Apple’s new tools appear reminiscent of Valve’s Proton compatibility layer for Linux and the Steam Deck.
Apple has announced a new tool to translate games coded for Windows onto MacOS. It sounds a lot like Proton, Valve’s compatibility layer for the Steam Deck, or more generally Wine for Linux, and it’s already been used to run Diablo 4 and Cyberpunk 2077 on Apple’s in-house silicon.
Sure, Cyberpunk ran at 14fps, which isn’t particularly playable. But Diablo 4 worked great, and it’s all good progress.
A way to port games over to MacOS without actually porting games over to MacOS could be a big development for the macOS gaming scene, or what there is of one. Outside of mobile games and Apple Arcade, gaming has not been much of a focus for Apple. If anything, Apple’s recent shift to specialised ARM hardware of its own design in its machines has made gaming even more of a reach on its systems, as few developers have bothered porting their games to Apple’s proprietary kit.
