For the truly dedicated, you can now run Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim directly in Mac OS X thanks to the Porting Team’s unofficial Mac port of the freakishly popular game. The game is played either through a Cider wrapper or Wineskin, the latter being easier but the former apparently having better performance, but in both cases you’ll need to own a Windows copy of the game to get it working (frankly the game is going to run a lot better natively in Windows through Boot Camp anyway), leaving this in the realm of determined die-hards.

Neither the Cider or Wineskin methods are the easiest thing in the world to get working, and if you have no experience with this sort of thing you should probably just buy the game for Xbox 360, PS3, or stay with booting into Windows on your Mac. Nonetheless, if you’re committed, here’s what you’ll need:



An accessible Windows copy of Skyrim from Steam

Wineskin (free download)

Visit the PortingTeam for the ports and details (simple forum registration required)

If you run into problems getting it setup or if it’s not running that well, the Porting Team forums are very helpful to sort things out. Below is a screenshot of the game in OS X from their forums:

My advice? You’re buying the game for Windows anyway to get the thing to work on a Mac, just run it in Boot Camp and get the best performance possible.