Sunday, June 11th 2023
Apple Game Porting Toolkit Brings DirectX 12 Titles to macOS
Apple has struggled in the area of offering comprehensive gaming ecosystems - in the personal computer space - over the past few decades with only a handful of studios bothering to port their games over to macOS, but material presented at this week's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) indicates that the technology giant is getting serious about its silicon becoming a legitimate platform for video games. A lot of the company's presentation focused on the controversial Vision Pro Headset, but some press outlets took notice of a quieter announcement during proceedings. Hideo Kojima (of Metal Gear Solid fame) made an appearance and announced: "I have been a die-hard Apple fan since I bought my first Mac back in 1994—and it has been a dream of mine to see my team's best work come to life on the Mac. Death Stranding Director's Cut on the Mac takes advantage of the latest Apple technologies to provide the best experience to our fans." Several other development outfits have also declared that their games are set for arrival on Mac systems this year. Apple was enthused about this new strategy and let everyone know that: "tens of millions of Macs can run demanding games with outstanding performance, exceptional battery life, and breathtaking visuals."
Susan Prescott, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations stated: "A new era for gaming on Mac is here...Developers around the world can harness our powerful tools in Metal 3 to deliver incredibly responsive gameplay with high frame rates to more players than ever before." Their software engineering team has been working on a system that simplifies and accelerates the process of creating Windows-to-Mac game ports. A Proton-esque environment - comparable to Valve's software layer efforts with Steam Deck - is capable of translating and running the latest DirectX 12 Windows titles on macOS. Codeweavers revealed in a blog post that Apple has chosen to base the Game Porting Toolkit on their CrossOver source code.Meredith Johnson, QA and CrossOver product manager at Codeweavers wrote: "We have decades of experience creating ports with Wine, and we are very pleased that Apple is recognizing that Wine is a fantastic solution for running Windows games on macOS. We did not work with Apple on this tool, but we would be delighted to work with any game developers who try out the Game Porting Toolkit and see the massive potential that Wine offers. Our PortJump team has perfected the art and science of creating ports of Windows applications using our Wine technology, and we welcome inquiries about how we can help get your game working on macOS. We are also excited by the potential that the Game Porting Toolkit can offer CrossOver. We announced last week that we have preliminary DirectX 12 support on macOS coming in CrossOver 23, and we are eager to build on that momentum. As we learn more, we will be sharing updates in future posts. You can stay informed by subscribing to our blog."
The Game Porting Toolkit is currently being used by development outfits as an evaluation solution (prior to making full conversions), but some members of the Apple hardware owner community have jumped at the chance to test it out for themselves. Gaming session footage has been shared on Reddit and YouTube, including Cyberpunk 2077 on an M2 Max-based system and M1 MacBook Pro, plus an M1 Max MacBook Pro running Diablo IV. The early iterative nature of the toolkit is noticeable due to mixed in-game performance, but the results are promising nonetheless. It will be interesting to find out whether Apple's upcoming M2 Ultra chip will be able to chew through big AAA titles with ease.
Susan Prescott, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations stated: "A new era for gaming on Mac is here...Developers around the world can harness our powerful tools in Metal 3 to deliver incredibly responsive gameplay with high frame rates to more players than ever before." Their software engineering team has been working on a system that simplifies and accelerates the process of creating Windows-to-Mac game ports. A Proton-esque environment - comparable to Valve's software layer efforts with Steam Deck - is capable of translating and running the latest DirectX 12 Windows titles on macOS. Codeweavers revealed in a blog post that Apple has chosen to base the Game Porting Toolkit on their CrossOver source code.Meredith Johnson, QA and CrossOver product manager at Codeweavers wrote: "We have decades of experience creating ports with Wine, and we are very pleased that Apple is recognizing that Wine is a fantastic solution for running Windows games on macOS. We did not work with Apple on this tool, but we would be delighted to work with any game developers who try out the Game Porting Toolkit and see the massive potential that Wine offers. Our PortJump team has perfected the art and science of creating ports of Windows applications using our Wine technology, and we welcome inquiries about how we can help get your game working on macOS. We are also excited by the potential that the Game Porting Toolkit can offer CrossOver. We announced last week that we have preliminary DirectX 12 support on macOS coming in CrossOver 23, and we are eager to build on that momentum. As we learn more, we will be sharing updates in future posts. You can stay informed by subscribing to our blog."
The Game Porting Toolkit is currently being used by development outfits as an evaluation solution (prior to making full conversions), but some members of the Apple hardware owner community have jumped at the chance to test it out for themselves. Gaming session footage has been shared on Reddit and YouTube, including Cyberpunk 2077 on an M2 Max-based system and M1 MacBook Pro, plus an M1 Max MacBook Pro running Diablo IV. The early iterative nature of the toolkit is noticeable due to mixed in-game performance, but the results are promising nonetheless. It will be interesting to find out whether Apple's upcoming M2 Ultra chip will be able to chew through big AAA titles with ease.