Update: Crossover has now officially announced support for DirectX 12 and allows Mac users to play Diablo IV on a Mac.
In an exciting move for those that want more gaming support for Macs, Crossover, which allows Mac users to run Windows applications and games without installing a full version of Windows, has announced it will support DirectX 12 in Crossover 23.
This is potentially big news for those that want to play Windows only games on Mac or those who rely on Windows only applications that use DirectX 12.
DirectX 12 is a powerful multimedia API that allows developers to create high-performance games and other applications on Windows PCs.
Many recent Windows or console only big game releases such as Diablo 4 and Hogwarts Legacy require DirectX 12 but the problem for Mac users is that most methods of running Windows on a Mac do not support it (although most methods do support DirectX 11 including Crossover).
Even virtual machines such as Parallels which is the best way to run Windows on a Mac, do not support DirectX 12 yet.
Until now, the only way to play games that require DirectX 12 on a Mac is to install Windows using Boot Camp but Boot Camp is only available on Intel Macs and does not work on the latest Apple Silicon Macs with the M1/M2 chips.
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Crossover’s support for DirectX 12, means that Mac users on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs may finally be able to play major game releases even if they are Windows only.
Crossover works by using a modified version of Wine which is an open-source compatibility layer that allows programs designed for Windows to run on other operating systems.
While Wine is tricky to setup and use, Crossover wraps it up in a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for Mac users to install and use Windows programs.
One of the advantages of Crossover compared to other methods of running windows on a Mac such as virtual machines is that it doesn’t require a copy of Windows to be installed on the Mac.
This means that Crossover requires less disk space and avoids the hassle of dual-booting a Mac with two operating systems.
Apart from support for DirectX 12, Crossover 23 will also include better support for high-resolution displays, improved graphics rendering and better shader compilation.
Crossover has revealed that the first game to support DirectX 12 on a Mac will be Diablo II Resurrected and it has already managed to get the game working on a Mac with Alpha builds of Crossover 23.
However, there’s no mention of whether Diablo 4 will work yet (check out our look at how to play Diablo 4 on a Mac for more on this).
Codeweaver, the team behind Crossover, have said that Crossover 23 is due for release later this summer.
You can read more about playing games using Crossover on a Mac here.
Apple Announces Gaming Porting Kit
The news that Crossover 23 will support DirectX 12 coincides with the WWDC where Apple announced the release of macOS Sonoma with a new Game Porting Toolkit and Gaming Mode.
The new Gaming Mode in Sonoma also includes a new Gaming Porting Kit for developers to allow them to more easily bring their games to macOS too.
In the WWDC demonstration of a Windows game that has been ported to Mac using the Game Porting Kit, it shows a game being played with DirectX 12 being translated in the background (see video below).
Like Crossover, the new Gaming Porting Kit has been based on Wine by Apple to support DirectX 12.
If this is the case and game developers decide to take advantage of it, it may mean that you won’t even need Crossover to play games that require DirectX 12.
You read more about Apple’s announcement of the Game Porting Kit here and watch Apple’s full video on it here.
However, one major hurdle will remain for both Crossover and any games ported to mac using the new Gaming Porting Kit in macOS Sonoma – cheat protection software.
Other than installing Windows with Boot Camp, there are currently no ways to make games work on a Mac that use cheat protection software such as Denuvo and the Vanguard anti-cheat software.
So even if Crossover and Apple solve the DirectX 12 problem, the anti-cheat software may prove a much tougher nut to crack.
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