“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.
I want to see Apple contributing more to the open-source CrossOver project, both in terms of code and financing. Their contribution has been minimal and Apple’s audacity in essentially repackaging open-source software is disgusting to me. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
You are not wrong. But this isn’t even like proton, it’s not for end users. It’s intended for developer testing, so they can get an idea how well it runs on a mac, and then somehow be persuaded to do a proper mac port??
Exactly this. After seeing what proton can do on Linux, devs will probably just wait and hope apple gets on that level.
I’d love for that to happen but I believe Apple wants all the games in the App Store so they get 30% cut, rather than giving that cut to steam.
My thoughts exactly. Apple is a public company, they’re not investing in software that’ll put money in other companys’ pockets.
If you look at what was also announced, it reads pretty clearly as they needed a solution for porting to and developing for their new VR headset.
Definitely. Apple doesn’t pour much resources into mac gaming because they make barely anything off it. It may change though, because I’m sure they’ll try to push it with their closed down goggles, which run mac / ios architecture.
If that’s what they want, Steam’s existence on macOS as well as games being available for purchase through both the App Store and Steam aren’t working in their favor in that regard. But between the App Store and those previous attempts to block out Game Pass, hopefully Apple will see an opportunity to ensnare more users to the ecosystem.
How many folks out there have iPhones but don’t have Macs because of weird hangups like “no games”? They’ll target this group eventually.
I’m personally about to exactly be in this category. I am moving from Android to iPhone, and will not be getting a MacOS device for my primary computing until MacOS gets good Gaming Support.
Namely Guild Wars 2 and Warframe. But, other games would be really nice.
Well, see how it runs on Mac in its current state. I’m sure that without Translation Layers, the games would run significantly better. I need to personally try the new No Man’s Sky Apple Silicon port on my Wife’s M1 MacBook Air.
How good is crossover? Would you recommend it?