if you like strategy games (turn based ones, that is). Then we have the unfortunate, ugly ripoffs like "Secret Maryo Chronicles," and other games that look like they were developed for a C64. Plenty of selection, not a lot of quality.

The following publishers develop comemrcial linux games:

http://www.pompomgames.com/
http://www.garagegames.com/
http://www.introversion.co.uk/
http://frictionalgames.com/
http://sillysoft.net/
http://www.basiliskgames.com/
http://www.guildsoftware.com/
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/
http://www.rune-soft.com/
http://grubbygames.com/
http://www.caravelgames.com/
http://www.planewalkergames.com/
http://www.graalonline.com/

There are also the high profile ones such as neverwinter nights, the doom and quake series, unreal, etc.

There are many high quality independant titles such as neverball, you mentioned wesnoth, crimson fields, flight gear, torcs, the spring project, total annihilation 3d, tecnoballZ, powermanga, tile racer, pingus, clonk, freeciv, ultimate stunts, planeshift, scorched3d, VDrift, silvertree (not complete, but being created by the wesnoth guys so likely will not be vapor), ufo: alien invasion, scourge, etc.

http://spring.clan-sy.com/
http://www.wesnoth.org/
http://torcs.sourceforge.net/
http://www.flightgear.org/
https://icculus.org/neverball/
http://ta3d.darkstars.co.uk/
http://linux.tlk.fr/games/
http://tileracer.model-view.com/
http://pingus.seul.org/
http://www.clonk.de/
http://freeciv.wikia.com/
http://www.ultimatestunts.nl/
http://www.planeshift.it/
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
http://vdrift.net/
http://www.silvertreerpg.org/
http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/
http://scourge.sourceforge.net/

Many of these are very impressive independently made free games. Perhaps they lack the multi million dollar marketing budget and won't make your geofrce 8800 gtxz 45 x super elite ultra melt, but theya re *fun* games, and they are numerous. Also keep in mind this publisher and free game list is only what I could find in 1 hour of searching.

Then there are freed older commercial games such as warzone 2100, homeworld, descent 1 and 2, doom, quake, etc.

Lets not stop t

Bah - highstreet games - tsk tsk (shakes head), get in the indie scene. The games are different/unique (usually), they actually all run on my PC (eek! - faints) and you aren't lining the pockets of faceless corporations. Sure there are plenty of dogs, just like high street games, hence lists like these are great.

Starscape http://www.moonpod.com/Starscape/
by http://www.moonpod.com/
This is a classic top down any direction scrolling shootermup, imagine asteroids but then go nuts with the artwork and add a giant space station that follows you around like a portable base, multiple fighters docked within it, research, construction and customisation plus a pretty cool anime rendered story adventure.

Spacetripper http://www.pompomgames.com/spacetripper.htm
by http://www.pompomgames.com/
Whilst PomPom's second game mutant storm definitely has a hardcore appeal that we like, we've found ourselves coming back to their first offering more and more. At it's core a tribute to Williams arcade classic Defender, it'll leave you wondering why they don't make games like this anymore.

Alien Shooter
http://www.sigma-team.net/alienshooter/index.htm
by http://www.sigma-team.net/
A great control system (move with the cursor keys, and aim with the mouse) , and gorgeous graphics made this our favourite Robotron-A-like. Alien Shooter likes to take gore to the max. We were sold on it once we picked up the minigun and started to mow down hordes of aliens; literally, painting the rooms red with alien blood :D

Platypus
http://www.squashysoftware.com/platypus.php
by http://www.squashysoftware.com/
Whilst it won't come anywhere close to being one of the top shoot-em-ups of all time, this is still solid. We found especially that the graphical style kept us wanting to see more (the entire game - even the effects, are made using claymation techniques. The whole game is built from photographs of plasticine models!)

Outpost Kaloki
http://www.ninjabee.com/outpostkaloki.html
by http://www.ninjabee.com/
Outpost Kaloki takes a well established genre and makes a very well polished pretty implementation that manages to avoid being too cliche by injecting just the right amount of humour. Each mission sees you create your very own space station purpose built to fullfill the story linked mission objectives. You can add modules for entertainment, research, food production, defence and many more.

