Apple’s new Proton-like tool can run Windows games on a Mac
www.theverge.com
Developers now have some serious tools to get Windows games on Mac

“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.

  • zaktmt@beehaw.orgEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    The tools for this are interesting. But I think the headline was slightly misleading to be called a Proton-like tool. This is more of a diagnostic tool than a translation layer to play games for troubleshooting than anything else. Even maxed out M2 Ultra devices are only getting like 30-40 FPS on Cyberpunk because of how many resources the tool uses. I personally hope it does incentivize some devs to port to macOS as a primary Mac user. Devs need to see a cost benefit to do it. Apple convincing one dev per year to port a AAA game to Mac is not enough of an effort to actually convince people of anything.

    That being said, Apple has had very inconsistent messaging regarding gaming in the past. And Steve Jobs notoriously did not care for gaming. Really, the only gaming success they are having right now is mobile games. And despite on/off rumors of a dedicated gaming device. I would just not be encouraged based on the majority of offerings on Apple Arcade that there would be much worthwhile. The only reason I even have it is because my phone plan includes it. Otherwise I would never touch it.

      • zaktmt@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        That was informative. Thank you! It makes me actually want to experiment. It sounds like the best results are on Sonoma. But I’ve heard some of the glitches with the software are not in a tolerable state yet. But I’ll try the beta when it goes public or when I feel confident about the stability.

    • Moonrise2473English
      1·
      2 years ago

      If i understood right, apple is licensing crossover which is a paid fork of wine, so imho it can be compared to proton, which is a gaming oriented fork of wine