Could games be run inside a virtual Linux environment, rather than Apple’s Metal or similar tool?
This would also help game developers - now they only need to build for Windows, Linux, and consoles.
The reverse, i.e. running Linux binaries on Windows or macOS, is not easily possible without virtualization, since Linux uses direct syscalls instead of always going through a dynamically linked static library that can take care of compatibility in the way that Wine does. (At the very least, it requires kernel support, like WSL1; Wine is all userspace.)
> But after that, Rosetta will be pared back and will only be available to a limited subset of apps—specifically, older games that rely on Intel-specific libraries but are no longer being actively maintained by their developers. Devs who want their apps to continue running on macOS after that will need to transition to either Apple Silicon-native apps or universal apps that run on either architecture.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/apple-details-the-en...
It's all a question of using the right/performant hardware interfaces, e.g. IOMMU-based direct hardware access rather than going through software emulation for performance-critical devices.