Apple Releases Tool to Help Developers Port Windows Games to Mac

Saturday June 10, 2023 6:28 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol

Apple at WWDC this week announced a new toolkit that makes it easier for game developers to port Windows games to the Mac. The toolkit provides an emulation environment that allows developers to run their existing, unmodified Windows game on the Mac and quickly evaluate how well the game could run on macOS before writing any code. A beta version of the toolkit is available for download on the Apple Developer website.

Mac Gaming
Apple is also offering developers a new Metal shader converter that simplifies the process of converting a Windows game's shaders and graphics code to run on Macs with Apple silicon. Apple says the toolkit and converter significantly reduce the total development time required to port games to the Mac, from months to just a few days.

Developers interested in porting Windows games to the Mac can watch Apple's series of "bring your game to Mac" videos for more details. Apple also has a page on its website outlining various gaming technologies and tools available for developers.

Apple appears to be increasing its commitment to high-end gaming on the Mac. For example, macOS Sonoma features a new Game Mode that temporarily prioritizes CPU and GPU performance for gaming. Game Mode also lowers AirPods audio latency, and reduces input latency with popular third-party game controllers by doubling the Bluetooth sampling rate, according to Apple. macOS Sonoma will be released later this year.

Tags: Mac Gaming, Windows

Related Forum: macOS Sonoma

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Top Rated Comments

jlc1978

37 months ago

Can't wait for Apple to put some L33T G4M3R LED lights on their MacBooks with flame decals. NOT!

Does anyone else feel enabling gaming on Mac cheapens the brand?

Not really; it adds a new reason for people to buy a Mac. While gamers who want maximum performance will still buy or build machines at the bleeding edge, making more games available on the Mac can only help, especially if they come out at the same time as the PC version, is a plus for casual gamers as well as help developers sell more games. That's a win for everyone.

It might also encourage Apple to improve things like graphic performance, will will help non-gamers as well; plus if improvements to Apple’s tool get rolled into Crossover it may mean better performance and compatibility with Window’s apps beyond games as well.

Score: 47 Votes (Like | Disagree)

whelmedjedi

37 months ago

Can users use it to run windows games on Mac? Or do you have to prove you developed the game?

Yes you can. Follow macgaming on reddit. They are currently playing almost every AAA windows games without any issues and great performance on their Macs using game porting toolkit. This toolkit provides preview for developers to see how would their game run on macOS before doing real porting. And these users using that benefit to play games. If developers choose to completely port their games to apple silicon, performance optimization should be even better than preview.

Score: 41 Votes (Like | Disagree)

HVDynamo

37 months ago

Does anyone else feel enabling gaming on Mac cheapens the brand?

Uhh, no. That's the dumbest thing I've heard.

Score: 38 Votes (Like | Disagree)

CarAnalogy

37 months ago

Hoping this is all as good as it sounds and developers actually take advantage.

We need eGPU support now though. As good as M1 is, the graphics performance still isn’t comparable to a mid-level modern nVidia card for actually running games on most Macs. And now of course that even applies to the Mac Pro.

Edit: I assume these downvotes are for the Mac Pro comment (since no one has bothered to actually say why they disagree.) Yes, it and its identically powered for $3000 less twin the Mac Studio are probably better than a mid-range card, even though there’s no ray tracing. But the point remains.

And I don’t mean just the M1 specifically, but the vast majority of the computers they sell is going to continue to be the MacBook Air and cheapest MacBook Pro, which will have the lower end chips of whatever generation. Maybe people really don’t expect to game on those but then right there, why is Apple chasing AAA games when the vast majority of the computers they sell won’t run them well? Do they really only expect to sell games to owners of Mac Studios or better?

Even in the Death Stranding demo you could see rendering latency. I would like to see their recommended specs for it on the Mac.

Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)