The truism that Macs can't play real PC games could be on the verge of changing thanks to the new Game Porting Toolkit in macOS Sonoma that lets developers easily port over DirectX 12-compatible PC games. Hobbyists have already gotten Grand Theft Auto V, Diablo IV, Cyberpunk 2077, and more running on Macs at very playable frame rates and resolutions.
  • @MicroWaveOPEnglish
    5•1 year ago

    Hell yeah

    But buried in the keynote was a macOS feature that Apple should have called out with more fanfare: DirectX 12 support for macOS. As PC gamers already know, this software support means the floodgates are open for some real games — not that casual Apple Arcade stuff — on Mac. Maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of the end to the old joke that Macs can’t play AAA games.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•1 year ago

      It relies on Rosetta so it’s still going to require coding work, just not as much as before.

      The real problem is long term support. I have games that were built for the Mac a few years ago and now they’re incompatible because Apple dropped 32bit support. Will the games shown at WW this month still be running when M7 Mac’s come out?

        • @[email protected]English
          1•1 year ago

          A quick search suggests it’s still possible to run 16bit apps in Win10, but still it’s far easier to emulate older versions of Windows than it is Macs. The PS3 games you own will still run on your PS3, so that’s not exactly the same issue.

          It’s more of a perception of Apple that they need to work past. Years of deprecating old libraries and seeing apps get pulled from the store (I bought a version of Oregon Trail for iOS a few years ago that I can no longer download… because they wanna sell a new version instead) has sent a pretty loud and clear message to folks about software longevity on the platform.

            • @[email protected]English
              2•1 year ago

              Yeah sadly nothing on the internet lives forever. Learned that the hard way a few years back when my favorite YouTuber had to delete a few videos because of a falling out with his friend.

              But none of this is OK with gaming. At the very least Apple needs to acknowledge that most of these games will never be recompiled after release. If they don’t offer some kind of long-term compatibility option then Windows (which does offer these options) will continue to dominate gaming.