At WWDC 23, the Mac gaming announcements were far from the star of the show, although Apple did announce Death Stranding: Director's Cut and the Game Porting Toolkit.
The latter was presented as a way for game developers to very quickly evaluate what it would take to port their PC games to MacOS. However, its DirectX12 emulation capabilities are so good that several users are already running cutting-edge PC games like Diablo IV and Cyberpunk 2077.
You can check out some brief videos below. The Game Porting Toolkit's emulation is so great because Apple picked the source code of CrossOver's Wine, as revealed on the CodeWeavers blog by CrossOver Product Manager Meredith Johnson. CrossOver didn't work with Apple on the tool, but they are nonetheless elated that Apple saw the potential of Wine and are eager to explore the Game Porting Toolkit with game developers.
Apple's new game porting toolkit is fantastic. Here's Cyperbunk 2077 running at Ultra on an M1 MacBook Pro 16 GB! pic.twitter.com/hylzMU6U46
— Isaac (@isaacmarovitz) June 6, 2023
Other supported games include Hogwarts Legacy, Marvel's Spider-Man, Elden Ring, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Definitive Edition, just to name a few.
Needless to say, it is a big day for Mac gaming since the list of games available to Mac users has massively increased. If you wish to check out how the emulation portion of the Game Porting Toolkit runs on your Mac, here's a handy install guide by Frityet.
To begin with, you need to install the Homebrew package manager with this command:
brew tap apple/homebrew-apple
The next step is the installation of the actual Game Porting Toolkit. It may take a while.
brew install game-porting-toolkit
Then, download the GPT from Apple's developer website. To use it, a Wine prefix has to be created. Substitute the placeholder folder my-game-prefix with any game name of your choosing.
WINEPREFIX=~/my-game-prefix `brew --prefix game-porting-toolkit`/bin/wine64 winecfg
In the following window, change the Windows version to 10. Proceed to install the game into the folder you just named. Enter this command to install the Game Porting Toolkit:
ditto [REPLACE THIS WITH WHEREVER YOU PUT THE GAME PORTING TOOLKIT]/lib/ `brew --prefix game-porting-toolkit`/lib/
And this command to run the game's .exe:
[REPLACE THIS WITH WHEREVER YOU PUT THE GAME PORTING TOOLKIT]/gameportingtoolkit-no-hud ~/my-game-prefix 'C:\\Program Files\\MyGame\\MyGame.exe'
While this is an exciting development for Mac gaming, users should keep in mind that the game performance may be suboptimal. After all, the Game Porting Toolkit's Windows emulation was primarily meant as a first step for game developers to port their titles properly.
However, several native ports are coming up soon on Mac, such as SnowRunner, Stray, The Medium, Elex II, Stray, Disney's Dreamlight Valley, Layers of Fear, and Fort Solis, while other games like Firmament, No Man's Sky, Humankind, and Resident Evil Village are already supported.
It's too early to definitively say whether Mac gaming will finally level up, but it certainly looks like Apple might be heading in the right direction.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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