Mar 10, 2020.

The Mac has plenty of games, but it'll always get the short end of the stick compared to Windows. If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to install Windows .. or do you?

There are a few ways you can play Windows games on your Mac without having to dedicate a partition to Boot Camp or giving away vast amounts of hard drive space to a virtual machine app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Here are a few other options for playing Windows games on your Mac without the hassle or expense of having to install Windows.

GeForce Now

PC gaming on Mac? Yes you can, thanks to Nvidia's GeForce Now. The service allows users to play PC games from Steam or Battle.net on macOS devices. Better still, the graphic power of these games resides on Nvidia's servers. The biggest drawback: the service remains in beta, and there's been no announcement when the first full release is coming or what a monthly subscription will cost.

For now, at least, the service is free to try and enjoy. All supported GeForce NOW titles work on Macs, and yes, there are plenty of them already available!

The Wine Project

The Mac isn't the only computer whose users have wanted to run software designed for Windows. More than 20 years ago, a project was started to enable Windows software to work on POSIX-compliant operating systems like Linux. It's called The Wine Project, and the effort continues to this day. OS X is POSIX-compliant, too (it's Unix underneath all of Apple's gleam, after all), so Wine will run on the Mac also.

Wine is a recursive acronym that stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's been around the Unix world for a very long time, and because OS X is a Unix-based operating system, it works on the Mac too.

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As the name suggests, Wine isn't an emulator. The easiest way to think about it is as a compatibility layer that translates Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls into something that the Mac can understand. So when a game says 'draw a square on the screen,' the Mac does what it's told.

You can use straight-up Wine if you're technically minded. It isn't for the faint of heart, although there are instructions online, and some kind souls have set up tutorials, which you can find using Google. Wine doesn't work with all games, so your best bet is for you to start searching for which games you'd like to play and whether anyone has instructions to get it working on the Mac using Wine.

Note: At the time of this writing, The Wine Project does not support macOS 10.15 Catalina.

CrossOver Mac

CodeWeavers took some of the sting out of Wine by making a Wine-derived app called CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is Wine with specialized Mac support. Like Wine, it's a Windows compatibility layer for the Mac that enables some games to run.

CodeWeavers has modified the source code to Wine, made some improvements to configuration to make it easier, and provided support for their product, so you shouldn't be out in the cold if you have trouble getting things to run.

My experience with CrossOver — like Wine — is somewhat hit or miss. Its list of actual supported games is pretty small. Many other unsupported games do, in fact work — the CrossOver community has many notes about what to do or how to get them to work, which are referenced by the installation program. Still, if you're more comfortable with an app that's supported by a company, CrossOver may be worth a try. What's more, a free trial is available for download, so you won't be on the hook to pay anything to give it a shot.

Boxer

If you're an old-school gamer and have a hankering to play DOS-based PC games on your Mac, you may have good luck with Boxer. Boxer is a straight-up emulator designed especially for the Mac, which makes it possible to run DOS games without having to do any configuring, installing extra software, or messing around in the Mac Terminal app.

Best Mac Extensions

With Boxer, you can drag and drop CD-ROMs (or disk images) from the DOS games you'd like to play. It also wraps them into self-contained 'game boxes' to make them easy to play in the future and gives you a clean interface to find the games you have installed.

Boxer is built using DOSBox, a DOS emulation project that gets a lot of use over at GOG.com, a commercial game download service that houses hundreds of older PC games that work with the Mac. So if you've ever downloaded a GOG.com game that works using DOSBox, you'll have a basic idea of what to expect.

Some final thoughts

In the end, programs like the ones listed above aren't the most reliable way to play Windows games on your Mac, but they do give you an option.

Of course, another option is to run Windows on your Mac, via BootCamp or a virtual machine, which takes a little know-how and a lot of memory space on your Mac's hard drive.

How do you play your Windows games on Mac?

Let us know in the comment below!

Updated October 2019: Updated with the best options.

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Apple is now redirecting (PRODUCT)RED purchases to COVID‑19 relief fund

Now through September 30, Apple is redirecting 100% of a portion of (PRODUCT)RED purchases to the Global Fund’s COVID‑19 Response.

Gaming on a Mac is not what Apple is historically known for. However, with Apple delving into the fledgling virtual and augmented reality space, some traditional game interfaces and not so traditional interfaces (think HTC wands or Valve's knuckle controllers) now need to be supported on macOS to reap the VR/AR benefits to their fullest.

Asphalt game free download mac software. Many of the cars I paid to max out, S cars for example, have been powered down from well over 300mph to under 280.

To ready you for some amazing VR pilot games such as Eve: Valkyrie that utilize a traditional game Xbox game controller, we're here to show you how to connect one to your Mac! In the past this method only applied to the Xbox 360 controller, but the latest version of the software you'll be using also now supports the Xbox One controller.

How to download and install the drivers

We're assuming that you already own a wired Xbox controller, but if you're needing to buy, a standard controller is about $50. You'll need to connect it to your Mac using a microUSB cable which, sadly, isn't included. If you buy a third-party wired controller you won't have to worry about this.

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Next, follow these steps.

1. Launch Safari.
2. Navigate to https://github.com/360/Controller/360Controller/releases.

3. Download the latest release of the 360Controller driver. As of this writing, the latest release is 0.16.5.

4. Go to your Downloads folder in Finder.
5. Double-click the 360Controllerinstall_*.dmg file.

6. Double-click the Install360Controller.pkg that pops up in Finder.

7. Click Continue.

8. Again, click Continue.

9. Select to Agree the license agreement.
10. Click Install.

11. Agree to allow a restart of the computer by clicking Continue Installation.

12. Click Restart.

13. You can optionally have the downloaded file Moved to Trash.

14. Upon restarting the computer start System Preferences from the dock or the  menu.
15. Click on Xbox 360 Controllers.

How to connect your Xbox 360 controller

Once you've installed the drivers, you'll now logically see that there are No devices found, since we have yet to physically connect the game controller to the Mac.

1. Plug in your controller to your Mac. If you have a current model MacBook or MacBook Pro, you'll need a USB-C to USB-A adapter.
2. Click OK when the System Extension Blocked warning message pops up.
3. Go into System Preferences via the dock or  menu.

4. Click Security & Privacy.

5. Under the General tab click the Lock at the bottom left.

6. Enter your password and click Unlock.

7. Click Allow.

Your Xbox wired controller should now be connected!

Final thoughts

Mac System Extension

I am super stoked about developers climbing aboard the VR/AR hype train. As a mere consumer of VR, I can only hope for more and more creative minds to get on board. If you're a VR/AR developer, or even better yet, a macOS VR/AR developer, what other ways can Apple help promote virtual reality on their platform? Let us know in the comments!

Game On A Mac Via Extension Download

Updated April 2018: Updated to reflect that this method also now supports the Xbox One controller.

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Game On A Mac Via Extension Online

Apple is now redirecting (PRODUCT)RED purchases to COVID‑19 relief fund

Game On A Mac Via Extension Box

Now through September 30, Apple is redirecting 100% of a portion of (PRODUCT)RED purchases to the Global Fund’s COVID‑19 Response.