Google Play Games, software for running Android titles on PC, should arrive in France in the coming months, with an enriched catalog. A strong competitor for the Windows 11 Android system!
If Google has experienced a bitter failure with Stadia, its cloud gaming service, in its attempt to establish itself as a major player in the video game sector, the Web giant is not let down. He tries again with Google Play Games, a launcher – a launcher, in French – which allows players to enjoy the best mobile titles on their personal computer. An idea in which he firmly believes since, according to a survey he conducted in partnership with IPSOS, many people would be very interested in the arrival of mobile games on computers. Indeed, they would be 71% in the United States, 60% in Japan and more than 85% in Brazil and Indonesia to be ready to buy a mobile game to play it on their PC.
Announced in December 2021, the service launched in January 2022 in a beta version in a narrow market including Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Hong Kong. Since November 2, Google Play Games has been available in the United States, but also in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. Europe should therefore logically be the next to have access to it. VSa good thing, the Mountain View firm has just announced on his blog that Google Play Games was expanding to new horizons, expanding to Japan and other countries in Europe over the next few months. For now, it is only possible to register in order to receive a notification when the beta is launched in France. “We are excited to expand our platform to more markets so gamers can enjoy their favorite games on Google Play.“, said Arjun Dayal, director of Google Play Games, in a blog post in November 2022.”As we move towards a full release, we will continue to add new features and evaluate developer and player feedback.“. New games and a partnership with Intel were also announced.
Google Play Games: no need for an overpowered PC
In practice, Google Play Games is software for Windows that allows you to play some Android mobile games – but not all – and therefore enjoy greater comfort and better gameplay. Unlike Stadia or Microsoft’s Cloud Gaming, the games do not work through remote servers: they are installed directly on the PC and use the latter’s resources. Google has bet on the accessibility card and therefore offers software and games that do not need a war machine to operate. You need at least a PC with a processor (CPU) with four physical cores (Intel or AMD, it doesn’t matter), 8 GB of RAM, 10 GB of free storage (SSD), an Intel graphics circuit (GPU) UHD Graphics 630, all running Windows 10 or Windows 11. Of course, a more powerful machine will be even more comfortable, but a five-year-old computer may be enough to enjoy it.
The rendering of the image remains to be seen, because not all games were designed for large screens. Google Play Games supports mouse, keyboard, but also gamepads to make gameplay more comfortable. Note that the interface does not resemble that of the Google Play Store, but is closer to Steam, GOG Galaxy and Epic Games Store. A clearly displayed desire to get closer to these PC gaming platforms.
Google Play Games: a catalog of games still shy
Small problem, however: not all Android titles are compatible. For now, there are only 85 games validated by the service, of which Just Dance Now, WWE SuperCard And Cookie Run: Kingdom. Even if the service is only in its infancy, it is very little… In the coming months, Google intends to add new ones, including Garena Free Fire, Ludo King And MapleStory. To prevent potential players from simply turning to an Android emulator, the Internet giant is banking on data synchronization via the user’s Google account, which allows you to resume a game started from a mobile device on a PC. , and vice versa. Moreover, he announces on Youtube a partnership with Intel to facilitate the task of developers who would like to be part of the program, which would allow it to enrich its catalog more quickly. The latter will have the right to a new emulator in order to perform debugging and optimization operations more easily. They will also have the possibility of translating their games into more than eight languages in just a few minutes via Machine Translation.
For the moment, Google Play Games promises to be a nice and free bonus, but which may well be insufficient to allow Google to establish itself in the world of video games. Not to mention that it comes – slightly – in competition with the Android system of Windows 11, which allows it to run almost all Android applications on a PC (see our article), but which is in practice much more greedy, thus requiring a Much more muscular PC.
