Apple unveils new Game Porting Toolkit that runs Windows games on Mac

Robert Collins

One of the more exciting things to come out of this year’s WWDC event, at least for gamers, was the unveil of the new Apple Game Porting Toolkit. Apparently the toolkit creates an emulation environment that runs Windows games unmodified. Engineering project manager Aiswariya Sreenivassan explained the toolkit during a WWDC session,

The new Game Porting Toolkit provides an emulation environment to run your existing unmodified Windows game and you can use it to quickly understand the graphics feature usage and performance potential of your game when running on a Mac.”

The toolkit is similar to Valve’s Proton tool, which is used in combination with Wine to create a compatibility layer to run Windows games on the Linux-based Steam OS, particularly with the Steam Deck handheld device.

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In its present state the Game Porting Toolkit is really more for allowing developers to evaluate individual games to see how they perform on Mac, and to determine how much work will be involved in properly converting games. However, macOS users can also use the tool to try out their existing Windows games.

Featured image via The Verge.