Crossover usually goes on sale on Cyber Monday
.The Samsung T9 external SSD works great if you bought the base MBP with limited storage.
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In 3 years, 50% of all computers capable of playing AAA games will be Macs
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Crossover usually goes on sale on Cyber Monday
.The Samsung T9 external SSD works great if you bought the base MBP with limited storage.
This crossover, is it running windows on the SSD with the translation to MacOS?Crossover usually goes on sale on Cyber Monday
The Samsung T9 external SSD works great if you bought the base MBP with limited storage.
Crossover runs under MacOS and translates the code.
Essentially after launching Crossover, you can run Windows Steam (and Windows Steam games) or non Steam Windows games that you have installed under Crossover.
The SSD is just to hold the games since the internal storage in a base MBP isn't that large.
Your Windows desktop will run the Windows games much better but it's nice to be able to game when you only have your MBP.
Crossover can have issues but I'm always amazed at how well it works (note - performance will differ depending on what Mac you are running).
@maflynn (he is also a Windows user that recently picked up a Mac) installed Crossover so you might ask him his opinion.
Crossover is a commercial version of WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) and its a compatibility layer that translates win32 system calls to macos compatible systems calls. Crossover is basically the older brother of Proton, the WINE layer used by Valve on their wildly popular Steamdeck.
As for how well it works - Surprisingly well. There can be occasional hicupp and odd occurance, but its an amazing piece of coding/technology to be playing a windows game on macOS. I will say that the games are highly dependent on the performance of your Mac. I found the M4 Pro lacking to run some games, but overall the M4 Studio to be perfect.
Another alternative one that I dabble in from time to time, is Geforce Now. Its a cloud gaming service, if you have decent internet bandwidth, it plays games on nvidia services. There's a free version that makes you watch some ads before starting a game, and I think it may place you on slower servers. I use the middle tier and find it runs games very well. I've not tried Starfield, I suppose I should.
Between the two, there's absolutely zero reasons in my book to fire up my PC to play games. It sits there unused and unplugged. Given Microsoft's latest moves at closing off ways for us consumers to use local accounts, I'm rather annoyed with MS and don't plan to return to windows.
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I can't give you FPS numbers, I never really compared things, but yes. Running an emulation layer that translates win32 code to macOS system calls, that then go to the macOS subsystems is less efficient then win32 calls, going directly to the windows subsystems. There's also the overhead needed to accommodate win32 calls that may not have a direct macos API call and so there's some work needed to translate that into something that macOS can use.
Overall, given the complexity of both windows and macOS APIs, its really impressive this works as well it does.
Edit
I asked chatgpt, and for directx 11 (or earlier) we're looking at about 10 - 15% performance hit, and for directx 12 games 30 to 40% all things being equal, i.e., similar hardware specs.
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Not really but native Win games will run better..
It's all dependent on the Mac hardware and how well the Windows the game is optimized.
Codeweavers offers a free trial of the latest version and, if you are interested, I would suggest downloading Crossover and trying all the games you might want to play on your MBP.
If money is a factor, Codeweavers usually has a sale during cyber Monday and Applegamingwiki has a coupon code.
The list of Crossover compatible games on Applegamingwiki is usually not up to date but it gives a rough idea of what will run. I find that the Codeweaver website gives the best compatibility results.
Note: Games that require anti-cheat programs will not run since these programs do not recognize Crossover or even the m series of processors.
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Depends on the game. Some bad native ports will actually run faster in Crossover. People say Borderlands 3 and BG 3 runs faster. OpenGL games run much faster. Some games have only little performance hit, like 10%. Some native ports will run MUCH faster. Resident Evil 4 runs 60-110% faster natively than in Crossover.
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Title "Linux usage on Steam hits a record high for the second month in a row"
Article: "As of last month, Linux users accounted for 3.2 percent of all Steam users."
https://www.theverge.com/news/837364/linux-usage-steam-hardware-survey-november-2025
Article: "As of last month, Linux users accounted for 3.2 percent of all Steam users."
https://www.theverge.com/news/837364/linux-usage-steam-hardware-survey-november-2025
There's a few reasons for that. I don't think that the Steam Deck is as big a factor in the growth of Linux as some have suggested. As Windows 10 has reached EOL, a lot of people are looking at Linux-based alternatives to Windows 11 such as CachyOS and Bazzite. There have been multiple reports that recent updates to Linux-based distros including Fedora have seen an influx of downloads and new installs, many of which are coming from Windows.
