Apple last year introduced a new Game Porting Toolkit to help developers bring their Windows games to macOS. Since then, we’ve seen some AAA titles coming to the Mac – and soon it will be even easier to port these games to iOS. That’s because Game Porting Toolkit 2.0 works not only on the Mac, but also on the iPhone and iPad.
Game Porting Toolkit Overview
For those unfamiliar, Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit is capable of translating Windows games so that they run natively on macOS. Developers can use this tool to evaluate whether it’s worth porting their games to the Mac, and then work on optimizations for the macOS version of the game – this includes converting DirectX graphics to Metal.
The SDK also helps developers take advantage of other built-in system features, such as support for game controllers, Spatial Audio, and HDR video.
Improvements in Game Porting Toolkit 2.0
With macOS Sequoia, Apple is introducing Game Porting Toolkit 2 with a series of improvements and new options. For instance, the new version has better graphics performance and compatibility with more software. It also works with ray-tracing on compatible hardware and features the AVX2 instruction set.
Expanding to iOS
But surely the biggest news here is that Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit now works with iOS 18 too. In one of the WWDC 2024 sessions, the company talked about how developers can now use Game Porting Toolkit to port a Windows game to macOS and then port the macOS version to iPhone and iPad.
When a developer optimizes their game for macOS, it can easily be ported to iOS. That’s because the SDK shares things like support for game controllers, audio, and graphics. For example, the vibrations implemented for game controllers can be easily replicated with the iPhone’s Haptic Engine using the same API.
This will certainly make Apple’s platforms a bit more appealing to game developers, as they’ll be able to port their titles to multiple devices with little effort.
Availability
Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit 2 is now available as a beta for developers. More details can be found. iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia will be released to the public this fall.
Now, if only Apple TV had a more powerful chip to also run ported games…
