Mac gaming is almost there
But you will still kind of need an M-series Pro chip and lots of unified memory.
Since Apple’s introduction of the M-series chips, I’ve been keeping an eye on whether it was possible to use these powerful processors for gaming. And thanks to the release of Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit (GPTK, and not to be confused with ChatGPT) in 2023, it was possible to play Windows games on a Mac via an translation layer.
To be clear, GPTK is meant for developers to work on porting their games over to run on Mac computers, but if you’re okay to do some legwork, it’s workable with plenty of tutorials out there. It basically creates a Windows emulation, and then translates DirectX 12 to work on Apple’s Metal graphics API.
If you don’t want to mess with the toolkit though, the easiest free way is to use Whisky, an app that tries to do most of the work for you, but there may be some compatibility issues depending on the game. But if you’re willing to pay, Crossover works for plenty of games, and it’s worth every penny.
But thanks to GPTK, we’re starting to see more developers willing to launch their games on macOS and iOS at the same time as their PC and console releases. Case in point, the latest (and excellent) Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which ran like a charm on our Mac mini M4 Pro, at 1080p, medium settings. On our M2 MacBook Pro, we got 25 to 30fps on Low, which is actually playable (and honestly, still looks really good).
More games are also coming (or have already arrived) to the Mac, such as Control, Wuthering Waves, and Cyberpunk 2077, which means Apple is finally serious about gaming on its Mac platform. The caveat is you’ll probably want a Pro chip at least for the more demanding games. Less resource-heavy games such as Hades II or Balatro run pretty well, though. I also want to point out they ran fine using Crossover before they had official Mac support.
With Crossover, there’s a whole bunch of games ready for you to play with a Mac. It also means that gaming isn’t just restricted to a PC or a console. So while you can already do plenty of creative work on a Mac, it’s also now a potential gaming machine that can run AAA games. And best of all, they use much less power, letting you save the earth (and your electrical bills), too.
Now, if only I have an M4 Max MacBook Pro to game, and work on the go. But I guess I’ll have to settle for my MacBook Pro M2 for now, and consider upgrading when next year’s model comes out.