Is it possible to play Need for Speed™ Heat on Mac?
Need for Speed™ Heat is a car-racing video game continuing the legendary NFS series. Brought to light in 2019 by Ghost Games and Electronic Arts, the Heat chapter has carried a new portion of breathtaking races rolled out on the bright streets of Palm city. As usual, this NFS chapter brings a world of different cars collected by players. Earn money on improving your roaring beasts by participating in legal daytime races. Once your garage acquires enough racing capacity, you will be able to blast into the race of lightning-fast cars competing across the night city. Illegal activity enticing packs of notorious cops is also present, so there is no way to be bothered driving through the volatile streets. Although the game is no longer a graphical standard, it is more than enough to satisfy your eye with the genuine NFS style. Unfortunately, because the game is not developed for Mac, some users have not been able to burn out the wheels on the racing streets of Palm city. Luckily, despite such an incompatibility, we are happy to say that there is a way to launch it on Mac eventually. All thanks to the cross-platform technologies discussed in the tutorial below.
System Requirements
| Minimal | Recommended |
|---|---|
| OS: 64-bit Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 | OS: Windows 10 (64-bit versions only) |
| Processor: Intel i5-4430 / AMD FX-3570 | Processor: Intel Core i5 4790 @ 3.2GHZ (4 CPUs) / AMD X8 FX-8350 @ 4GHZ (8 CPUs) |
| RAM: 8 GB | RAM: 16 GB |
| Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 / AMD Radeon R7 280x | Video card: DirectX 11.0 Compatible video card (AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB / nVidia GeForce GTX 1060 3GB) |
| DirectX: from 10 version | DirectX: from 10 version |
| Disc space: 50 GB | Disc space: 50 GB SSD |
Play Need for Speed Heat on Mac with Parallels
Need for Speed Heat does not require lots of PC resources, and you can play the game on any Mac computer (iMac, iMac Pro, or Mac Pro), where Parallels Desktop can be a solution. This is software for Windows virtualization on Mac with the full support of DirectX and GPUs. It allows you to install Windows 10 on Mac with a couple of clicks and switch between MacOS and Windows instantly. You can run Windows just like on a regular PC, install Steam and enjoy Need for Speed Heat game on Mac.
Note: Recommended devices to run resource-demanding games: MacBook Pro (models with Intel processor, discrete graphics cards, and 16 Gb of RAM or more), iMac (models with Intel processor, discrete graphics cards, and 16 GB of RAM or more), iMac Pro (all versions are suitable), Mac Pro (all versions are suitable). Parallels on Mac computers with M1 (M1 Pro, M1 Max) chips may not support recent games. Games that require DirectX 12 and later currently not supported by Parallels.
Play Need for Speed Heat on Mac with Boosteroid, Xbox Cloud Gaming or Nvidia Geforce Now
Update: Boosteroid, Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia Geforce Now support Need for Speed Heat to the date, and you can play Need for Speed Heat on Mac on full settings! Register and explore cloud gaming now!
If you have an old Mac, or it cannot satisfy Need for Speed Heat game system requirements, there is an easy solution. Cloud gaming provides you with sufficient cloud resources for a fixed fee. All you need is a browser or small client program and a good internet connection starting from 15 MBits/s. There are several great services, that provide such an opportunity, among the best are Boosteroid, Nvidia GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming. All three services already have Need for Speed Heat in their game catalog, and you can play on any Mac computer (starting from MacOS 10.10) and even Android!
Play Need for Speed Heat on Mac with BootCamp
Note: Mac computers with new Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3 Pro, or M1, M2, M3 Max) currently do not support BootCamp. In this case, please, use the options above to run Need for Speed Heat on Mac
This method is simple but time-consuming. If your Mac meets all system requirements above, this is probably the best way to play Need for Speed Heat for now. You need to set up a dual boot of Windows and Mac via BootCamp. BootCamp allows users to choose the system to work in on startup, however, you won’t be able to switch between systems like in Parallels. You will need to reboot your machine every time you switch from Mac to Windows and vice versa. Remember that Mac is just a computer, that uses common processors, RAM, disks, and other components. So you can install Windows on Mac by allocating disc space of a minimum of 64 GB (to be able to run Windows and a couple of games). To set up Windows via BootCamp, please, do the following:
For OS X El Capitan 10.11 or later
Mention, that for MacOS versions prior to OS X El Capitan 10.11 you will need to create bootable Windows USB.
- Download Windows ISO file
- Open Boot Camp Assistant (Go to Applications > Utilities)
- Define the Windows partition size, choose downloaded Windows ISO file
- Format Windows partition and go through all Windows installation steps
- When Windows boots for the first time, follow on-screen instructions to install Boot Camp and Windows support software (drivers)