Ladies and gentlemen, hold on to your hats because Google Play Games for PC is expanding and it’s bringing six new games to the service! That’s right, during the Google for Games Summit, the company announced that it would launch beyond its current availability and land in Japan and Europe over the “coming months”. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know which European countries will be lucky enough to get access. That’s still fantastic news for anyone eagerly awaiting what “could” one day become the future of mobile games. I, on the other hand, finally installed and tested it, discovering that it was exactly what I feared and expected.
But that’s not all! Google has also revealed that six new titles will be coming to larger screens, meaning they’re heading to desktops and laptops with mouse and keyboard support. These games include Angry Birds 2, Disney Mirrorverse, Ludo King, Uma Musume, MapleStory M, and Garena Free Fire. These are all games that will do incredibly well on PCs and laptops in my opinion, though I likely will only poke through them a bit when they launch.
In addition to the new games, Google Play Games for PC Beta is also getting a dedicated emulator for developers to test and deploy their titles through Android Studio on Windows. This is a massive win for developers who may be interested in getting their games on the service. To help speed up this process, Google has partnered with Intel. Any games that are compiled for arm64 instead of x86 (phones instead of PCs) will be able to run on computers as a sort of compatibility layer until more devs start optimizing their experiences manually – something the tech giant still encourages them to do!
It’s clear that Google is putting in the effort to make sure that the service does what it was created to do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a success. As much as I love the idea of Play Games for PC, I have zero confidence in Google’s ability to go more than a few years without sharpening its favorite axe and “sunsetting” the poor thing.
Lastly, I don’t think the service should have launched with so few games, and I think the company is drip-feeding titles more than it is waiting on folks to port things over. It could also be the case that they’re garnering little interest in developers who want to do so, but who knows at this point. In the meantime, we’ll be keeping a close eye on the launch in Japan and Europe and will let you know exactly where and when to check it out.
Newsletter Signup