I will probably test both CachyOS and Bazzite out on another desktop I have at the house and see which OS I prefer, as I am growing increasingly frustrated with Micro$oft and Windows in general.
Steam Deck uses SteamOS Holo and that stands for almost 27% of the Linux share on Steam.
And most of those Windows users looking to ditch Microsoft won't be installing SteamOS holo, but some other Linux distribution. Note that Holo lost almost a full percent of the Linux share according to your screenshot. The implication is that the growth of Linux overall is greater than the growth of Halo itself.
That wasn’t my point. You said ”I don't think that the Steam Deck is as big a factor in the growth of Linux as some have suggested” but that number shows it is indeed. Before Steam Deck Linux had a smaller market share on Steam than Mac. After Valve started to include SteamOS and the Deck in their survey the number started to rise and is now larger than Mac market share. Steam Deck/OS makes up 27% of the Linux base so without it Linux would have 2.35% market share instead of 3.2% which means Steam Deck is a big factor in the growth of Linux as a whole.
However, the Steam Deck is a very niche product and the type of product where Linux has advantages as OSS. A company can tailor the software to its unique needs; and while they could be required to provide the software if asked, the requester would still have to invest a lot to come up with a viable competitive product.
I suspect most computer users have never heard of Steam Deck and it is not making Linux more recognizable as a viable alternative to Windows/MacOS. IMHO, it's a bit disingenuous to consider a dedicated game console as part of the overall OS market share, and even if you consider its market share, it is tiny.
Linux is a solid OS, but the very thing that makes it useful, i.e. being OSS and modifiable, hampers it in the desktop arena. a user is faced with the 'tyranny of choice' when deciding which to use, and even so many distros aren't exactly plug and play.
Linux, IMHO, has two main markets:
- The hardcore fan who wants the freedom of OSS and is willing to tinker with it to make it work and put up with various quirks/incompatibilities with major OS software formats and files
- Companies that need an adaptable OS for specific needs
I could see the majority of steam deck owners not really knowing that its running a version of Linux. They bought it to play games and it does that job extremely well.
I suspect you may be right, although it is possible, given theSteam Deck is a niche product, many are already into hardware and thus know it runs Linux.
I am pretty sure the Steam Deck is doing as well as it is because it is relatively inexpensive. There were handheld gaming pc's before the Deck, but all of them are fairly expensive.
That's part of it. But Steam OS and co. (e.g., Bazzite) actually make using a handheld gaming PC a pretty good experience. Microsoft finally got around to making a controller focused UI with the Xbox ROG Ally X for Windows and it still seems to have problems, sleep doesn't seem work fully in all games, etc. Steam Deck also has trackpads which helps with a bunch of games and navigation but a lot of the competitors like the ROG Ally series lack. Using basic Windows 11 with just a tiny touch screen and maybe a joystick mouse seems like a horrid experience.
Steam OS adds a lot of features that make using a handheld PC good. Built-in framerate limiter, TDP controls, etc.
Yes it is a way more polished experience than what MS offered until recently. I am curious to know how well the Legion Go is selling (at least the SteamOS variant).
What I found interesting (as an aside) is this comparision of AC:Shadows between the Steam Deck and the Switch 2.
I wonder if the Switch 2 settings would work well on iOS/iPadOS. The lack of reflections on the water is kind of jarring (to me) though.
EDIT: I also wonder if the settings used on the SD work/exists on macOS.
I wonder if the Switch 2 settings would work well on iOS/iPadOS. The lack of reflections on the water is kind of jarring (to me) though.
EDIT: I also wonder if the settings used on the SD work/exists on macOS.
So you view .85% of the overall market share as a "big factor". Given that the Linux market share overall is growing at a higher rate than .85%, and Steam OS itself dropped by .76% in the latest survey per your own screenshot, that means more new Linux-based installs are from sources other than Steam OS.
So you view 26.42% of 100% as a small insignificant factor? It’s 0.85% of 3.2%, not 100%. I’m talking about the overall growth since Steam Deck was released in Feb 2022. Linux market share in Nov grew by 0.15%, in Oct 0.37%, in Sep 0.04%, since July 0.31%.
It’s true that SteamOS’s market share has been declining from 45% in May 2024 to 26% in Dec 2025 but it still is a big factor. SteamOS/Deck makes up almost a third of the Linux Steam market share. Soon the numbers for Steam Machine will be added to the survey too.
Steam Linux Market Share | GamingOnLinux
Steam Linux user share statistics over time
That's what I've been saying. It's doesn't feel right to include handheld gaming devices in the stats for desktop Linux systems. It's like including iPad numbers in the Mac stats.