How to Play Tekken 8 on Mac: M1 Benchmarks

“Get Ready for the Next Battle!” If this sounds familiar to you, chances are that you’ve played a lot of Tekken growing up. Developed with love by Bandai, Tekken 8 tries to innovate on everything that Tekken 7 did well. Using the new Unreal Engine 5, it promises better visuals, gameplay, and a larger roster of characters alongside great multiplayer support. This begs the question, how do you play Tekken on the Mac? And, if you can play it, what sort of benchmarks and performance should you expect?

Can You Play Tekken 8 on Mac?

Tekken 8 is not officially supported on Mac. However, you can still play the game on macOS thanks to the help of virtualization tools like CrossOver.

As of YET, Tekk

So, we’ve gone ahead and tested out the game ourselves. And yes, you can play Tekken 8 on macOS via CrossOver. Since the game runs on Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit, it has gotten much easier for games that typically don’t run well on Mac to now run butter-smooth. Plus, since CrossOver takes advantage of Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit, a lot of newer games like Palworld are able to run as well. 

How to Play Tekken 8 on Mac?

Look, we’re going to be honest. We here at MacGamerHQ really prefer games to be natively supported on Mac. However, you can make a case for a lot of the games we’ve covered recently, like Palworld and Lethal Company being too fun to ignore. Because of this, we’re going to go over how you can play Tekken 8 on the Mac, even though it is not officially supported on the platform. 

Our Preferred Method to play Tekken 8 on Mac M1: CrossOver

Mac Used: 16″ M1 Pro MacBook Pro and 14″ M3 Max MacBook Pro 36 GB
Method: CrossOver 23 (version 23.7) + Steam Demo version of the game

Here are the benchmarks of what you can expect from the game:

First things first, you will immediately notice that the game is locked to 60 FPS on the Mac. While we hope that this can be fixed by a CrossOver patch eventually, we won’t bet on it. Because of this, even though clearly the M3 Max and even slightly weaker machines can definitely pull more frames, they’re being soft-locked by the game, which means that we can’t figure out the true capabilities of the machine.

Besides that, the gameplay itself is pretty great. You will be able to plug most Windows-supported controllers in with no issues, and there’s no random lag or stuttering, which can be pretty jarring in a fighting game like Tekken. Therefore, if you aren’t annoyed by the FPS cap and have a decent machine, Tekken 8 should run like a breeze on the Mac. 

The Verdict: Should I Play Tekken 8 On My Mac?

Yes, Tekken 8 is playable on your Mac and works well with the base MacBook Air M1 as well, given that you are okay with playing the game at a slightly reduced frame rate. The multiplayer mode runs pleasantly as well, which means that you can play both the Campaign and online VS with no issues whatsoever. We can also anticipate that the game will run better on the Mac over time. Currently, it is locked to 60 FPS, which is a bit of a bummer as we can clearly see that the benchmarks prove that the M3 Max, in particular, can easily run this game at a higher frame rate if given the chance to do so. Regardless, if you want to test out whether the game works nicely on your Mac, CrossOver does offer a 14 day trial as well.

Is Tekken 8 Coming to Mac?

No, Tekken 8 is not going to come to the Mac anytime soon. This is because there is no real demand for the game on the Mac, and the franchise has usually always been played and enjoyed on consoles and the PC. Moreover, since the game runs relatively on CrossOver, the developers really lack the incentive to spend time and resources trying to optimize the game for the Mac or take out a native port, considering the small player base. If you really are into Tekken 8, we recommend you play on a PC or console instead.

Tekken 8 “Mac” Requirements

With Tekken 8 not coming to the Mac anytime soon, we can get an idea of the recommended specifications you should have on your Mac in order to play the game at a reasonable level:

Mac Games Like Tekken 8

Finding Mac games that are like Tekken? Well, there are a few that might just tickle your fancy. One of our favorite free-fighting games is Brawlhalla on the Mac. While it isn’t as combo-intensive, it still has a nice learning curve and contains a lot of depth for what it’s worth.