Well, yes and no. The main point of compatibility that games should be working towards if they want to run well on macOS is to have ARM versions that work better with Apple’s M-series chips. SteamOS/The Steam Deck are still built for x86 processors which Apple has since stopped supporting.
It’s not impossible to bundle the games in an emulation layer, but it is a bit more involved than something like Proton/WINE, which are just compatibility layers and not emulators, and it comes at the cost of performance.
That’s the thing though. I bet you Valve is already prototyping an ARM based Steam Deck. It’s the logical next step to improve performance and thermals/battery at the same time.
Well, yes and no. The main point of compatibility that games should be working towards if they want to run well on macOS is to have ARM versions that work better with Apple’s M-series chips. SteamOS/The Steam Deck are still built for x86 processors which Apple has since stopped supporting.
It’s not impossible to bundle the games in an emulation layer, but it is a bit more involved than something like Proton/WINE, which are just compatibility layers and not emulators, and it comes at the cost of performance.
Rosetta 2 seems pretty good still. It’s not free translation, but it’s viable.
I don’t expect macOS to be the best platform for games, I just want them broadly playable.
Yeah a lot of the proton work is going into
https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/
Which there’s a cool user friendly experience with
https://getwhisky.app/
A lot of that work is going directly into
https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/
So there is certainly overlap, though as you said, architecture emulation is a different beast
That’s the thing though. I bet you Valve is already prototyping an ARM based Steam Deck. It’s the logical next step to improve performance and thermals/battery at the same time.
Not SteamDeck, but there is evidence that Valve is working on x86-ARM emulation for a stand-alone VR Headset.