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Daily Authority: Android games on Windows

Google launches Google Play Games on PC if that's what you want, plus more tech news you need to know today!
By

Published onJanuary 20, 2022

🐕 Good morning! Had a great dinner out last night capped off with Kyoto only barking once. A real improvement!

Google brings Android games to Windows (not for you)

Google Play Games for PC beta
Supplied by Google

Wake up people in Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong: Google is bringing Android games to Windows in your markets, right now, and nowhere else yet, for some reason.

What’s happening:

  • Back in December, Google announced Google Play Games would be coming to PCs.
  • Just a month later, that’s happening, if you’re in those regions and manage to get in the beta.
  • Google says you’ll be able to “play a catalog of Google Play games on… Windows PC via a standalone application built by Google,” and testers will be able to try out popular mobile games like Asphalt 9, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Summoners War, and Three Kingdoms Tactic.
  • Google says “more than 25” games will be available. (Possibly meaning 26, I don’t know.)
  • You’ll need Windows 10 or 11, a gaming-class GPU, and an SSD drive with 20GB of space, some of which some gamers won’t have on more value-class laptops.
  • And for what it’s worth, you can earn Play Points while playing/paying for Android games on PCs.

Why? Why now?

  • Google seems to be racing to bring Android games to PC following Microsoft’s announcement that it would be bringing Android apps (not just games) to Windows 11.
  • And of course, Microsoft surprisingly partnered with Amazon and its own Amazon Appstore rather than Google to achieve that.
  • It could also be related to Apple allowing M1-chip Macs to run iOS apps and games too.
  • But I mean… it is a little odd that Google just didn’t touch this market at all until now, letting the likes of Bluestacks emulate games by itself.
  • It’s possible that the timing is finally right to move Android games to bigger screens, mouse and keyboard controls, and so on.
  • Plus, Google’s new Android game developer site encourages devs to optimize games for publish-once-publish-anywhere cross-device play, so maybe there were limitations that have now been overcome?

Roundup

Throwback Thursday

wheelchair basketball

Something fun for you: on this day, January 20, back in 1892, the first official basketball game was played in Springfield, Massachusetts, by YMCA students of the game’s inventor, James A. Naismith.

  • Naismith had invented basketball in 1891, “to condition young athletes during cold months,” using peach baskets and a soccer style ball.
  • At first, the game was chaos: full contact, tackling, a free-for-all.
  • The first rule change was to disallow running with the ball.
  • The first international game was in 1893, just a year later, in Paris, in Montmartre.
  • It took until 1894 for the soccer ball to be replaced by a ball Naismith contracted Spalding to make.
  • And, the seriously great game of wheelchair basketball started in the mid 1940s.

 

Cheers,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.

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