At the WWDC 2025, Apple renewed its commitment to gaming. This year’s announcements reveal a more straightforward strategy: building a real gaming ecosystem across macOS and iOS, with new tools, a dedicated launcher, and enhanced graphics technologies for both players and developers, while aligning the operating systems more closely across the Apple devices.

Apple is currently the only company offering native AAA games, like Resident Evil Village and Death Stranding, on both desktop and mobile devices.

Apple creates a new game launcher 

With the new app called Games, Apple introduces its first native application built entirely around gaming. Available on iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe, the app provides a centralized interface to keep track of purchased titles, access installed games, launch sessions, view social activity, and invite friends.

While it doesn’t match the depth of platforms like Steam, the Epic Games Store, or GOG.com, Games brings a simpler structure, fully integrated within the Apple ecosystem. It also features a custom in-game overlay that allows players to adjust settings such as volume, brightness, and power-saving modes, while offering quick ways to interact with other players.

The Metal HUD improvements

Apple’s Metal HUD, the heads-up display that shows real-time game information, has been improved with clearer visuals and better data organization. Players can now customize which metrics appear, focusing only on the information that matters most. The result is a more straightforward and intuitive way to monitor and manage game performance while playing.

Metal 4 and frame generation bring next-level graphics on Mac

The latest version of Apple’s proprietary graphics API, Metal 4, introduces several advanced features powered by machine learning. Neural rendering improves shaders, geometry, and upscaling, while frame interpolation automatically adds new frames for smoother gameplay, similar to NVIDIA’s DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling). Metal 4 also features advanced denoising to enhance texture sharpness. These improvements enable games to run at higher frame rates with better graphics quality and fewer performance issues, but they’re exclusive to Apple Silicon devices.

Apple introduces Game Porting Toolkit 3.0

One of the biggest challenges of gaming on Mac has always been figuring out which titles run natively and which offer decent performance. Apple’s updated Game Porting Toolkit 3.0 aims to address this by providing developers with improved tools that simplify the process of porting games and translating shaders for macOS.
The new version also introduces remote development tools that enable developers working on a Mac to debug and test Windows games remotely, streamlining cross-platform development without requiring device switching.

New games announced

Alongside the technical updates, Apple announced several new titles that will be coming to Mac. While most are still indie games, the lineup now features higher-profile releases such as the long-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition (including the Phantom Liberty DLC), as well as upcoming titles like Hitman: World of Assassination, Sniper Elite 5, the Lies of P expansion Overture, and Dead Island 2. It’s a clear signal that Apple is aiming to take a more active role in the video game industry, targeting not just casual players but also fans of more demanding AAA experiences.

In addition, Apple confirmed that with the release of macOS 26, support for Rosetta 2 will gradually phase out on Intel-based Macs. While some transitional solutions may remain in place for a limited time, the company is focusing on Apple Silicon chips as the foundation for the future of gaming and high-performance computing on macOS.