Apple's game porting tool previews a future where a gaming PC isn't necessarily a PC
It was little more than a sidenote when Apple dropped its new Game Porting Toolkit at its WWDC event last week. But it could point to a revolution for PC gaming.
Similar to Valve's Proton technology for running Windows games on Linux, Apple's Game Porting Toolkit allows you to run unmodified Windows games on MacOS and therefore Macs and MacBooks. Cue inevitably and almost immediately the bizarre spectacle of CyberPunk running on MacBooks.
The technology of emulating game code across hardware platforms gets utterly baffling awfully quickly. But the broad brush with Apple's tech is that it's actually based on the CrossOver source code, an existing Wine-based solution for running DX12 Windows games on MacOS.
Broadly, there are two things to appreciate about the Game Porting Toolkit. Firstly, it's not meant to be a solution for gamers to run Windows games on their Macs. It's built for developers to help them assess the out-of-the-box performance of their game as a first step in optimising it for MacOS. So, it doesn't suddenly turn every Mac into a gaming rig.
And secondly? Despite that, many games run remarkably well. When you see something as demanding as Cyberpunk getting decent frame rates on an Apple laptop, well, it's hard not to take notice.
As it happens, Cyberpunk is not actually an example of a game that runs really well via the toolkit. Mac Gamer HQ lists it as merely 'average' in performance terms and therefore below numerous titles including Diablo 4, GTA 5 and Overwatch 2.
Anyway, the point to all this is that Apple's toolkit is just the latest example of how gaming seems to be increasingly heading in a hardware-agnostic direction. Proton already makes it easier than ever to run Windows games on Linux. But
Read more on pcgamer.com
