Alphabet (Google’s parent company) is trying to make mobile gaming more direct on PC.

Sure, you can put an entire Android OS on a PC with BlueStacks, so we’ve had a way to play mobile games on a PC with middleware for years (iOS is a different story). Google, however, wants to cut out the middleware to make it easier to play on PC. We’ve written before that after Windows 11 (where Microsoft is also offering a direct solution), they’re also simplifying the Android>PC path.

The Google Play Games for PC beta has launched in Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. Anyone with a Google Play account in one of the countries concerned can download it from here (you may also see the download option pop up on your browser’s welcome screen). There are currently over forty games available, which is not bad for a beta, but don’t expect any significant games (e.g. Genshin Impact is not here), as Android and controller support are like oil and water. For example, Cookie Run or Idle Heroes are what we have in the beta.

These games are heavily optimised for mobile, so playing them on a PC may not be much point, but a mouse and keyboard pair can be more helpful, and your mobile battery won’t be drained. In return, you may have to activate hardware virtualisation in the BIOS. In AMD machines, it can be called SVM (Secure Virtual Machine). And the system requirements have been lowered: Windows 10 is now sufficient instead of Windows 11. You’ll need 8 GB of RAM, a quad-core processor and a graphics chip up to Intel’s UHD Graphics 630 level, but it can be a bit of a drag to install on an SSD, and it needs at least 10 GB of space.

Still, it’s not bad as a starting point. If you can find more games later, it might not be a bad idea to play this way…

Source: PCGamer