How to Play Fallout New Vegas on Mac

Are you (not so) patiently waiting for Fallout 4 to come out next week? Are you frustrated when you go to install Fallout New Vegas on your Mac—for some Fallout fun while you wait, of course—only to find it’s PC-only? Save your Darth Vader scream (James Earl Jones, not Hayden Christensen), there is (a new) hope! You can play the Fallout series and you don’t have to drop $500 on an Xbox to play on a console.

If you virtualize Windows on your Mac using Parallels Desktop 10 or 11, you can install Windows on your Mac and dive right into New Vegas.

If you’re like me, you have a gaming rig (PC) at home because we’re still living in a PC-dominated game environment. More and more games are coming out for Mac, which is great! But I want access to my entire library, because I’m not taking that gaming rig with me everywhere. A virtual machine does have its constraints, but it’s perfect for being able to install those games that you want to check in on outside of your marathon gaming sessions at home.

As for me, I’ll be wandering through New Vegas for the next week while I’m refreshing my UPS delivery tracker with my Pip Boy edition of Fallout 4.

Are you virtualizing Windows to play any games? Comment below or tell us on Twitter what you’re playing!

9 comments on “How to Play Fallout New Vegas on Mac”

Mark Iomc Mario Cartwright
November 10, 2015 at 1:30 pm

Just FYI, this does NOT work. Fallout 4 requires DirectX 11, which is NOT supported on any current version of Parallels Desktop.
Lindsay
November 10, 2015 at 1:39 pm

Hi Mark, you’re correct that you can’t currently play Fallout 4 via a Parallels Desktop virtual machine. However, in this blog post, Megan is talking about the ability to play Fallout New Vegas on a Parallels Desktop virtual machine while eagerly waiting for Fallout 4 to arrive (which she would then play on her gaming rig at home). We have put in the feature request to our dev team for DirectX 11 support. Thanks for your feedback!
Mark Iomc Mario Cartwright
November 10, 2015 at 1:45 pm

Apologies! You are absolutely right! Fallout: NV is most definitely supported.
Lindsay
November 10, 2015 at 1:57 pm

Oh no worries! Megan is as excited as you are about playing Fallout 4 – sadly you still need a PC to do that, but like I said, we’ve asked our dev team! 😉 We hope you get into exploring Boston soon. (And again, thanks for your feedback. We always love hearing from our customers!)
Albin Holmqvist
November 11, 2015 at 8:45 am

Please do hurry up with the DirectX11 support.
JB
January 16, 2016 at 3:18 am

What about Fallout 3? I tried installing it via Steam on Windows 7 under Parallels 11 and it keeps crashing.
Jason Cloninger
January 17, 2016 at 8:07 am

I’m having the issue of the game crashing as soon as it proceeds past the introduction video and begins to start/load the game. I have 4GB of RAM allocated to the Windows VM in Parallels, 2 processors assigned, and have another 4GB of VDisk Memory allocated. I have the resources required to run the game, so why does it keep crashing? Perhaps you can go more in depth regarding how to configure parallels so that the game runs?
Lindsay
January 19, 2016 at 10:44 am

Hi JB – we recommend checking Fallout 3’s hardware requirements to ensure that you have what you need in order to run the game. Let us know if you get it to work or if you need support.
Lindsay
January 19, 2016 at 10:48 am

It sounds like you have the hardware requirements you need to run the game; we recommend connecting with our Support team to make sure your VM is allocating your resources correctly to run this game. Please email them directly at cs@parallels.com, and let us know how it goes. Thanks!