Abstract:
nxnative, an open source project produced by developer seedds, is trying to allow Nintendo Switch games to run natively on Apple chip devices. In actual testing, "Monster Hunter: Rise" stably reached 60 frames on the basic M1 MacBook Air without running through a traditional simulator.
nxnative requires users to provide game files and prod.keys themselves, and then converts the content into applications that can be used on iPhone, iPad or Mac. Both Switch and Apple chips use the Arm64 instruction set, and the project will rewrite the game code so that it can be executed directly on Apple chips.
The project uses a small host to replace the Switch's Horizon OS and rebuild Nintendo's NVN graphics interface on top of Metal. The shader conversion borrows the work of Ryujinx, and the overall idea comes from d2r-mobile, which brought "Diablo II: Hellfire Reborn" to mobile devices.
YouTube creator Andrew Tsai used a base model M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of memory and no fan for testing. "Lord of the Beasts", "Dragon Quest XI S: Quest for Lost Time" and "Dark Souls: Remastered" all work, but "Doom: Eternal" cannot be launched.
The project README currently lists about 70 test games, and the target devices are mostly iPhone 15 Pro or newer models, and iPads equipped with M1 or newer chips; Mac applications need to be additionally built. nxnative currently does not support online functions and amiibo, and the compatibility of various games is not consistent. Individual successful cases do not mean that all works in the catalog can run smoothly.
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