The build-up to WWDC23 is full of good news for running native Mac games: No Man’s Sky, Beat Saber, and even Stray have all confirmed coming soon to macOS. But there’s also good news even from games that are only ready for Windows yet.
And it is that Crossover, the application that emulates everything necessary to run these games on macOS, has confirmed that it is beginning to have achievements in its work for provide support for DirectX 12. We already knew about this program more than a decade ago, and today it continues to be a “bridge” for those players Don’t settle for Windows.
In the absence of DirectX, well it’s Crossover
We can define DirectX as an API environment and other tools that Microsoft makes available to all video game developers. The equivalent on our platform would be Metal, and we can also cite the open alternative of OpenGL. But of course, in the same way that Metal is only on macOS, DirectX is only on Windows.
What Crossover does is emulate these tools so that we can run Windows games on macOS without too much hassle. That they succeeded in translating the DirectX 12 instructions is a first step towards the possibility of offering an emulation of the most modern and demanding games: What you see in the screenshot above is Diablo II Resurrected running on a Mac with an M2 chip.
The folks at Crossover admit that in this example there are a few bugs to iron out and it will take some time before we see very reliable runs with DirectX 12, but that they’ve already managed to run the odd game is proof that they are on the right track after working on it for more than 18 months.
You can install Crossover on your Mac to play the games supported by this emulation layer from today, the current version has a long list of supported games. Of course: you must have purchased this game and you must also pay for the license of 74 dollars of Crossover. You can try it for free for two weeks.
Maybe tomorrow, when Apple shows us its news in the opening speech, we get to see a good amount of news as solutions like Crossover become less and less important. But it’s always good news to see how enthusiasts of the video game they’re working on programs like these so macOS users don’t run out of options.
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