![]() ![]() Spokane’s best-known developer, Cyan, built its games for Mac first and foremost for many years. In their defense, they were very early computer owners and up until the mid-90s, gaming on a Mac wasn’t uncommon. I’ll admit to having a soft spot for this type of thing – growing up I used whatever computer was available to me, and my parents were Apple loyalists through and through. Proton has been a surprising success, and I can confirm firsthand that most games I’ve thrown at it perform near-flawlessly. Despite this, Valve themselves chose to have its own Steam Deck hardware run Linux by using Proton, a utility that accomplishes feats very similar to Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit. Video game distribution platform Steam reported that in December 2022, 96.15% of its users were running Windows compared to 2.48% on Mac and 1.38% on Linux. ![]() While Windows PCs make up the vast majority of personal computers, Macs currently account for around 18.8% of them according to StatCounter. To be clear, there’s no chance the Game Porting Toolkit will suddenly shoot Macs to the forefront of gaming – but I’m all for people having more options. The game mode will give video games top priority on the CPU and GPU, lowering usage for background tasks – something Apple should’ve implemented ages ago – and reducing latency with wireless accessories like game controllers and headsets. If a developer plans on it from the start, they can use a cross-platform game engine to make matters more simple, but even then they have to debug the game and optimize the performance for each individual platform.Īpple also flexed its new game mode for the upcoming macOS Sonoma upgrade. The process typically involves recompiling source code, converting audio, input, and HDR rendering, converting custom shaders and reimplementing graphics subsystems. But between the difficulty of porting games to different platforms and the relatively low user base of Mac versus Windows, developers have rarely been incentivized to put in the necessary work to release games on Mac. To clear up misconceptions – the hardware powering Mac computers has always been beefy enough to handle most video games. Several hobbyists have already been tinkering with the Game Porting Toolkit, with promising results – on Apple’s latest M2 processor, people were able to get even a graphically intensive game like Cyberpunk 2077 running at 4K resolution and a respectable 30 frames per second. ![]() In the vast majority of cases, the game will run well enough, but need additional optimization. The tool allows developers and hobbyists alike to instantly launch an unmodified version of a Windows game on a Mac. Amid all the new game announcements at Summer Game Fest and the Xbox Games Showcase, it might have been easy to miss the announcements Apple made June 5-9 at its Worldwide Developers Conference about gaming on macOS.Īpple has created its own “Game Porting Toolkit” powered by source code from CrossOver, a Wine-based application that’s long been used to run – or attempt to run – Windows games on macOS. ![]()
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