Call of Duty Warzone Mobile arrives this week: but will it play on a Chromebook?

Over the years, there are a few games I’ve used to test the overall viability of Android gaming on a Chromebook. There are really three levels of gaming activity when I sit and think about it. First, you have simple puzzle games like 2-Dots, Sudoku, Wordle, or Fruit Ninja. Then you have the slightly more coplex titles like Monument Valley or Alto’s Adventure. Finally, we move on to bigger, 3D titles like Roblox, Minecraft, PUBG, and Call of Duty Mobile.

This isn’t a holistic look at all the games on Chromebooks by any stretch of the imaginiation, but it helps me sort gaming into a few separate areas. Nearly all Chromebooks are great at the first two categories and especially if you have a device with a touchscreen, you can generally play these sorts of games as much as you choose.

That third category, however, is a bit different. 3D games require more resources and can push the Android container on Chromebooks to the limit. Depending on the processor you have in your device and whether or not the developer of a particular game supports Intel, AMD, and/or ARM processors, you can have a wide variety of outcomes with these sorts of games on a Chromebook.

Call of Duty Mobile has been solid

For me, I’m always interested to see if I can get away with getting in a few rounds of the games I tend to play like PUBG Mobile, Call of Duty Mobile, and the ill-fated Apex Legends Mobile. Again, depending on the hardware, I usually get a very different experience across the board with these titles.

But more than any other, Call of Duty has been the most usable over the years on Chromebook. It runs on more devices than most and when it does, it is far more playable as well. The gyroscope works for motion controls as expected and even if the processor inside doesn’t support the highest graphics settings, the gameplay ends up smooth and gives me the option to play for sure.

Will Call of Duty Warzone Mobile follow suit?

So, in that spirit, I’m very hopeful that the launch of the new Call of Duty Warzone Mobile might just work on a Chromebook as well. With new tablets on the way hopefully by year’s end, having a few great 3D games to play would be a very fun proposition. As it stands right now, I can play Call of Duty Mobile on pretty high settings on the Duet 3 or Duet 5, so if Activision launches Warzone Mobile with the same broad accessibility, I’d love to leverage this new game on a larger screen as well.

For now, we don’t know if it will play out that way or not. The new Warzone Mobile game is slated for release on Thursday, March 21st, so we don’t have long to wait. For the time being, it does show up as available for install upon launch in the Play Store on the Acer Chromebook Plus 515 I’m using right now, so that’s a good sign. And it’s worth noting that the desktop version is very much available to play on a Chromebook via GeForce NOW immediately, and it’s very fun! But if you are like me and really do enjoy touch controls for mobile FPS games, you also likely hope that Warzone ends up running well on Chromebooks when it arrives, too.