Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit Can Run DirectX 12 Games on macOS
- Laurent Giret
- Jun 07, 2023
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At its WWDC introducing keynote on Monday, Apple detailed how the upcoming macOS Sonoma will make gaming on Mac even better. There’s a new Game Mode that will optimize CPU and GPU performance and lower latency for Bluetooth-based controllers and audio accessories. But the biggest news was actually the new game porting toolkit for developers, which Apple detailed in a series of WWDC videos (via The Verge).
Even though iOS and iPadOS are both great platforms for mobile gamers, gaming on a Mac has never been great: The market share is just too small for game developers to care about porting their Windows games, even though we’re now seeing blockbuster games like Resident Evil Village make their way to macOS.
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With the new game porting toolkit on macOS, Apple lets developers test the Windows version of their games on a Mac and evaluate what needs to be done to create a native version that takes full advantage of Apple Silicon chips. Apple believes its game porting toolkit will contribute to “eliminating months of upfront work and enabling developers to see how well their existing game could run on Mac in just a few days.”
There are already solutions like CrossOver that can translate Windows games to make them run on a Mac, but Crossover is still working on adding support for DirectX 12. Apple’s game porting toolkit, however, will be able to translate DirectX 12 graphics into Apple’s Metal 3.
Apple’s M-Series chips deliver an incredible level of performance per watt compared to Intel or AMD chips, and the new M2 Ultra chip that was announced on Monday comes with 24 CPU cores, up to 76 GPU cores, and up to 192GB of memory capacity with 800GB/s of memory bandwidth. While creative professionals can certainly take advantage of this level of computing power, we have yet to see game developers do the same.
Apple announced on Monday that more graphically demanding games are coming soon to macOS including Death Stranding and The Medium. This is definitely a good sign, but there are still way too many games that ignore the Mac platform, the freshly-released Diablo IV being a good example.