Bah - highstreet games - tsk tsk (shakes head), get in the indie scene. The games are different/unique (usually), they actually all run on my PC (eek! - faints) and you aren't lining the pockets of faceless corporations. Sure there are plenty of dogs, just like high street games, hence lists like these are great.

Starscape http://www.moonpod.com/Starscape/
by http://www.moonpod.com/
This is a classic top down any direction scrolling shootermup, imagine asteroids but then go nuts with the artwork and add a giant space station that follows you around like a portable base, multiple fighters docked within it, research, construction and customisation plus a pretty cool anime rendered story adventure.

Spacetripper http://www.pompomgames.com/spacetripper.htm
by http://www.pompomgames.com/
Whilst PomPom's second game mutant storm definitely has a hardcore appeal that we like, we've found ourselves coming back to their first offering more and more. At it's core a tribute to Williams arcade classic Defender, it'll leave you wondering why they don't make games like this anymore.

Alien Shooter
http://www.sigma-team.net/alienshooter/index.htm
by http://www.sigma-team.net/
A great control system (move with the cursor keys, and aim with the mouse) , and gorgeous graphics made this our favourite Robotron-A-like. Alien Shooter likes to take gore to the max. We were sold on it once we picked up the minigun and started to mow down hordes of aliens; literally, painting the rooms red with alien blood :D

Platypus
http://www.squashysoftware.com/platypus.php
by http://www.squashysoftware.com/
Whilst it won't come anywhere close to being one of the top shoot-em-ups of all time, this is still solid. We found especially that the graphical style kept us wanting to see more (the entire game - even the effects, are made using claymation techniques. The whole game is built from photographs of plasticine models!)

Outpost Kaloki
http://www.ninjabee.com/outpostkaloki.html
by http://www.ninjabee.com/
Outpost Kaloki takes a well established genre and makes a very well polished pretty implementation that manages to avoid being too cliche by injecting just the right amount of humour. Each mission sees you create your very own space station purpose built to fullfill the story linked mission objectives. You can add modules for entertainment, research, food production, defence and many more.

Since I've started using Linux exclusively, it has changed somewhat:

1. Multiple instances of Doom with the doomsday engine
2. Crack-attack
3. Mutant Storm
4. Nethack:)
5. Grid Wars 2

Eurogamer has a piece looking at the sucess of Geometry Wars, despite its old-skool flavour.

that's actually not the issue at all.

game developers write for different CPUs and graphics APIs right now. the technical issue of writing for the mac is not the issue.

the real problem is more to do with the number of mac users, in particular the number who buy games for their mac. there aren't enough people on the platform buying games to warrant publishers to bankroll publication of most game titles.

making ports easier and cheaper for the mac is certainly a good thing, and may help publishers take the leap to the platform, but they're not going to publish the games if no one is there to buy them.

while this may seem like somewhat of a chicken/egg scenario, things can be done to get more games on the mac platform:

*buy games -- support existing mac titles (there are some good titles already out there!)
*tell your friends -- you have lots of mac-owning friends, right? get them to play games too.
*support the grassroots -- don't ignore independent studios! companies like pompom make great cross-platform games.

If you're lucky enough to have a 360, you can play both Outpost Kaloki (original, 360) and Wik: Fable of Souls (original, 360. Mutant Storm (original on Windows, Mac, and Linux, 360, original Xbox Live Arcade), the winner from 2002, is also available on 360 and was available on Live Arcade on the original Xbox as well. On the 360, these games go for $5-$10 (400-800 Points, where 80 points ~= $1), and Mutant Storm is $9.99 on Xbox. Compare that to $20 for the PC versions of Mutant Storm and Outpost Kaloki.

At least the titles from PomPom Games use it. Of course, I can only judge by the Mac OS X versions, but at least those work fine. Since most of the work is done by the OS and hardware, I'm not sure how SDL could really slow down things a lot (they just offer a uniform interface afaik).