While Google may be winding down its own stand alone platform, Stadia, that doesn’t mean it thinks cloud gaming has no future. In addition to offering its infrastructure (Immersive Stream) to partners (*cough* Ubisoft *cough*), the company has many more successful products (Chrome, Chrome OS, Android TV, Android) that can both benefit from other cloud gaming services and help them in return.
Today Google announced a new line of cloud gaming focused Chromebooks from Acer, Asus and Lenovo. They come with 120+ FPS displays, wifi 6 or better connectivity and colorful backlit keyboards.
Google is touting that you can play over 1500 PC and console games on these devices from services like GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud Gaming and Amazon Luna. Obviously not included is Google’s own Stadia service that is being shuttered.
In addition to the release of these three gaming Chromebooks, Google is also adding cloud gaming search (alongside existing Google Play store search) to the search menu on all Chromebooks! The games can be launched from a single click in the search results. Which is a very handy feature.
With the launch of these Chromebooks, GFN is also adding 120FPS to the Chrome browser (and Chromebooks in general though not many can support it) and up to 1600P.
While it’s natural to wonder if Stadia may have had more legs if Google had thrown its full weight behind its own platform (Google definitely deserves to take a few punches), it isn’t a bad thing to see Google doing what Google does best – help build up an entire ecosystem by leveraging its ability to organize information, curate results and apps from multiple sources and promote the web as the real platform of the future.
It’s a testament to cloud gaming as a whole that Asus, Lenovo and Acer are placing a bet on the cloud gaming space by producing gaming specific Chromebooks.
We were already playing games flawlessly on our Chromebooks . What makes this better? The 120hz? Does a Chromebook need to be “super gaming powerful” to have a 120hz display? I don’t get why outlets like Chrome Unboxed & XDA are all losing their ish over these.
Xda article: “It honestly was like playing on a console itself without the hassle of downloads, installs, or worrying about game updates.”
(yeah, we been doin this dummy ???)
“Gaming is the last thing that I think of when I use a Chromebook.” (bcs you’re clueless??)
“I’ve never been this excited about ChromeOS in a long time, and it’s all thanks to the Acer Chromebook 516GE.”
(yeah…stroke that expensive hardware ?)