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GameHub For Mac First Look! (Play PC Games on Apple)

IbizaPocholo

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


Play AAA Games on Your MAC! Game Hub For MAC, If you're familiar with GameHub for Android, you know how powerful it is. Now, that same Wine and Proton-powered magic is coming to macOS. In this video, I test the highly anticipated GameHub Mac Beta using Apple's latest Game Porting Toolkit 3.0.
We push the hardware to its limits, testing everything from Skyrim and GTA V on the brand new MacBook Neo (running the A18 Pro chip with 8GB RAM), all the way up to Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Spider-Man: Miles Morales on an absolute powerhouse M4 Max MacBook Pro. We're looking at frame rates, thermal performance, and how well this software translates DirectX 12 games out of the box!

0:00 - What is GameHub for Mac?
1:09 - UI Walkthrough & Settings Setup
3:00 - Game Porting Toolkit 3.0 Integration
6:54 - MacBook Neo Setup (A18 Pro Chip)
8:09 - Skyrim on MacBook Neo Test
8:45 - GTA V on MacBook Neo Test
9:40 - M4 Max MacBook Pro Setup
10:28 - GTA V Test (M4 Max)
11:08 - Spider-Man: Miles Morales (M4 Max)
11:43 - Final Thoughts & Release Info
Click to expand...
 
Neat to see. I had a MacBook Air many years ago and while I loved it as a general purpose machine, I couldn't get over the gaming limitations. I obviously knew this would be an issue going into it, but it kept me from staying within the Mac ecosystem when I was looking for an upgrade. Would love to see a future where we get the best of both worlds. Glad to see some serious work is going into making that happen.
 
With FeX getting this good, it's only a matter of time before we see Steam officially on Mac. Even if it's a .DMG that you have to install from the Internet, it will still be a huge boon for Mac Gaming.
 
I mean this is no better than Crossover, they took the work the Crossover team did and introduced a front end with bunch of telemetry going to Chinese servers. You also have to trust them with Steam account credentials.

There is a reason people are using a fork for Android.
 
Jinzo Prime said:
Really? I had no idea. So why do we need Gamehub?
Click to expand...
Steam for Mac only supports games that have a native macOS version. You might be thinking of Proton, Valve's tech that enables Windows-native games run on Linux. GameHub and a competing product called CrossOver translate Windows applications to run directly on macOS or Linux or Android. So if there's a game in your Steam library without a native macOS version, you'll need to use one of those translation tools.
 
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Demigod Mac said:
Steam for Mac only supports games that have a native macOS version. You might be thinking of Proton, Valve's tech that enables Windows-native games run on Linux. GameHub and a competing product called CrossOver translate Windows applications to run directly on macOS or Linux, Steam doesn't do this on its own.
Click to expand...
I wonder if Valve will update Steam to use Proton/Game Porting Toolkit/FEX-Emu to get games running on Mac? Seems like a missed opportunity.
 
Jinzo Prime said:
I wonder if Valve will update Steam to use Proton/Game Porting Toolkit/FEX-Emu to get games running on Mac? Seems like a missed opportunity.
Click to expand...
Valve would have to have a solution that reliably translates to Apple's graphics API, is my understanding. So you gotta convert from x86 to ARM (early days), directx to vulkan (already how the deck does it), and then Vulkan to Apple's metal API in some fashion. I believe the Game Porting Toolkit uses Apple's D3DMetal translation layer, which not sure how much Valve can control it to work consistently with enough games.

Apple is the only one in the way of these opportunities.
 
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FYI: This isn't new. You have been able to play windows games on Macs for years now. Cross over and whiskey has been around for a long time.

The big change now is the new Apple silicon chips can actually do it well.
 
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Durin said:
Valve would have to have a solution that reliably translates to Apple's graphics API, is my understanding. So you gotta convert from x86 to ARM (early days), directx to vulkan (already how the deck does it), and then Vulkan to Apple's metal API in some fashion. I believe the Game Porting Toolkit uses Apple's D3DMetal translation layer, which not sure how much Valve can control it to work consistently with enough games.

Apple is the only one in the way of these opportunities.
Click to expand...
God, I hope John Ternus just has Apple join Kronos and puts the Vulcan API on Mac. It would save everyone a shit ton of time and effort.
 
Jinzo Prime said:
I wonder if Valve will update Steam to use Proton/Game Porting Toolkit/FEX-Emu to get games running on Mac? Seems like a missed opportunity.
Click to expand...
It'd be very cool if Valve ported Proton to macOS but I'm not so confident this would happen. Valve partners with Codeweavers on developing Proton, but CodeWeavers also sells the CrossOver product on Mac, so a macOS version of Proton would significantly eat into their sales. Things could happen though if the Windows market share declines further enough and Valve feels it's worth the investment to make a new deal with CodeWeavers.
 
Jinzo Prime said:
God, I hope John Ternus just has Apple join Kronos and puts the Vulcan API on Mac. It would save everyone a shit ton of time and effort.
Click to expand...
Yeah, this stuff would be sooo much simpler if Apple would just allow Vulkan to be supported natively, and likely if that support was there you'd even see Valve work on custom support for the M chips in FEX so they get better performance.

If Apple would just offer a guest door into their walled garden to support an API, they'd already be able to market Macbooks as gaming devices with great battery life.
 
Demigod Mac said:
It'd be very cool if Valve ported Proton to macOS but I'm not so confident this would happen. Valve partners with Codeweavers on developing Proton, but CodeWeavers also sells the CrossOver product on Mac, so a macOS version of Proton would significantly eat into their sales. Things could happen though if the Windows market share declines further enough and Valve feels it's worth the investment to make a new deal with CodeWeavers.
Click to expand...
My only solution to the CrossOver problem would be for Valve to buy or merge with Codeweavers. CW isn't a very big company and could benefit from the stability Steam provides, but that's just my random thoughts on the matter.
 
Apple would rather games use their own Metal API than Vulkan or MoltenVK, so the best we can hope for is they keep improving the toolkit to help developers create Metal renderers.
For better or worse, when Apple develops in-house technology they expect everyone to go all-in on it.
 
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