Summary :
Boot Camp is the best way to run a Windows-only PC game on your Mac. Macs don’t come with Windows, but you can install Windows on your Mac via Boot Camp and reboot into Windows whenever you want to play these games. This allows you to run Windows games at the same speeds they’d run at on a Windows PC laptop with the same hardware. For maximum performance, the best way to play Windows games on an Intel-based Mac is to install Apple Boot Camp, install Windows, and then boot into Windows to play Windows games. However, Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0 (and higher) supports DirectX and OpenGL and a number of games have been tested and found to work, VMWare Fusion 1.1 (and.
It is impossible to directly run Windows games on Mac. But, due to some reasons, you want to do it. How to play Windows games on Mac? This post shows you some possible ways. While to solve data loss issue on both Windows and Mac, you can ask MiniTool Software for help.
How to install Windows apps on your Mac using CrossOver. If you want to install Windows apps on your Mac without all the overhead associated with Windows, follow these steps. Navigate to CodeWeavers and download CrossOver. Go to your Downloads folder and locate the Zip file you downloaded. Double Click it to open it.
Yes, you can play many games on your Mac computers. However, compared with Windows devices, there are always limits on Mac. Most Mac devices are lacking in the graphics department, and even worse now, there is a lack of decent macOS-supported AAA games.
In this situation, you may ask is it possible to play Windows Steam games on Mac? In fact, the answer is yes and there is more than one way to run Windows games on Mac.
In the following contents, we will show you how to play Windows games on Mac in different ways. You can select one accordingly.
GeForce Now for Mac
Pros: Easy to operate, no need to download it, huge library of AAA games are available
Cons: Needs internet connection with high speed and recommends Ethernet cable over Wi-Fi
The best and easiest way to play Windows Steam games on Mac is to use GeForce Now for Mac, an Nvidia’s cloud-based game streaming service for macOS and Mac OS X users.
Currently, it has a Beta form in Europe and the US. With it, you can play many games from the Steam or Battle.net accounts instantly without worrying about the machines’ graphical power.
How To Get Mac Os On Windows
How to play Windows games on Mac via GeForce Now for Mac? You can search for a guide online.
Shadow
Pros: full cloud-based Windows experience, high-end specs for gaming
Cons: a high-speed internet connection is needed, expensive
If you want the full Windows experience, Shadow is your best choice. Unlike GeForce Now for Mac, Shadow can offer you a full copy of Windows 10, enabling you to install many launchers, like Steam, Origin, Epic Games Store, etc. and modify settings as you do on a Windows computer.
Besides, some applications are available on Mac, Windows, Android and iOS. With Shadow, you are able to access to the virtual PC from almost any device.
Additionally, the internet speeds of Shadow are very fast. The virtual computer can offer up to 1GB/s download speeds and 100MB/s upload speeds. That is the game downloads and updates are lightning-fast.
However, you need to pay for this service with price at £26.95 per month now.
Boot Camp
Pros: cost-efficient
Cons: needs more hard drive space.
If you don’t want to pay for playing Windows games on Mac, you can choose to partition your hard drive with Boot Camp. Then, you can run Windows on a separate partition. This means that you need to use hard drive space on your Mac to run Windows. By the way, you’d better install Windows 10 on the separated partition. Then, you can play both Windows and Xbox games on your Mac computer.
To do this job, you can also search for a guide on the internet.
Are you bothered by Xbox One green screen of death issue? Do you want to fix it? Now, you can read this article to get some available solutions.
Virtualization Software
Pros: allow you to run Windows and Mac side-by-side.
Cons: decreased computer performance, expensive.
Using virtualization program to run Windows games on Mac is another choice. The software includes Parallels, VMware, VirtualBox, and more.
But, you should know that this will hit the computer performance since the virtualization software is running on the same partition and your computer need to run other programs in the background.
There are also some other choices for you to run Windows games on Mac. For example, you can use Wine to build an additional layer on your Mac. Then, it tells Mac to run Windows Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to run Windows programs without error, but, it is not fully compatible with all games. Besides, if you are old school DOS gamers, you can choose to use Boxer to play Windows Steam games on Mac.
How to play Windows games on Mac? Now, you can choose a way based on your actual situation.
I like gaming so of course first post will be about installing a Windows game on Mac OS X (and Linux). I have been gaming for a long time and got a decent amount of games at Steam.
A few years ago I deleted Windows and installed Linux on main computer which I use as a server, I also bought a Mac for my daily work. The bad thing about stop using Windows was I “lost” about half my game on Steam, because they are Windows only.
Last week I wanted to play Anno 1404, I haven’t played it for years but it’s a Windows only game. I didn’t want to install Windows again, and I have tried to play games through Virtualbox, I didn’t like it. So the only real alternative was to use Wine. Wine is not an emulator, instead it translate Windows API to POSIX used by Linux and Mac OS.
Next problem to solve was to install the game. I got a legit copy of the game through Steam but both Mac and Linux clients are locked to the OS and you can’t install games for another os. Download the game from a torrent site didn’t feel right, and I wanted to use Steam. A simple solution would be to install Windows Steam with Wine and then download the game, but I didn’t like the idéa to have two Steam installed. SteamCMD is Another way to install the game using command line.
SteamCMD are a command line program for Windows, Mac and Linux written for easy install dedicated game servers and it’s maintained by Valve. You really don’t need any GUI if the machine only gonna run game servers. The best part, you are not bound to install game servers, you can install any game you own on any operating system. Valve provide binaries for all three operating system.
1) Install Brew and Wine
The easiest way to install Wine on a Mac is to use Brew. Brew describing itself as the missing packets manager on Mac. You can install command line program just like Linux.
2) Install SteamCMD
On a mac you need to create a directory to Steam and download the binaries.
3) Login and install a game
To install a game with SteamCMD you need a GameID. Simples way to obtain this are from Steam store URL. I use Anno 1404 as an example. http://store.steampowered.com/app/33250/Anno_1404/
Anno 1404 got GameID 33250
We only need three commands:
force_install_dir – if we need to change default install dir. I wanted easy access so I force it to install the game directly under Steam. Usually Steam install games buried deep in sub-dirs.
Windows Games On Mac Os X
@sSteamCmdForcePlatformType windows – The game does not exists to Linux or Mac OS so we need to use windows platform type.
app_update 33250 – install game, with the ID from steam store URL.
Then running steamcmd.sh first time, it will update, it can take a while.
UPDATE:
It seems like SteamCMD go back to default config after you close the program, so you have to change platform every time you use it. Plus you can only install the games you own, and free games.
4) Setup Wine with Winetricks
Anno 1404 got some dependencies. It need directx 9 and directx 10 to run and you probably need Windows fonts (corefonts). We only need to run winecfg to check if everything is working and it’s running Windows XP or Vista. (Best support for XP).
5) Run the game =)
Links)
Brew – https://brew.sh/
SteamCMD – https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD
Steam Store, Anno 1404 – http://store.steampowered.com/app/33250/Anno_1404/
WineHQ – https://www.winehq.org/
Download Mac Os On Windows
Winetricks https://wiki.winehq.org/Winetricks