“Apple has created a new Game Porting Toolkit that’s similar to the work Valve has done with Proton and the Steam Deck. It’s powered by source code from CrossOver, a Wine-based solution for running Windows games on macOS. Apple’s tool will instantly translate Windows games to run on macOS, allowing developers to launch an unmodified version of a Windows game on a Mac and see how well it runs before fully porting a game.”
The new software will allow Mac users* (see edit) to play ‘Windows games’ on their Apple silicon (M1/M2) devices. With development, this has the potential to bring gaming to Apple.
*EDIT: The Game Porting Toolkit is designed for developers to see how their game performs on Apple silicone to entice devs to create native ports. Thanks to commenters for pointing out this distinction. The CrossOver project on which it is built, I believe, is designed for end-users to run software on their Mac clients.
This is so exciting to see, as the “Gaming on a Mac!?” argument has been a “chicken or the egg” problem for the Mac ecosystem for decades. You know how it goes, “Publishers don’t want to release games for Mac because the user base isn’t there” versus “The user base isn’t there because there aren’t games for Mac”.
This toolkit is a significant step in the right direction that can cut down on porting times for games. And the folks who’ve tested out games have been surprised at the performance without ports. Macs may finally get a market out of this :)
When I read this headline I thought of when I bought my first mac in 2006 when they switched to Intel. They also thought that’d bring over games, and it didn’t. “Mac gaming is right around the corner” feels a little like “this is the year for Linux on the desktop.”
I’m not saying it’ll never happen. But it’s definitely a wait and see situation.
Oh I agree completely. I thought gaming would’ve been more feasible once Marzipan made it easy to install iPad apps on macOS. But again and again, the carrot is dangled.