CrossOver update brings EA and DirectX 12 game support to Mac

AppleInsider

CrossOver 23 now lets Mac and Linux users play Windows games from EA, or which rely on DirectX 12, while its new geometry shader support allows games to play without graphics issues.

Windows games running on Apple Silicon

Following its first successful tests of running DirectX 12 games on Mac in June 2023, CodeWeavers has now announced that an update CrossOver 23 is shipping with this feature and more.

"Our most exciting feature is initial DirectX 12 support on macOS," says the company in a blog post. "Diablo II Resurrected and Diablo IV are currently running well on macOS Ventura, making them the first DirectX 12 games working on a released macOS version."

"This breakthrough was the culmination of years of development," it continues, "and we look forward to continuing to aggressively pursue support for even more DirectX 12 titles."

Alongside DirectX 12, however, the new CrossOver 23 adds geometry shaders to prevent the black screens or other graphics issues in games. Plus the EA app is now running on macOS Ventura using CrossOver.

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"Looking ahead, we are preparing for macOS Sonoma," says the company. "We are actively working on compatibility fixes and plan to release an update for Crossover 23 on the same day Sonoma is released."

The new CrossOver 23 is available direct from CodeWeavers and costs $74. A free trial version is also available.

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9secondkox2

Only for Intel? Or for Apple Silicon as well? 

mknelson

9secondkox2 said:

Only for Intel? Or for Apple Silicon as well? 

Yeah - probably the most important detail and it's not in the blog post either.

The requirements page says Intel or Apple Silicon, but it stops at CrossOver 22.
https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover#requirements

Mike Wuerthele

mknelson said:

9secondkox2 said:

Only for Intel? Or for Apple Silicon as well? 

Yeah - probably the most important detail and it's not in the blog post either.

The requirements page says Intel or Apple Silicon, but it stops at CrossOver 22.
https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover#requirements

We've asked. We're pretty sure it's for both.

aderutter

Wonder if Apex Legends runs better (ASi). 

narwhal

This tech seems important enough for the Mac that Apple should pay them to port existing DirectX 12 games for Apple Arcade.

blastdoor

narwhal said:

This tech seems important enough for the Mac that Apple should pay them to port existing DirectX 12 games for Apple Arcade.

I love that idea. There is the "Apple Game Porting Toolkit", though, which isn't as ambitious as your suggestion but is something. 

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/06/06/apple-says-emulation-in-macos-can-show-devs-how-windows-games-could-run

auxio

blastdoor said:

narwhal said:

This tech seems important enough for the Mac that Apple should pay them to port existing DirectX 12 games for Apple Arcade.

I love that idea. There is the "Apple Game Porting Toolkit", though, which isn't as ambitious as your suggestion but is something. 

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/06/06/apple-says-emulation-in-macos-can-show-devs-how-windows-games-could-run

Apple's toolkit appears to be based on Crossover, so it's the exact same technology. In fact, there are clues in that original article hinting to DirectX 12 support coming to Crossover (likely because of Apple's help).

loopless

CrossOver and Wine only really run very specific apps and games reliably.  If you want to use Win32 productivity apps ( e.g.  any Office 365 apps and pretty much everything else apart from games) then Windows 11 ARM64 running in Parallels is the way to go. 

tht

Apple needs to be more committed than just helping with the toolkit. 

They need to make deals and either have them available as part of Arcade or have come directly from the App Store. 

Marvin

tht said:

Apple needs to be more committed than just helping with the toolkit. 

They need to make deals and either have them available as part of Arcade or have come directly from the App Store. 

A direct install would be a lot easier for people to use and would get more attention. Although the crossover setup seems to be guided from start to finish, it involves a lot of steps and separate launchers:



Part of the problem here is where the game is hosted. Big game developers don't want to pay a cut to 3rd party stores, especially a company like Activision that makes billions every year. So you have to install the separate store first, then buy the game on the store and launch it through that.

What would be a nicer setup is to have the stores native on Mac then when installing a game, it does all that background installation and just runs it so Activision would have a deal with Crossover to wrap the game inside their compatibility layer for Mac and they could pay them a small fee like $1-3 per copy. I doubt Codeweavers sells many individual copies of Crossover per year. They employ ~45 people so $5-10m/year running costs. At $64 per copy, they need 150k sales per year between Linux/Mac.

A single big game could sell 1 million copies on Mac so $1-3 per game could cover their running costs. They could continue selling Crossover, it would just be easier for most Mac users to have a 1-click install option.

fastasleep

tht said:

Apple needs to be more committed than just helping with the toolkit. 

They need to make deals and either have them available as part of Arcade or have come directly from the App Store. 

This has nothing to do with Apple's toolkit. They don't need to "make deals" for developers to sell in the App Store — either they will, or they won't. Arcade is another issue, but that also has nothing to do with Crossover or the toolkit. What are you talking about?

tht

fastasleep said:

tht said:

Apple needs to be more committed than just helping with the toolkit. 

They need to make deals and either have them available as part of Arcade or have come directly from the App Store. 

This has nothing to do with Apple's toolkit. They don't need to "make deals" for developers to sell in the App Store — either they will, or they won't. Arcade is another issue, but that also has nothing to do with Crossover or the toolkit. What are you talking about?

Apple’s Game Porting Tool Kit uses CrossOver’s open source toolkit. Apple dropped like 20k lines of CrossOver code during WWDC. This de facto improves CrossOver’s support for macOS, while Apple is using CrossOver to try to get game developers to port. So they are hoping for a little synergy with this. 

A CrossOver or Wine strategy is perfectly fine, as opposed to porting the game to ObjC+Swift+Metal. This is what the Valve does for the Steam Deck. All those games it runs are Windows games running on Linux, on a handheld, with Proton, which is an enhanced Wine, like CrossOver is.  

But it is only fine if Apple is committed. Waiting on game developers to do it isn’t going to be enough. Apple has to create the demand for gaming on macOS games. That means publishing games themselves and proving that developers can make money on macOS. 

Hence me comment. Supporting CrossOver and the Game Porting Tool Kit isn’t enough. Apple has to create the demand.