Diablo IV and Cyberpunk 2077 on macOS: Here's How AAA Windows Games Run on MacBooks

2023-06-07 14:34:00

macOS has always been synonymous with productivity, but it has always fallen short when it comes to gaming. Now Apple wants to change that with the Game Porting Toolkit announced for the system during WWDC 2023. With it, it will be possible to run games made for Windows with DirectX 12 with ease.

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Thanks to the Game Porting Toolkit, developers won’t need to change any line of code in their games, as it will allow them to emulate DirectX 12 within macOS.

Some developers have already ventured into this feat and managed to run games like Diablo IV and Cyberpunk 2077 with just a few quick tweaks with the tool provided by Apple.

One of them is Twitter user @isaacmarovitz, who posted a video showing Cyberpunk 2077 running in ultra quality on his MacBook Pro with an Apple M1 chip with 16GB of unified RAM.

The performance was far below normal with an average of 13 fps in the resolution of 1440×900 pixels, which is the maximum resolution supported at the moment, but the user claims that it is possible to play with much greater fluidity in high and medium quality.

Apple’s new game porting toolkit is fantastic. Here’s Cyperbunk 2077 running at Ultra on an M1 MacBook Pro 16 GB! pic.twitter.com/hylzMU6U46

— Isaac (@isaacmarovitz) June 6, 2023

In addition to these titles, Isaac says he is also working on tests with Elden Ring, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Stray, The Medium and many others. Hideo Kojima has also confirmed that he will be bringing Death Stranding to macOS Sonoma.

This means that the possibility of having so many AAA games on macOS is no longer a utopia, but depends on some efforts by developers and Apple, which has already taken the first step in launching an official tool.

As limitaes do Game Porting Toolkit

On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that the tool has a limited testing period, being necessary to pay around 74 euros to acquire the Game Porting Toolkit definitively.

Another point is that macOS still doesn’t support technologies like NVIDIA DLSS, so developers will have to work on their own solutions for Apple’s system like MetalFX Upscaling. We expect Apple to work around these limitations in the future with the release of macOS Sonoma.

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