Summary
- Apple Silicon offers powerful CPUs & GPUs for gaming, but Mac is not ready to replace gaming PCs yet.
- Mac gaming options are growing, with native titles like Death Stranding available, thanks to Apple Silicon and app compatibility.
- Steam Deck & Mac rely on compatibility layer software like Whiskey; Mac gaming is improving, but developer support is still needed.
Mac gaming is better than ever, but is Mac gaming good enough to give that gaming PC a skip? Spoiler alert—no! However, that might not be true for long, and if you already have a modern Mac, you might not need to buy a gaming PC to supplement it.
A (Brief) State of Mac Gaming
So let’s recap where Mac gaming is right now as I write this:
- Apple has its own hardware, known as Apple Silicon, which offers powerful CPUs and gaming-capable GPUs, even in its cheapest systems.
- Macs and iOS devices have their own dedicated graphics APIs, and technologies to compete with the likes of NVIDIA DLSS.
- Apple is actively courting developers to port their games to macOS, and offer a porting toolkit to make it as easy as possible.
- Some major titles, such as Baldur’s Gate 3, have received native macOS ports.
- Compatibility layer solutions, such as Whiskey, make it possible to play Windows games seamlessly on Mac—when it works!
The long and short of it is that if you have a modern Apple Silicon Mac right now, there are hundreds if not thousands of native macOS games, and countless Windows titles that will run using solutions like Whiskey.
Related
Compatible Games Are Growing Fast
We’ve seen great games like Death Stranding, Baldur’s Gate 3, Borderlands 3, Resident Evil 4 Remake, 7 and 8, and so many more come to Mac as native titles. Sadly, some heavy hitters, such as Diablo IV are not on Mac, despite previous titles in the series making it to Apple’s side of the fence, but both older and newer titles have a greater chance than ever to get a Mac version.
MacBook Pro with M4 Pro 12-core 14-inch
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$210
Since both Apple Silicon and Apple mobile devices run the same software, it means that porting a game like Death Stranding becomes more feasible, because your installation base is so much larger. Also, when even the humble M1 MacBook Air, which is now almost half a decade old, can trade blows with last-generation consoles, it means that mainstream gaming on Mac makes more sense for software developers.
Mac and SteamOS Are in the Same Boat
The Steam Deck, which runs a special version of Linux called SteamOS, has few native games just like macOS. By working with compatibility layer software, and with cooperation from developers, the Steam Deck is adding more and more Windows games to it’s list of compatible games by the day.
That same compatibility layer technology can (and is) implemented in macOS. I’ve tested the most popular solution, Whiskey, extensively on my M4 MacBook Pro and the results have been spectacular. It’s so good these days that I’m surprised when a game doesn’t work, rather than the reverse. While macOS doesn’t have the developer support yet to ensure better compatibility layer performance, I feel we’re already in a good space.
Related
These 12 Games Will Convince You to Install Windows on Your Steam Deck
There’s more to the Steam Deck than SteamOS.
Your Mac Isn’t a Gaming PC, but That Doesn’t Matter
While Apple’s hardware is definitely ready for mainstream gaming, the software side still needs help before I could ever suggest that someone who wants a gaming PC or laptop should get a MacBook or desktop Mac instead. However, these days I find myself testing if a Steam game works on my MacBook first before playing it on my Windows gaming laptop.
When games do work on my Mac, I’m more likely to play them there, than on my large, noisy, and power-hungry laptop. If macOS can become half as good and easy to game on as SteamOS, then we’d be in business!
