Today, Apple has released the toolkit for developers to begin porting Windows games to Mac devices. This is a big step forward for Apple in the gaming field as Mac users have often complained of a lack of AAA titles to play. However, this shall soon change with the new toolkit. The gaming toolkit is similar to how Proton works to bring games to Steam Deck. The toolkit offers an emulation environment to run DirectX 12-supported games on Windows on macOS.
How does the Apple gaming toolkit work?
Apple’s toolkit is based on CrossOver’s source code. For the uninitiated, CrossOver is a platform that allows users to run Microsoft applications and games on macOS. While many might confuse it with an emulator. But, in reality, it is not an emulator. CrossOver does the work of translating x86 instructions and Windows API into Mac counterparts so that users can run Windows software as if it were designed natively for Mac. Using the new Apple gaming toolkit, developers will be able to launch an unmodified version of games on Macs and see how well it performs before porting them fully to Apple’s operating system. Aiswariya Sreenivassan, an engineering project manager for GPUs and graphics at Apple, explained on the stage at WWDC 2023, “The new Game Porting Toolkit provides an emulation environment to run your existing unmodified Windows game and you can use it to quickly understand the graphics feature usage and performance potential of your game when running on a Mac.” While the Apple toolkit provides a much-needed respite to Mac users, it is still a beginning. The toolkit will allow developers to port Windows games on macOS, but there will be performance issues and bugs until game developers create their versions of ported games. Ever since the announcement of the gaming toolkit, several posts have appeared on Reddit where users are now running games like Cyberpunk 2077, Diablo IV, and Hogwarts Legacy on their Apple silicon-powered Macs. The toolkit will make it easier to bring games to Macs. However, making their performance rich and glitch-free is something that will happen with time. Recently, when CrossOver announced that the upcoming version of the platform will support DirectX 12 on macOS, it also said that the DirectX 12 support on macOS will be released per-title basis due to the complex process of sorting out bugs involving MoltenVK and SPIRV-Cross. The company said that there is no single magic key to port DirectX 12 support on macOS. It had to fix several bugs to run Diablo II Resurrected on a Mac device using CrossOver 23. So we can imagine the time it will take to fully bring games to Macs.
