Discussion [Speculation] Possibility of Microsoft Windows Games ON NINTENDO SWITCH ( wineHQ implementation )?

Possible, but not practical (it would work really really slowly if at all). Windows apps are made for x86 or x86_64 CPU architectures and the Switch runs on ARM. Emulating x86 on ARM is rather a slow and painful process.

from: https://wiki.winehq.org/Emulation

 

Misleading thread and fake picture of dead space on switch.

 

With Dolphin you are not emulating x86 you are emulating PowerPC.


Also, Wine is not an emulator. You still need an x86 or x86_64 CPU to be able to to run Windows games and/or programs. Unless someone port Wine for ARM which only has compatibilty with programs or games ported to Windows RT (Microsoft’s 32-bit operating system for ARM architectures).

 

Man.. I got excited. This would be pretty neat.

 

Wine for Android requires an x86 CPU if you want it to run x86 windows games. It is not for any Android out there.

 

I would guess basically impossible, it's much work porting stuff to work on ARM. Wine needs a x86 CPU to be able to run stuff from x86, as it doesn't emulate it, but just gives kind of a background for it to be able to run. It's theorically possible, but the amount of work to make it function would be insane.

 

Theoretically this would be possible. If someone wanted to port QEMU to the Switch it could be used as a compatibility layer to interface with Wine. See here for the patches required to make it work on the RPi. Though, tbh, if someone ported QEMU it would probably be better to run a stripped down version of Windows XP in it rather than a Linux distro with wine.

 

You don't seem to understand a thing here, but yeah keep dreaming, your best shot at playing windows games on the switch would more be with virtualization through linux rather than wine, it could even probably launch a few old school games but nothing like assassin's creed or dead space...

 

Man that title got me excited for a bit, that's not cool.

 

This is very misleading and doesn't understand the underlying tech. Wine in itself is a compatibility layer for running code built for a different operating system, but in the same architecture (x86) -- wine in itself is not emulation, and on top of that it's not as well developed for ARM which is your first barrier to getting it working on Tegra. Plus you'd still need to port over or emulate the x86->arm components of the program.

Second, once wine is more supported for ARM, which would almost certainly require more powerful ARM processors hitting consumers, given the Tegra X1 is already 3-4 years old, maybe you'll see some opportunities in emulation/compatibility layers for x86 tech.

it's far more likely you'll see someone attempt to port Windows 10 and try to use Windows on ARM translation/emulation technology before you see Wine. Tegra used to be the backbone of WinRT so it's not impossible, just very unlikely without a business use as the real purpose was to get Photoshop and such working on ARM, not games.

dolphin on ARM is also not comparable. The binaries and code was built on ARM, and then it runs the same emulation tech that was originally built on x86. Porting wine would only work if you're also trying to run ARM-based windows code, because it's just adding compatibility for those operations.

 

We have dosbox at the moment so that's something

 

We might see this become practical for some things in the future, since Windows 10 runs on ARM and is technically capable of running desktop programs as long as they're compiled for ARM. Don't think any Windows games support ARM yet though, and since Windows on ARM isn't terribly popular it's never going to be supported by any large amount of games or software.

 

Why have you highlighted FreeBSD?

 

That switch picture is so fake. lol.

 

For the second time, I was talking about the title. The image has nothing to with it and the lack of question marks in the title lead me to believe this was some sort of release.