Nintendo switch games running natively on your Apple Silicon mac without the usual emulation overhead. The importance is that now you can get console games exclusive to the console on your mac that didn’t have a native way to play previously. This is possible through the open-source project called nxnative.
Open-source tool leverages shared ARM64 architecture for native play
They utilize the fact that Nintendo and Apple use similar ARM64 chip architecture. You should care because this is a more straightforward way to play games natively on your hardware.
They use a translation of graphics instructions to the apple metal api for compatibility to play on macOS and iOS. We see this technology in action on Apple Silicon Macs from the YouTuber Andrew Tsai. He’s showing the tech on his M1 macbook air base model.
The one with 8gb ram. He mentions how this tech was meant to put Switch games into .ipa for iPhones and ipads. Making the standalone .app macOS bundle was an afterthought. It’s an added step you do in terminal.
61 games supported on iPhones and iPads by this open-source project so far. We see monster hunter rise running a locked 60 FPS on this M1 macbook air that was tested. Console exclusive that did not get a windows version, unicorn overlord runs natively.
Dark Souls remaster runs fine without any internet. There’s occasional vertex glitches. The new Square Enix game, final fantasy resonance that just came out plays. It has some minor graphical flicker issues.
Doom eternal type heavy games did not boot up in testing. You need to provide game files that are legally dumped and the prod.keys from a modded console for this to work. They don’t specify which macOS versions or list out all the Apple silicon models that this works on.
This is in a gray legal area as Nintendo has dmca’d other projects similar like macnativegames. Which does confirm that this tech works and it’s a very fragile legal and compatibility stage.
Source: TweakTown
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